If Chess Were Easy...

     If chess were easy everyone would play it, as the beauty of the game is that it is so difficult, an infuriating challenge, an inexplicable riddle.
     It is like climbing a mountain on Mars or hitting that elusive perfect golf shot,
the unattainable pursuit of perfection, the Olympic Dream of standing on the podium hearing one's National Anthem.
     It is like that one perfect sunset from forty years ago on that one beach in that one harbor on that one sunny day but you can't recreate it again.
     It is that math equation that you never solved in college that you still ponder
about, or that beautiful woman that smiled at you that one day across the platform in the train station that you will never see again.
     It is not supposed to be easy.  It is supposed to be difficult, and frustrating,
and exasperating.
     If it were easy you could never brag about that great move you played that
one day, because nobody would be impressed.
     It is like that day you went to a theme park with your family and there were
no lines and you rode every roller coaster five straight times and time stood still
and that will never occur again.
     It is like swimming across the Atlantic Ocean only to find out you have to turn around and swim all the way back, in a hurricane.
     If chess were easy everyone would play.
 

Tic-Tac-Toe is easy. You know a lot of people who play that?