A game that grabs your attention
July 31, 2011 § Leave a comment
After a week of playing chess, I’m pretty hooked. I was having drinks with a friend the other night and she asked me what it was about the game I liked.
There are two things I like about chess that I can tell will keep me playing:
1) You learn something new just about every time you play. You can spend the rest of your life playing and never fully know the game. It’s always interesting because there are so many possible iterations. Through this project, I like finding things I can continually learn from over the course of my life. Roasting coffee is like that. Learning about the nuance of wine is a life-long endeavor.
2) It makes you sharper. I used to think it would be taxing mentally because it requires so much concentration but it’s actually more like meditation. When you walk into a game of chess you may be wrestling with a lot of different thoughts across different facets of your life. Chess completely blocks everything out, it focuses you on problem solving and when you’re done playing, your mind is re-calibrated to think in terms of possible solutions. Stanley Kubrick put it well: “Chess helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.”
There is a quality to chess that mirrors life in so many ways. It’s not hard to see why it has had such a firm grip on so many people. Marcel Duchamp gave up making art for a time at the height of his career to focus on playing chess. He saw chess as a true art form: “I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
Humphrey Bogart made a living off street chess during the Depression before he became the iconic actor we know today. When interviewed later in life asking what mattered most to him, he replied that chess was one of the most important things to him.
Chess may have lost a bit of its luster in popular culture with the onslaught of video games, apps and other distractions, but it is still alive and well. I imagine it will continue to thrive long after Angry Birds has come and gone. If anything apps and online gaming allow more people to get into the game and find people to play with.
I just need to taper back my playing a bit or I’ll be heading into Duchamp territory. I still have more weeks to do.
52 To Do 
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