The Philosophy of Chess

Barking mental cases sans straitjackets can rarely be found in such concentrated numbers as the insides of chess clubs. Chess players suffer for their art. If art is symbolised by the beauty of a rose, then chess is the roots. There is definitely something curious there, but it is hidden from all but the gardeners and the nematodes.

In the same way one should never trust a politician who isn't corrupted by power, one should never trust a chess player who is actually adept at chess! Chess is glorious when played by beginners who abuse the game by moving their queen more than all the other pieces combined. Then the joke is on chess. Any player that advances beyond that ecstatic stage must admit that the joke is on him.

People play chess for one reason: to beat the living mental crap out of each other. Its pure psychological bloodlust.

If the pleasure of playing lay purely in the beauty of the game then people would enjoy playing computers. BUT PEOPLE HATE PLAYING AGAINST COLD, CALCULATING MACHINES! Anyone who tells you they play chess purely for the aesthetic aspects of the positions of the pieces is A QUACK PSEUD AND A LYING FRAUD!!! They are no better than a wine buff who claims that his intellectual love of wines has nothing to do with intoxication. Even Deep Blue, IBM's computer that beat Kasparov, would be unable to fathom the hyperbolic hypocrisy of chess.

You want proof? A better chess player than me, Mr. D, said, "my fide master friend told me once when he was playing Quinteros that he needed a win so he started choosing second best moves as best moves would have led to a draw, LOL, and my friend won!"

Fischer
Fischer was the greatest ever player. Fischer was the most interesting player. He is the only SANE player of chess. (Well, OK, he is barking - but he's relatively sane for a chess player). The way the Americans treat their genius is atrocious. Fischer gave chess its finest hour. He gave the Yanks a fine victory over the Russians during the Cold War and in return he is persecuted. Sing along now, Born in the USA....

Ageing & Chess
Age is the great enemy of the chess player. Once the short term memory abandons a chap, he is left to flounder at the mercy of the young sharks, who have no wisdom, but much aggression and the mental horsepower to back it up. As the player ages, the neurons don't fire so fast.

If, when are 20, one's brain is a speedy Athlon chip
Then when one is 30 it is a Pentium 3
At 40: a crummy Pentium 2
At 50 a mere pentium
The 60th year sees our noggin reduced to a 486
Three Score and ten will pass and all we have to show for it will be a 386
80 years herald a brand old 286
90 grants us a rusty 8086
100 years old and we downgrade to an abacus
And it's downhill from there...
but the software may improve. Slightly. On a good day.

A chess player who is better than me (almost everyone), Mr. P, points out his fate, and your fate too, when he says, "my software gets softer and my hair-drive is being reformatted."

Chess and Ego
A budding Buddhist once said to yours truly, "but I don't see how I can shrink my ego per buddhism and mysticism and yet maximize my ego per winning at chess, appears I am at a crossroads"

In reply I said, "Just tell yourself that every game you win is proof of a misspent life. Every victory condemns you as one of life's pathetic losers. Then you might find that you can maintain your winning ways and still shrink your ego"

If you find yourself muttering darkly of opponents avoiding your Albin Counter Gambit trap because they don't know the "main line" then it is time to find a cave in Berkshire and go and live in it. You'll thank me for that advice one day.

Chess and Sex
It is very difficult to play chess and feel horny at the same time. That must be why I am so bad at chess :)

So there you have it! Chess prevents good men from interfering with the affairs of state. Chess is a wise distraction that diverts fools.

Oh bugger. I've just lost again...

Haha!  Nicely put.

now it's obvious what I was missing all of my life, the perfect game!!!

how did everyone sidestep this important sequence. no one can play a game better than this. everything else is just a whaste of time and a boost of ego. how dumb?!

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well, I guess now I'm off to tic-tac-toe.

I have no idea if this will ever be read, but I stumbled across this piece and created an account just to say I fucking love your article!

Lol @ VMadman: yes, great reading indeed'

Beautifully said, all people are aging. The reaction speed decreases, the ability to remember new things decreases. But you can't compare a person to a computer. A person can just grow old, but he can become wiser, and an iron machine can not become wise in the human understanding.

