A game of wits.

Ze Chess

I have never had the inclination to undermine the beauty of this game called Chess. But never had I known how to admire it either. As French, or as Rabindra Sangeet, Chess surely sounds  beautiful. But I only ever appreciated the game or its players from a distance, as one appreciates a victory of human spirit where neither is she the human, nor the spirit hers.

I was led by the divine and patented Youtube Algorithm stumbled upon, perchance, a Youtube channel named agadmator's chess channel. A humble Croatian named Antonio Radić creates videos that have him analyzing famous (in the niche chess-lover's circle) games played by chess grand masters of the present and the past. He greets by saying 'Hello Everyone'. I never would have thought a greeting this simple can be as relaxing as I have found it to be over time. It is his passion for chess and his unassuming tone through which he analyses the moves of the games, that has made me a big fan. I hope more people watch and support his work.

Soon after I viewed some scores of Antonio's videos in the course of a few weeks, I started to play with the idea of pursuing chess a tad bit. Only as a time-pass. After a rather economical arrangement involving downloading a few apps and purchasing the necessary merchandise, I had in front of me 64 squares forming a simple geometry and 32 plastic pieces forming two opposing armies, ready to battle.

Simple as it may seem, I still try to comprehend each day the sheer number of combinatorial possibilities that lie after every move (after the 4th move, more than 288 billion different positions are possible!); more so, the exquisite geometries that abound the movements of each piece. This should probably have boggled my mind to dysfunction had my intelligence quotient seen itself past a century. Thanks to that, I went over to chess.com to play a random stranger armed only with my knowledge of the rules and my unyielding pride fueled out of ignorance. That Game is how Webster exempli gratia-tes disaster.

To my surprise I did not recoil from the blow of reality on this occasion. I explored the features of chess analysis engines and found myself understanding, I dare say, what made my moves bad, and my opponent's better. A feeling of contentment settled in my heart as I closed my laptop and wound down to bed. Besides congratulating my opponent in my mind.

There it was. A short encounter with the game had made me feel contented after loosing! How that is different I needn't explain.

Since then, as I have been playing more and more each day and watching tutorials on chess, I have only experienced more of the intricate nuances that come parceled with this game. I seem to occasionally analyze little arbitrary things a bit like the moves in chess. Won't say I reap any substantial benefits out of that exercise. But I will say it has provided me a perspective that was absent before. To me, that is enough to now willingly call this my hobby.




If anybody is interested, I am on Lichess.org as iammrigank.

[Ze Chess] Image courtesy: Pixabay, Felix Mittermeier (used in accordance to CC0 1.0).

CC0 1.0 Universal