I have
over the last few months begun playing chess with a friend back in
England via e-mail using algebraic chess notifications. The
horizontal lines on the chess board are alphabetised A-H and the
vertical lines are numbered 1-8, so one notification for example may
be, pawn moves to e4 etc. A system of beautiful simplicity in
theory. Using e-mail is of course not as romantic as a game played by
postal correspondence or, of course carrier pigeon, (or those owls in
Harry Potter.) It's a shame really, this modern lack of romance, were
everything is so coldly rationalised. The sociologist Max Weber
talked of the Iron Cage of Rationality inherent to social life in
Western capitalist societies. Now, in an ideal world (one where I
wasn't apparently in a cage of rationality) I would have a poor
minion run across the harsh, unforgiving surface of the world with my
chess move tightly bound on a papyrus scroll, carrying my chess
notification over dangerous land and tempestuous sea with bleeding
heels like a Roman envoy from where I presently am in Sydney to my
friend in Sheffield. However as the Rolling Stones rightly said, You
Can't Always Get What You Want. We both had chess sets set up (see photo below) and
would move the pieces as per the notifications we sent to each other,
simple. You consider your move, type it in and click send, then move
the piece accordingly on your board. Done. Couldn't be easier. In theory simple,
that is what my friend and I thought till we attempted it.
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Problems
began around maybe 10-12 moves in. It's almost impossible to precise.
It began with an e-mail where I was sure, nay, convinced I could take
his Queen. I went over the move again and again, giddily and
excitedly cackling at my opportunity and his erroneous over sight. Of
course, I sent him an e-mail with my notification in a humble,
conciliatory and gentlemanly tone. It read;
“Before
reading my next notification below I want you to take a few deep
breaths and make sure you are sitting comfortably. Upon reading don't
give in to too much self hate and loathing.....”
It
actually transpired, to my dismay, the Bishop I had used to take his
Queen was not where it was on his board, the move to take his Queen
was impossible. His Queen would love to fight another day. The tin of
worms was open, something had gone very wrong. Sure of my critical
faculties I set up the chess pieces again as they were when you begin
and began to pick through the e-mails, I would easily see where the
error had arisen I thought naively. I spent a spirit
sapping hour or so going through the labyrinthine e-mail trail to no
avail. We had added moves as an after thought after lots of writing,
or replied to previous e-mails with another move...I couldn’t work
it out, it was utterly beyond me. My patient friend eventually worked
it out , he'd accidentally moved a Knight instead of a Bishop
previously. We knew the point where we had gone wrong and began
afresh from there, even with an e-mailed photograph of his chess
board showing exactly where his pieces were to cast out any further
doubt or confusion. It was just a rock of the boat, no problem, it
would be plain sailing from here on in.
5
moves later were both staring, across the world from each other,
glassy eyed with confusion at our chess boards. He had moved a bishop
into a place where it could be easily taken, it was obviously a
mistake. After further investigation this time a typing error was
seen to be to blame. The good old confusion inducing typo. No mistake it
seems was beyond either of us! We hobbled on with the game. Literally
a move or so later it became apparent that my friend had possibly got
mixed up whether he was playing with the white or black pieces
because he was using a chess set that had clear and opaque pieces. At this point we both decided to give up, throw the towel in and stat again.
At
time of writing I am happy to report we have managed to finish at
least one game and are presently in the opening phase of another
game, however the completed game was not without incident. I sent
e-mails with untold numbers of typos in the notification. In one instance, I sent the notification for one move incorrectly not once,
but twice whilst making some spaghetti bolognese. There are much
easier ways of playing correspondence chess now. There are various
chess sites where you play online and it saves the progress of the
game, there's really no need to send a
chess notification at all. None the less I think it's much more
exciting to get an e-mail and read Nc3 and then to move the piece and
see how the game is developing than to log on and simply see where
the piece has moved to. I have just re-read this and realised to my utter dismay that I just
wrote the sentence, 'it's much more exciting to get an e-mail and
read Nc3 and then to move the piece and see who the game is
developing..' (At this point I move away from the keyboard and hold
my head in my hands, wearily, and wonder were it all went wrong.)
Chess
is famous for being an intellectual game that demands great
concentration. It can be so draining on the mind they say, that it can
make the mind crumble. The example of the grandmaster Bobby Fischer's
break down into a world of paranoia is infamous. It has been
suggested that it may be the infinite amount of possibilities and
combinations being considered that eventually leads chess genius's
minds to crack. AndrewAnthony wrote in a piece on Bobby Fischer;
“His
descent into wild and irrational behaviour is far from a unique
narrative, particularly in chess. The history of the game contains
many similar trajectories. As GK Chesterton noted in arguing that
reason bred insanity: "Poets do not go mad, but chess players
do." Akiba Rubinstein, the early 20th-century Polish
grandmaster, would hide in the corner of the competition hall between
moves, owing to his anthropophobia (fear of people), retiring from
the game when schizophrenia got the better of him. William Steinitz,
the Austrian who was the world's first undisputed chess champion,
died in an asylum. Then there was Paul Morphy, the American who was
said to be the 19th-century's finest player and to whom Fischer has
frequently been compared: he quit the game, having beaten all his
rivals, and began a decline into paranoid delusion. Aged 47, he was
found dead in his bath, surrounded by women's shoes.”
My friend and I are lucky chess induced insanity is not an issue
for us; if reason does breed insanity then we are both safe from madness, as we are both apparently, as we have seen, steeped in enough 'un-reason' to be happy and sane, with our bolognese, typos, moving incorrect pieces and confusion about which colour pieces we are. The lofty heights of chess are perhaps thankfully then beyond
us, as is apparently sending an e-mail and moving a chess piece to
it's correct place on a board! We are just lucky we do live in an age
were e-mails are available, bless us both. To understate the issue,
we would have both struggled with postal chess.
