Smoke and Bounce

3:12 pm EST

Chess Diary I.1 - presuming stalemate; asking why

We make mistakes; therefore, upon next the more audacious claim that every chess move is a mistake, white "being a step ahead" is at a disadvantage. Black conforms to the stalest laws of chess more easily and often more abidingly. Suppose white a keystone predator in a wilderness preserve; if "wins" are "successful individuals in a population", note the predators are always less than the prey by far. In chess black demands less -- a vegetarian. Black's natural tendency toward attrition reminds the author of the fable of the tortoise and the hare. Say, white = hare; black = tortoise. Since chess demands extermination, say then black = turtle. Hares stalk more steadily and deliberately than turtles never mind the diet. Turtles stalk with passive deception; laid back, dilapidated pontoonery until they snap upon prey's final error. Forks, pins; frisky fianchettos and impedious pawn passings; the lure of the black queen for her desultorily restless sister who finds herself lacking her friends and winds up right skittish. White is born in error, prodigal to balance. Aggression is irresistible duty in the game -- and isn't it begrudging? White's moves are oaths -- he has something to prove. Black plays dumb prankster. Black even blends in with the board's shadows (covered in algae) as white waits for noon. Black is a highly intelligent zombie, failing game when he does by mistaking his identity for someone who really cares more than even a little about the outcome of his existence. He wins minding his business, and sneezing in the eye of the hare; the occasional stinging booger throws white into puzzled ferment. Chess is a pointless, arbitrary game; of booger divers [him]! and deluded opportunists [me]! If white is to presume advantage of its original self, initiating the "fourth instant of aimlessness" en chronos: why bother this game? And yet here I am playing! So white plays to abort attrition. But the assumption of either side winning is inverse to the equilibrium of the opponents. [For now the author will not evaluate ratings.] So if white is to challenge himself as a way of the world of games, then his nature is undone. He plays a game glacially dizzy in the goal of victory and is bored. A good game will have some very hot squares -- but these are meant to open ranks and files in the long run; the white queen was the first to aggravate and at the same time, potentially, reduce her vulnerability to lesser pieces. The latter is the more important imperative, and it manifests as an indigestionous gambit in black's ranks --. (predisposition to defense -- or so I've heard?) One should expect a noisy, chitinous chiseling to the tune of whisping away pieces to not get over the same methods; used, a dialectic. Chess practice is a controlled experiment of attitude relived and decorous art.