In 2017 Alexander Shilyaev published the book "The early history of chess: to Chaturanga".

This book is devoted to the study of the Indian game Chaturanga and the early history of chess. For the first time in such detail in Russian, the connection between traditional Indian games and the emergence of Chaturanga is analyzed, the coincidence of Buddhist terms and attributes with the set of Indian game Chaturanga. An analysis of literary sources indicates the Buddhist origin of this game. Buddhist teachings entered the Indian game in a mythological form. The author offers a new concept of the appearance of Chaturanga, which is a reflection of the Buddhist military and political doctrine of the ideal worldly ruler - Chakravartin. He acts as a defender of the teachings on four continents. Conquest of the figures assumes not violence, but appeal to the Dharma of new supporters. Chaturanga is represented by a pair game with cubes for four players. The revolutionary use of dice is as follows: instead of determining the length of the impact, they began to determine the possibility of moving a figure with a given movement. With this invention, dice in the future have become an unnecessary attribute. In the allegory of Buddhist Bhartrihari (VII century), dice play the role of time: "Time (Kala with Kali), throwing day and night, like two dice, plays with the living pieces on the playing board of the universe." All the material components of the game, according to Murray, for the creation of Chaturanga were known before its invention. Only the Buddhist interpretation of Chaturanga illuminates the hidden mechanism of the invention of the chess game. The Buddhist goal of the game is revealed in the book gradually and in parallel with the presentation of military interpretation. The chess board as an external attribute of Chaturanga is a gambling device on the Manduka diagram (as a construction and astrological model) and on the Buddhist chart (as a model for memorizing and teaching Buddhist ideas). Ashtapada, which was called a single-colored board, has its own specific color. This is the color of the clothes of a Buddhist monk.

Nice!

What a big pile of crap. Doesn't even resemble the truth and is in fact so far from reality that I almost didn't want to bother with this, but I'm still going to do it. 

"People play chess for one reason: to beat the living mental crap out of each other. Its pure psychological bloodlust."

How can you possibly think everybody plays chess for the same reason? There's a LOT of reasons, and thinking everyone must have the same mindset as yourself is plain ignorance on your part.

"If the pleasure of playing lay purely in the beauty of the game then people would enjoy playing computers. BUT PEOPLE HATE PLAYING AGAINST COLD, CALCULATING MACHINES!"

I, for one, really enjoy playing against machines, they are masters in finding elegant moves,positional ideas, and tactical material gain. Playing against them trains my opening/middlegame skills more than playing against humans does because they don't allow mistakes, and thus makes it easier to see what you are doing wrong.

But you don't have to take my word for it, ask any of the millions of other chess players who play games against machines(surely they must all NOT enjoy it and still do it as you are claiming)

"You want proof? A better chess player than me, Mr. D, said, "my fide master friend told me once when he was playing Quinteros that he needed a win so he started choosing second best moves as best moves would have led to a draw, LOL, and my friend won!" 

You have to understand that chess engines have nothing to do with winning, psychology and attitude. They simple evaluate positions according to their algorithms. If an opponent has a good reply to a move they might not consider that move because the resulting position is worse and they always assume that the opponent plays the best move that there is at any given time(look up minimax if that interests you anything at all, which probably isn't the case).

But humans make mistakes and don't always find the best moves, so it might be better to play "second best moves" to complicate things and gamble on your opponent missing the critical idea, instead of playing the "best move" which may lead to a position that is worse for you , but a very hard draw if you play super machine like.

See? Psychology and situation influence which move is "best" very much(which the big grandmasters of the past already knew, starting from Emanual Lasker) and you can't give an objective opinion on it in all situations.

I don't agree with the part about aging, but I guess that subjective. 

You are right about ego and sex, no problems there. Nice quote at the end too

Many would disagree with you on that point, and since it cannot be proven one way or another, it cannot be considered a fact. It's just your opinion. And you know what they say about opinions

i very much enjoyed your writing, and share you thoughts of the intellectual dick measuring contest that is chess.

Nice.

The philosophy of chess is the pleasure of the mind without a shadow of a doubt

Sweet thoughts