From “The Scratching Post”:Chess

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, March 30, 2017. Republished here by permission of the author.]



I can’t recall how old I was when I started playing chess – either 8 or 9. One day, my father came home from work with a cigar box that contained no cigars. Instead it was full of black and white figurines, most of which represented people out of the pages of medieval history. My father explained they were members of warring kingdoms. The field of battle was a chessboard, formerly known to me as a checkerboard. The objective, to invade the opposing kingdom and trap its king.
    The game was challenging well beyond anything I’d met with at school. Dozens of rules intersected one another. The pawn alone, a deceivingly simple piece, has five rules attached to its movements! The knight, unlike any other piece, can jump over pieces and makes a right-angle turn before landing again. The king has a few odd moves of its own and is guided by two rules that set the boundaries for the entire battle. Rule 1: Any threat of capture must be immediately dealt with by moving the king, blocking the threatening piece, or capturing it. Rule 2: Any move that would expose the mover’s king to capture is forbidden.
    Worse than the web of rules is a stupefying question that occurs regularly throughout every game: What move should I make? It seemed the more I learned about chess, the more stupefying the question became. You see, there are two kinds of chess moves, tactical and strategic. A tactical move is one the leads in short order to a crippling capture or to a checkmate (a trapped enemy king). A strategic move is one that’s part of a winning plan. It may be about building a long-term attack or limiting the scope of the enemy pieces or maneuvering your pieces to powerful outposts. (Not all squares are created equal.) That’s a lot to think about, but just when you’re beginning to think in both modes, you realize your opponent is doing the same! So you have to think “quadraphonically.” That is, you also have to look for your opponent’s tactical opportunities and try to see his winning plan. If you can’t think like your opponent, you’ll never see an attack coming.

You’re probably saying to yourself, “Chess is masochism – who needs this torture?” I agree that torture is disagreeable, but what if you instead view it as complexity? For example, the complexity of a Beethoven symphony. You have the confluence of instrumental timbres, of musical themes, of rhythms and tempos. It isn’t a painful cacophony but an integrated work of euphony.
    The best description I’ve ever read of a chess game comes from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel The Defense. In this excerpt, he also likens chess play to music:

The players occupied their positions cautiously, moving this and that up but doing it politely, without the slightest sign of a threat…. Then, without the least warning, a chord sang out tenderly. This was one of Turati’s forces occupying a diagonal line. But forthwith a trace of melody very softly manifested itself on Luzhin’s side also. For a moment mysterious possibilities were quivering, and then all was quiet again…. The players seemed to calm down and forget the momentary flare-up. The vibration in this part of the board, however, had not yet quite died down, something was still endeavoring to take shape…. Some other deep, dark note chimed elsewhere and both players abandoned the still quivering square and became interested in another part of the board…. The weightiest elements on the board called to one another several times with trumpet voices and again there was an exchange…. Then there was a long interval of thought, during which Luzhin bred from one spot on the board and lost a dozen illusionary games is succession, and then his fingers groped for and found a bewitching, brittle, crystalline combination – which with a gentle tinkle disintegrated at Turati’s first reply…. Both players repeated the same two moves – threat and defense, threat and defense…. And Turati finally decided on this combination – and immediately a kind of musical tempest overwhelmed the board and Luzhin searched stubbornly in it for the tiny, clear note that he needed in order to swell it out into a thunderous harmony. Now everything on the board breathed with new life, everything was concentrated on a single idea, was rolled up tighter and tighter; for a moment the disappearance of two pieces eased the situation and then again – agitato.

    I’ve been playing for more than 65 years and still find delight in chess ideas that are novel to me. Whatever my constructive habits of mind are, chess has no doubt had a role in shaping them. How fortunate I am to have it in my life! It’s vexing to realize that so few American children have it in theirs. From the 4th grade through middle school, chess should be part of a school’s curriculum or made available as a daily after-school activity.
    I volunteer at a chess club in a nearby elementary school. The club meets on Tuesdays after school for one hour. No chess on other days or during school breaks, which includes the entire summer. I’m thankful these kids are given a token exposure to cognitive stimulation at their school. About as thankful as I am about the other forms of tokenism that pervade our society.

Copyright © 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.