Chess can captivate us, even if we're not great players
31 Jan 2009
I have played chess as long as I can remember. There always were chess boards and chess pieces around the house. I'm not sure when I learned ... probably about the 4th or 5th grade. I can't claim to ever having been a good player or even an average player. However, the game does hold a certain fascination for me.
 Like many young (at the time) people I wanted to be good at something. Chess was one of those things that I thought I could be good at. Although the high school I attended had a chess club it didn't provide any real instruction. It was merely a place for people looking for a game to congregate. There were no tournaments. So, in the interest of getting better, I went to the local library and picked up some books about chess. I don't recall any of those books and I'm not that my game improved as a result. That probably had a lot more to do with my focus than with the books.
I now see the same behavior in my youngest son. He's looking for an opportunity to excel and standout. He's begun to dabble in chess. He's picked up a few books on the topic and looked on the internet. These days he's my only playing partner. When he beat me a couple of weeks ago for the very first time he insisted that I take a picture of the board showing the chess pieces in their checkmate position.
My point in bringing this story up is that chess is looked at somewhat differently than other board games. Chess is firmly entrenched in our culture. Anything involving some form of a thinking strategy is compared to a "chess game". A headline in the recent news suggests Taxpayers pawns in federal, state chess matches.
I do believe that part of the lure of chess is that we believe that playing the game says something good about us. It's implied that if you're a chess player you are a thinker, clever and mentally nimble. You think through your moves. No hasty or impetuous actions here. When have you ever heard those characteristics applied to a checkers player. Nothing against checker players but they just don't command the same feelings.
It's not only individuals who use chess as a means to subliminally communicate to others. In his book "White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard", Daniel Johnson descibes how chess was inextricably linked to the rise and fall of the “evil empire.” This excerpt describes the tension and panic of the Russians as it became clear that Bobby Fischer would defeat Boris Spassky.
At this point the real battle again shifted away from the board. It was plain to all that only a miracle could stop Fischer now. Being good communists, the Soviet team did not believe in miracles; they believed in conspiracies instead. The fear of what might await them back in Moscow fueled the atmosphere of paranoia that had pervaded the Spassky camp ever since Baturinsky had warned back in October 1971 that "there has been some conjecture about the influence on these results of nonchess factores (hypnosis, telepathy, tampering with food, listening in on domestic analysis, etc)."
Over the course of this match people who had barely ever played the game were enthralled. It had become more than just a chess match. It was us against them. As a 15 year old at the time I remember following the daily reports from Iceland.
I'm sure that I'll continue my fascination with chess. There's always that belief that I can be good at it. I'm a thinker, y'know.
Jerry Kita
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