(1). my father is chess

My father is chess. I make up the rules as I go along.

It was the earlier days of the internet, and he had discovered that he could find the thin Avalon Hill rectangles from his childhood for a modest price in internet auctions. I remember those games fondly as objects, their promise. I don’t know what they promised him—if they promised anything at all. To say that my father and I do not think in the same way is an understatement.

But I remember them—Midway; Afrika Korps; Tactics II; Chancellorsville. The Afrika Korps box had this perfect tan color, the color of sand in my imagination. I had never seen sand that color. Most of my memory-forming years were spent looking out at expenses of white frost and pine forests as far as you could see in any direction.

The box had introductory text that features a friendly drawing of Erwin Rommel, with chits to substitute for various words, something I later modeled when I asked Mary to the prom (she said no). I knew nothing about the odd fetishization of war criminals and generals within wargaming  (Rommel in the Desert, Rommel’s War, Field Commander: Rommel, etc.) and I doubt my father did either.

He was, and is, a man who cares about what is in front of him, and little else. He worked and studied as a geologist, and his mind is in the dirt, seeing the patterns and formations of rock. Patterns are what he looks for, commonalities, themes.

I, on the other hand, was a little italo calvino, jamming one thought into the next and into the next until someone throws up. How did we come to be talking about the corruption of the healthcare system and 9/11 conspiracies—weren’t we just talking about football?

“Moving the goalposts” is my middle name.

Afrika Korps is what is known as a “hex-and-chit” wargame, meaning that it contains both hexes and chits. The chits are little pieces of cardboard that have symbols printed on them, designating them as a certain piece of materiel. They have a few numbers, like 1-2-1 for example, that designate statistics that the designer of the deemed important for fidelity to individual troops. This one could be firepower, or it could be movement range, or it could be armor. My father beat me into dust on the hex maps of these games, so I doubt I was ever bothered to really learn what the digits meant.

These games often present a scenario to the players: look here, it’s the Brits! They have jeeps! Watch out, Brits-in-jeeps, you’re going to have to contend with German MG-42s! The scenario offers a puzzle, and it casts players in specific roles. Whoever solves the puzzle most efficiently is crowned the winner.

I was never much of an opponent for my father, nor am I much of one now, in spite of my enormous, nigh-encyclopedic knowledge of games. See, I was always running in the clouds, never in the dirt. To win a game, you have to be in the dirt. You have to see where the arguments begin, and where they end. You have to see the possible movements of your opponent(s) and prepare your pieces to match. You must be a general, a marshal, or you will lose. Generals are not boys with their heads in the clouds, imagining how great and meaningful everything is all the time. No, boy, you must follow along. Don’t you see! You’ve let your men get caught in an enfilade! Or is it a defilade? I can never remember.

To win games, you have to see them, not imagine them.

There are spirits of the air and spirits of the earth, spirits of fire, spirits of water. Some of us live in the fissures and burbling depths of clay, and others, well, they just flit around like the wind. Maybe both belong, somewhere in the desert.

I’ve probably played about four hundred games of chess in my life. I’m bad at it. Computer programs that play chess are orders of magnitude greater than any chess player I might become if I studied chess as a lifestyle.

While I was browsing the Wikipedia entries on chess programming, I came across perhaps one of the best lines I’ve seen written on the website:

“Players today are inclined to treat chess engines as analysis tools rather than opponents.”

What goes unsaid here speaks volumes. Why is it that the machinery that is capable of beating the best humanity has to offer is not a part of the competitive world of chess? What is it about a computer that does not make it an opponent? There are two answers to the question that make any sort of sense:

1. It is not “human,” and therefore cannot compete against humans, just as a dog cannot compete in the 100 meter dash.

2. It has shattered the structure of the game.

I believe competition should be banded according to ability. Games are structures, structures that define the range of movements that participants can make. These structures define parameters and sometimes ask for charity on the part of their players because there is always a flaw. “Degenerate play” refers to a game state where a player can still play, but is not playing within the “spirit” of the game. You might argue that a computer that can calculate all of the moves and pick the optimal one is not playing in the spirit of the chess game.

But what is the “spirit” of the game of chess? Magnus Carlsen, who forces speed rounds of chess through repeated draws in world championships? Is he playing against the spirit of the game?

Chess is fundamentally a game about entrapment. It is a game that is about advancing your pieces so you have maximum mobility while reducing your opponents mobility. It is not about taking pieces, it’s about denying space. It was, and is, the game of my father. Like the wargames, the challenge of outmaneuvering is exciting. The analysis of the game ends there for him. He is attuned to reality, and I love him for it.

When a computer calculates all the moves and beats the ever-loving shit out of me, did it play against the spirit of the game? In my mind, it did not—it completed the game. Does it mean anything?

Eternal bedrocks are what move some people to get out of bed in the morning. Chess is the greatest game that ever existed, no? It’s been around for a thousand years. How could it possibly be undone by a box with a bunch of wires and silicone? The frightening answer is neither of the answers I gave are the correct ones. The truth is that the computer played the perfect game, and now there is no more game. It is time for the game to evolve, to change. It has been outgrown, and it is time to look for something new.