The Game of Chess

I have often thought that Chess feels divine. Like Borges, I would call myself an agnostic, and yet it is in the contemplation of Chess that I feel closest to something supernatural. The ways of Chess, like the ways of Providence, are inscrutable. Something in the structure of the thing exceeds, or seems to exceed, the sum of the hands that shaped it.

The feeling is hard to articulate. There is an elegance to Chess that fails to appear elsewhere. ¹ For what its worth, I do not think chess is truly sui generis. Math and logic are more elegant still, but they do not claim to be man-made. Conway’s game of life does occasionally produces a similar level of elegance. I would imagine Go does too, though I do not know it well enough to make a claim in good faith. chess’s elegance simply speaks to me the most. It is the only game where I have questioned the mortality of it’s creators. The pieces interact too beautifully, too precisely, in a way that does not feel human-engineered. Too often a knight sits in exactly the square it needs to. Too often a pawn structure built on move six decides the endgame thirty moves later. The interactions feel less like the consequences of rules and more like coincidences that were arranged in advance.

Other formal systems can produce surprise e.g. Conway’s Game of Life produces gliders and guns, simple cellular automata produce complexity that similarly exceeds their rules. But the surprises in Chess have a shape to them. They feel addressed to the player. A relationship forms between you and the board. Even further, you and the creators of the board. A fork is not simply a logical consequence of how knights move. It becomes a small drama, a betrayal at a crossroads, the representation of pieces placed exactly. Chess, a game seemingly composed of simply rules, breeds a narrative gravity.

Currently, Chess stands as both a pillar of modern gaming and the very antithesis of the industry. It rejects the constant patches and balance changes that define contemporary games. Its popularity ebbs and flows independent of any update, because there are no updates. Chess does not need to be kept alive. It outlives its caretakers. It is cognizant of its own immortality.

At its core, Chess is thinking in its purest form. You, your interlocutor, the board. It is devoid of luck or randomness. Simply the distillation of two minds onto sixteen pieces and sixty-four squares. Whatever you produce on the board is what you are, in that moment, capable of producing. The moves depict the self during the game. A close game is a philosophical debate. Claims and counterclaims, concessions, sudden reversals, the slow accumulation of small advantages until one position becomes untenable. Each move is a punch between pugilists, war at its simplest. It is life rendered in miniature.

I know, of course, that Chess is a feat of human iteration. The modern ruleset was not finalized until about the fifteenth century. Rules like en passant and castling are even newer addition. Ultimately, I realize that what I am calling perfection is the survivor of a long evolutionary process, the final draft after centuries of pruning. I know this. For us, builders and engineers, it should stand as the model for perfect design and continuous iteration. Most of what we make is iterated on for months, occasionally years, before being abandoned or rewritten. Chess was iterated on for a millennium. While we may never achieve something of the same likeness, even in the duration of our entire life, simply aiming at such elegance will redefine the character and brilliance of our work. I know the greatness of Chess stems from its iteration rather than divine origins. Yet still, often while sitting at the board, I find myself questioning the mortality of its creators. That is the part I cannot explain away.