What’s in Chess?

     I don’t remember what train I took. I don’t remember what I was wearing either. All I can say for certain about that morning was that it was stupid hot. I did lose my way for a while after exiting the train station. As big as Central Park is, orienting yourself toward it among the bustling city streets and cloud piercing buildings can be difficult. The heat made it all the more troublesome. Luckily I was packing light. In fact, the only thing of note that I was carrying happened to be a complete set of chess pieces. Not the board, or the instruction manual, or the box these kinds of things are usually bundled together in. I carried just the pieces in a Nike pull bag. I was on my way to Central Park to play chess, for reasons I’m still not too sure of.

    Central Park is home to the famous Chess and Checkers House. I really don’t know how famous the House actually is, but being that it’s in Central Park, and given the fact that it’s been around for over fifty years, must give it some recognition. To my disappointment, as I walked up the steps to the open air table area, I noticed the place to be empty. I didn’t leave though. I took a seat, and faced a question that, from the moment I left my house, had hummed in the back of my head. “Why am I here?” I said this aloud. I didn’t mean it in an existential way, but, instead, why did I leave my house this morning to come here? When I noticed that that question couldn’t be answered, I moved on to another one. What is chess?

    Chess is obviously a game. However, as any grey haired man will tell you, it’s more than that. It’s a game of kings and queens. It’s a game of war. It’s an everlasting struggle of one man’s mental energies against another. It’s a game where the courageous are either fruitfully rewarded or completely decimated. The definitions are quite romantic. For some, I guess, the game is a test of skill. For the older generation who raised me, the game was different. Playing the game of chess came with a sense of validation. As my barber use to tell me, “Nobody can call you stupid, if you can beat them in chess.” I’ve always perceived chess as a constantly shifting puzzle. Chess is a password protected security lock in which the password changes every two minutes. With every move the answer to unlocking the ultimate prize, check mate, changes as the dimensions of the board take new shape. Arguable, it’s the world’s most advanced puzzle.

    I was no longer the only one seated at the Checker House. Five other people had showed up. Of the five, four people formed two groups of two and began to play. The fifth person just needed a place to sit down as to comfortably hold a phone conversation. I returned to the question, “Why am I here?” I looked at the others playing chess and wondered to myself, “Why are they here?” It was a week day, and nobody seemed to know each other. The games were played in silence. The only audible things were the birds chirping and the man complaining on his phone. 

    There is a ridiculous amount of stuff that goes into chess. Putting aside the history and research, the sheer amount of strategies and counter strategies in the game is staggering. Everything from the immensely popular “Queen’s gambit” to the “Ruy Lopez,” also known as the Spanish opening, has been examined, reexamined, and discussed to exhaustion. And those are just the openings. Midgame and endgame moves have also been detailed, cataloged and categorized. There are libraries that have entire book cases dedicated to chess. I can’t help but notice that there is an obsessive quality to it. This is what separates the casual chess players from the extreme ones- the obsessivness. This is probably what separates the casual anybody from the fanatic. But what is it about chess that has captured the fascination of so many people for centuries? How do you explain its longevity? Maybe it’s due to the simplicity of the game. The game, at face value, is very simple. Yet, there is a depth and complexity that one can only appreciate after moving that first piece.

    As my body remains still, in Central Park, my mind wanders to other parts of the city. I ask myself, “Why didn’t I go to Washington Square Park?” I’m sure there would have been more people to play with over there. Then I remember something a friend told me. “They play for money over there, and those guys are extremely good. Some of them claim to play at a grandmaster level, but I don’t know.” My mind wanders to Brooklyn. Why didn’t I stay there? It was the summer time. You can’t enter a park without seeing elderly gentlemen playing a game of chess. They lean back in their seats and exhale a deep breath while they examine the chess board. Their canes or walking sits lean against the side of the table. As a youth, I saw these men as the noble sages of the neighborhood. They were proliferators of wisdom. They watched over the block and guarded the small kings and queens in the neighborhood just like the rooks which, in the name of strategy, would always stay in the corner of their board. Why did they play chess?  

    My mind was back in Central Park. The games were still going, but the man, who was previously on his phone, had left. Noticing that I would have to wait a while longer to get a game in, I decided to leave. My chess pieces never left my bag. However, I did leave with a strange reverence for the game. A reverence that seemingly was the result of my meditations, but the outcome of those mediations is something I still don’t understand. Why do I play chess? I’m not a great fan of it, but there are times when the urge to play resonates throughout my body. Simulations on the internet won’t do it either. There is something about playing someone face to face. There is just something about actually picking up the pieces and feeling their weight. The sound of the chess pieces striking the board, or stone table, that ignites the mind.               

          -Shayne McGregor