Chess

First published in Column 8 on the 20^th February, 1991

Before Christmas I said I preferred to take my exercise sitting down. Though I was talking then about hobbies, I do occasionally get into something slightly more strenuous.

Occasionally is the operative word. My occasional involvement means I’m never likely to excel at the game of chess.

My father was top of the class at this game in Australia during the forties and fifties. There’s no evidence that he passed any of his skill on to me.

However, the historic game of chess, not yet overtaken in its supremacy as the real sport of kings by that newcomer on the local scene, Go, continues to draw me on.

Playing Go at a tournament
courtesy AvantaR

Incidentally, Go, though it obviously has the capacity to make the brain work very hard, isn’t as
colourful as chess. The large number of black and white pebbles, each shaped the same, can’t compare with the varying characteristics of chess pieces and their individual way of moving.

Chess players can exercise some imagination, quite apart from the moves themselves. Some computer versions of the game, however, don’t give the players’ imaginations a chance.

Friends of ours play ‘Battlechess’ on their computer. Personally I think it’s rather gross and should be given a R13 rating.

Pieces literally slaughter each other – holding up the game in the process. The swords are sharp and wound mortally. The King produces a gun to slay his opponents.

As the Soldiers move about the board in their armour, there are great clunking sounds by way of accompaniment. Even worse sounds accompany the death rattles of the losers.

Who needs Gulf Wars?

I prefer my own computer version, Chessmaster, whose only irritation is that it can’t take any of my pieces without saying in a smarmy fashion, ‘Gotcha!’ If I remove one of its pieces, it laments, ‘You got me..!

Playing with the sound off is one possibility, though the sulky silence starts to get to you.

Disheartening though it is, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m never going to be tops in chess. I’ve read book after book to try and pick up a few clues – and that’s all I do pick up. The flights of brilliance escape me.

The latest was How to Think Ahead in Chess. The greatest amount of thinking ahead I did was when I thought the opening chapter claimed I’d never again have an opponent wipe me off the board – especially with the four-move checkmate.

However, I found soon enough that I was only going to win if my opponent followed the book too – and my opponents don’t.

The only one I could get to play the game my way was the Chessmaster – and then I had to set him up.

Three years ago, in spite of my lack of skill, three friends and I formed a team to play in the the Otago Chess Club’s monthly Chess for Fun series. (Chess for Fun?)

Chess for Fun allows you to be as social as chess players are ever likely to be. Occasionally the players do speak to each other, but most nights the noisiest part of the evening is the heavy concentrated breathing.

And sometimes I win. The occasional win does the old moral a bit of good.

It’s needed to compensate for the effort of bringing the self-esteem up to scratch again after a devastating defeat – by a child who’s young enough to be your grandson.

Playing chess during the pandemic
courtesy Sasmirido

I still play Chess, mostly with my older son, but we play it online these days at chess.com, since we live in different towns. I have played chess with his older son, too, but it’s not a good idea. He breezes through the game as though I was hardly involved.

My comments about Go are possibly still relevant, though I know that its adherents swear by the enormous skill required to play it well. I recently read a thriller by Robert Goddard (One False Move) in which Go featured as a major plot point. In this case playing Go against a computer was the focus, and whether the character who regularly beat the computer was a genius or not. (Incidentally, it turned out I’d already read this book back in 2020, and had forgotten the storyline completely – it’s perhaps not one of Goddard’s best.)