Chess

...and every move, foolish or clever, like ignorant or enlightened actions, becomes a factor leading to ultimate failure or success...

...whereas an initial success is apt to bring another...

...my only—and I hope sufficient—excuse is that I love it...

...In vino veritas," for chess has taught me the same sad lesson—I am better on the opening than on the end game, and not for me, alas, is the slogan, "The Old Guard dies but never surrenders...

...he used to exclaim as he initiated his counterattack...

...There is also the idea of reincarnation, for just as a humble and poor retainer, by virtue of a well-spent life might conceivably reincarnate as a lord or captain, so does a pawn, at the end of its long and perilous progression to the opposite king row, reincarnate as a queen...

...Chess is a splendid discipline, not alone of the mind but of the emotions...

...For every move is conditioned by those which went before and conditions those which come after...

...I used to play chess with a Jew who would sometimes deliberately sacrifice a piece for no other purpose than to arouse his own righting spirit, for he always played most brilliantly when the game was going against him...

...The punishment for my perversity is in my regret for lost golden hours of innocent pleasure, and in the humiliation of being beaten with great regularity by him to whom I owe my initiation into these delightful mysteries...

...For any chess game can be described in terms of warfare and any military campaign can be reenacted, after a fashion, with chessmen on a board...

...Talk of even the most elementary "combination" among expert chess players fills me with envy not unmixed wth awe...

...If one meets with defeat there is no alibi—one cannot claim, as in whist, that the cards were against him...

...Similarly, chess masters no longer play the oldfashioned open game, having abandoned it in favor of tactics quite similar to trench warfare...

...Speaking of love, the history of how I became interested in chess is an illustration of how love finds a way and works its will irrespective of all obstacles...

...When I had a son of my own, however, she met from him no such silly oppostion, and having taught him, he in turn taught me, so that her wish to benefit me was in this roundabout way fulfilled...

...With a person of a different psychology the reverse of this would be true...

...And oddly enough, championship chess has changed in the same way as has warfare, which is no longer a thing of longdistance raids, cut off from supply bases, of brilliant cavalry charges, but is a matter of "digging in"—wars now are wars of attrition...

...Onward, Jewish soldiers...

...Chess is microcosmic—it contains profound meanings, closely related to life and conduct...

...There is nothing—unless it be love—more revealing of one's "self elements" than chess, for one's game will be in exact accordance with his character...

...The logical ultimate of this, as the human mind grows more four-dimensional, would be the substitution of "cubical" chess—the addition of another dimension, though now the brain reels at the very suggestion...

...This has resulted in an increasing number of drawn games—so many, in fact, that it has been suggested that the game be made more difficult by increasing the size of the board and the number of pieces...

...Chess represents not alone the clash of armies, but the conflict of personalities, and the struggle of man with those counterforces which would subdue and conquer him...

...For example, the oriental idea of karma—that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap—is implicit in the very nature of chess, into which chance does not enter...

...My parents were both enthusiastic devotees, for chess constituted one of the favorite pastimes of the early Victorians...

...My mother always wanted to teach me, but I persistently refused to learn...

...A club acquaintance confided in me once, while in a state of inebriation, that I was a good fellow but that I didn't follow through...

...I am easily discouraged and made uncertain of myself by failure, so if I lose a first game I am likely to go on losing...

...For me to write about chess at all is therefore in the nature of a false pretense...

...Apropos of this, Ouspensky says, in Tertium Organum: "Two men may be playing chess, acting outwardly very similarly, but in one will burn self-love, desire of victory, and he will be full of different unpleasant feelings toward his rival—fear, envy of a clever move, spite, jealousy, animosity, or schemes to win, while the other will simply solve a complex mathematical problem which lies before him, not thinking about his rival at all...

...fought thereon, and it is only at the end that the reader is permitted to discover that the whole thing is a detailed description of one of Paul Morphy's most celebrated chess games in terms of military action...

...I learned too late in life to be a good player, so that only the ardors of the game are for me and not its rigors...

...Better than victory over one's opponent is the mastery of one's own emotional nature...

...Chess is par excellence mathematics made animate, but about this aspect of it I know literally nothing...