Musings on Chess

I should probably preface this posting by stating that I don’t believe I have ever won a game of chess. In my defense I’ve never read word one about chess strategy and I don’t know if I’ve even played ten games in my entire life. Last year my father and I were grabbing a cup of coffee when he noticed that Mugby Junction (a local coffee shop in Winona. They’re pretty all right. I like their soup.) had chess sets available for the use of their customers. He challenged me to a game and I reluctantly accepted. Naturally he clobbered me and then proceeded to ridicule me for at least four months. This was exactly the outcome that I expected, so I’m going to chalk that one up as a moral victory. Despite my ineptitude at the game I am absolutely fascinated by chess. It’s so straightforward, yet so complex. Even though I don’t know too much about chess I recently had quite the epiphany while pondering its mechanics.

Within the game, most things are equal

In a game of chess both players begin the game with the exact same set up, with only two relevant differences. The player that plays first has an edge in that until he/she makes a mistake (which he/she almost assuredly will on multiple occasions) he/she dictates the pace of the game. The other edge is granted to the more experienced/well-read player. Of course, the only games where skill doesn’t come into play are games of chance. Speaking of which…

There is nothing random about chess

This is probably the greatest aspect of the game and precisely what causes chess to be so challenging. Never in the course of the game does anything happen that is not the will of at least one of the players. This allows skilled players to “map” out many turns in advance and illustrates more often than not which of the two players is the better strategist. If you make a mistake you don’t get to make any saving rolls. There is no chance that your hand turns from nothing into a flush on the river. When you lose a game of chess it’s probably your fault, and the only way that your mistakes go unpunished is by the good grace (or more likely poor play) of your opponent. Quite the exercise in humility.  

Chess turns bluffing on its head

Generally speaking I play most games very conservatively and only ever bluff for one of three reasons. I’ll bluff if I can’t conceivably win without doing so, if the risk of bluffing is negligible, or if I have a very good reason to believe that my bluff will work. That being said, I bluff all the time. There is nothing more satisfying than stone-facing an opponent and “no-sirring” them out of a play that would assuredly result in their victory. The major problem with bluffing in most games is that you have to rely on your opponent’s ability to recognize exactly what it is you’re trying to bluff. You have to get inside of their head and make them see what isn’t there. But chess isn’t most games. There is no hidden information to bluff in chess. The only manner of bluff that can be made is one where a player relies on his/her opponent not seeing something. A bluff in poker attempts to incite uneasiness about what might happen. A bluff in chess attempts to blind the opponent to what will happen.

For the above reasons and more, whichever player plays a better game will win every time

If only this were true of every game. I hate it when horrific play is met with victory. I curse the New Orleans Saints for performing an onside kick to start off the second half of the Super Bowl. I abhor it when an opponent bets on a two-seven off-suit and hits three of a kind on the flop. Whenever I land on a hotel on Mediterranean Avenue that an opponent actively traded for I have half a mind to blow my nose with the negligible $250 that I owe them. It’s not that I mind losing. I mean, I lose all the time at all kinds of things. It’s the fact that a bad play unpunished leaves the bad player with a feeling that they never made a mistake, or worse that they actually played well. Bad play never pays off in chess. If you want to play chess often you are forced to improve or your desire to continue to play will quickly diminish. You’ll either find yourself consistently beating worse players or losing to better ones. Neither of those strikes me as a very enjoyable regularity.

No matter how skilled you become at the game there will always be room for improvement

This is what I find most fascinating on the matter. Chess, while technically a solvable game, will never be played perfectly by a human being. The math is simply too complex for us to comprehend at the level that would be necessary to play optimally. Take a second to reflect on that. Chess is played on a 64 square grid. Every game starts the same way, give or take playing first. There are very specific rules about how the pieces can move, and both players have the same knowledge of everything that happens in game. Given all of this there is no known “correct” way to play. Now compare chess to everyday life. We don’t all start on near equal footing. We have to deal with tremendous amounts of variance. There is far more hidden information than known information. And sometimes no matter how well it seems like we’re doing we still end up behind. If that isn’t a humbling revelation then I’ve never had one.

You can take this and run one of two different ways with it. You can go ahead and blame your pitfalls on variance and posit that bad things will happen no matter how well you try to live your life. The Saints did after all win Super Bowl 44. I have been cleaned out by triple deuces. Nobody ever loses on Mediterranean Avenue because that’s just ridiculous, but the point still stands- sometimes David beats Goliath. Personally I choose to go the other direction. Variance happens, but most of the time when met with a bad scenario there is something that I could have done differently. If Goliath had taken the match a little bit more seriously he would have won it. He had every advantage save the eye of the tiger. If the Rocky saga has taught me anything it’s that wanting to win and doing everything in one’s power to do so are the most important factors in victory. Rocky only ever won by pushing himself to new heights. That and having a superhumanly thick skull. It’s true that nobody bats 1,000, but without applying oneself you’d be lucky to bat 200.

I don’t know everything. I never will. But I think it’s better to try to approach that goal than to live in mental stagnation. It has oft been said that "you learn something new every day," but I don't think that this adage is typically delivered in the proper context. Learning new things shouldn't be considered an incidental factor of living. It should be a goal for the day's end. I have never sat down to write a bucket list, but I think it might be time to start. Item number one- Beat my father at chess.