The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain

Chess holds its master in its own bonds,” Albert Einstein once said, “shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer.

In a sense, all schooling in the United States was an elaborate training session for the free market, democratic, meritocratic, modern, bloodless warfare that would dominate their adult lives.

Playing well requires study—period. There are more and less sophisticated ways to play the game, and those unwilling to face up to the reality of chess knowledge will be consigned forever to be ineffective, ignorant underachievers. (Understanding this hard truth didn’t amount to acting on it, but it was at least a good first step.)

Such warnings are not to be taken lightly, and it behooves every chess parent, chess organizer, and chess instructor to be mindful of the game’s destructive power—to work on tapping into chess’s positive Benjamin Franklin forces while avoiding its corrosive Bobby Fischer forces.

For the English player, more comfort is not required. He sits straight as a poker on his chair, keeps his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, and does not move until he for an hour has [surveyed] the chessboard. His opponent has sighed hundreds of times when the Englishman eventually moves his piece.

Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine,” Viennese player Rudolf Spielmann would later advise. Even

One legend has it that Ferdinand was himself right in the middle of a chess game when Christopher Columbus approached the court with his plan to sail west in search of the Indies; at that moment, victory came to Ferdinand on the chess-board, putting him in such a good mood that he quickly approved Columbus’s request.

Serious converts to the game usually have some powerful motivation—perhaps unknown to them—for investing in the game at a particular time in their lives.

Acquire knowledge. It guideth us to happiness; it sustaineth us in misery; it is an ornament amongst friends, and an armour against enemies.

Seasoned players realized all too well that with the tweaking of a few pieces’ powers of motion, it was an entirely new game.

The paradox of illuminating complexity is that it is inherently difficult to do so without erasing all of the nuance.