Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
On Islam: Ceder, If you get a chance to read the book, ceder, I think
you will be fascinated by the connection between Islam and chess.
There's no direct connection to its origin, as you suggest, but I also
think its clearly no accident that they were both born around the same
time and place. The values of chess -- intellectual openness, 
discipline, community, and combat -- nicely mirror those of chess.
Muhammad implored his followers to "acquire knowledge" as one of the
foundations of a successful life. So it's no surprise to discover that
the early Muslims were drawn to the game, and helped spread it all over
the world.

On mental illness: I hear what you're saying, dotman, and I think that
chapter pretty strongly implies that I don't claim to have the final
answers about what's going on. I don't subscribe to Zweig's explanation
-- and I'm not sure Zweig does either. It feels to me like he's
feeling his way around the subject imperfectly, as we all are. My sense
is that it's a combination of all these things, but a key part of it
detachment from the 3D world. I think, as Krauthaumer describes, you
really climb into that 2D space in such a way that it comes alive. The
near-infinite possibility sustains a manic energy of constantly looking
around every corner, and yes, I think there is an element of paranoia
in there. Your write-off of that point doesn't seem fair to me. You
know it's only a tiny fraction of chess players spread over a two
centuries, AND we know that chess has some qualities which neatly
separate it from other pursuits, so you can't casually say, "well, if
it's paranoia, why not that other group too?"  


 
  

    
Temperamentally, I'm pretty much with you, davadam. I never really got
into chess as a kid, and though a part of me now loves it, it doesn't
occupy much of my creative energy. I prefer pursuits that have
intangibles. I also fundamentally don't like being apart of a
constantly  competitive environment. I like things like writing and
music, where I can be me and no one else will be able to duplicate what
I do.

Having said that, I am fascinated by chess personalities -- how, in
this game of perfect information, people can truly express themselves
on the board. Duchamp certainly believed that chess playing was a true
art form.
  

    
Yes, it came across clearly you weren't endorsing any of those views
about chess and psychosis, David, just laying out what others had
offered. Krauthammer's point about the sense of vertigo arising from
the sheer magnitude of the possibilities was interesting.

My intuitive guess, which is all it is, has it that certain personal
psychological traits, which help some achieve the highest levels of
accomplishment in the game, bring with them also a susceptibility to
the problems you listed. I don't see the game itself as the cause.

That relates to the subject of prodigies, which seem to be sprouting
like mushrooms all over the place these days.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3333

Laslo Polgar is renowned for rearing three remarkable daughters, all
with international titles, and he authored a rather large book full of
training problems he used to coach them from a very young age. You
can't argue with his results, which you wrote that he predicted before
they were even born! 

Most of us assume the issue is nature, not nurture, that champions
like Capablanca were just wired differently than the rest of us. You're
very persuasive making the case that the opposite is true.
  

    
I have been enjoying this book, I am still in it but will reread the
parts about Islam more closely after finishing.

My start in computers was with both a Univac and a <hal> not in the
same room though.
  

    <scribbled by dotman Tue 12 Sep 06 15:43>
  

    
Clare, <ceder>, I'm very curious about the impressions of readers who
aren't regular chess players, as it seems to me that is the main
contribution of _The Immortal Game_. I think it's an old Islamic
aphorism, something like, chess is a pool in which a gnat can drink
and an elephant bathe. Appealing to both chess players and chess laity
is a nifty accomplishment in a similar vein.

We haven't reached the heart warming tribute to one of the author's
ancestors, an illustrious French champion from the Romantic era of the
game, over a century ago. Likewise the particular game from back then
that shares the title of his book, and runs through it.

(bad typo corrected)
  

    
The backstory on the Polgar sisters was very interesting to me. I
never realized that their father predicted their success before they
were ever born, and that he had no special chess ability himself.
Trying to understand the balance required between practice and innate
ability is always difficult, but it sounds like I've overestimated
ability by quite a lot. The trick is finding something that you enjoy
practicing...
  

    
Maybe David would like to say more about that. It struck me as good
news. How about you, Vince?
  

    
I love the interplay of "The Immortal Game" between chapters of the
book.  Will there be a movie made?
  

    
Heh. There oughta be, like Roesch - Schlage, Hamburg (1910?), far
better known as the scintilating Queen sacrifice checkmate that HAL9000
delivered against his astronaut opponent. Kubrick was a big chess fan.

'The Immortal Game', Anderssen - Kieseritzky, London, 1851 and a few
others like 'The Evergreen', Anderssen - Dufresne, 1852, represent the
apotheosis of the Romantic Era in chess, when everybody played in the
beginner style, and some did it unbelievably well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_game

That group included David's grandmother's grandfather, Samuel
Rosenthal, who held his own against Anderssen, 3.5-3.5, in the seven
games I found. Presenting 'The Immortal Game' in a way such that
anybody can appreciate its brilliance is a delightful contribution.
David made it much more generally accessible than that wiki entry.
  

    
Another word about that accessibility. You don't need to know chess
notation, as there is a diagram and explanation after each move.
  

    
Somebody asked me about an "Immortal Game" movie last night at a
boookstore event. My brother and sister-in-law are wonderful
documentary filmmakers (actualfilms.net), and we have been talking for
a couple years about how to turn this book into a film. All we need is
a million dollars. 

As people will see in the book, I am of the strong opinion, based on
observation and research, that the public generally far overestimates
the importance of innate ability. Obviously, people are born with
important differences from one another. But studies demonstrate that
excellence follows from determination and practice. How much are you
willing to sacrifice to be truly superb at something. How many hours a
day are you willing to dedicate?

At the upper margins, one probably can say that inborn physical
differences play an important role. What made Michael Jordan superior
to Scotty Pippin, or Lance Armstrong consistently a few seconds faster
than ______? Obviously all those guys have 1000% determination and
deducation, and there are probably organic distinctions that are at
play there. But I really think that greatness as we understand it is a
function largely of determination. 

Thanks for the continuing kind words about the book. Anyone who knows
any of my previous stuff knows that accessibility is a core value for
me. If you are able to read English, I want you to be able to
understand and appreciate whatever subject it is that I'm exploring. I
hope very much not to lose the respect of the insiders/experts, but I'm
writing very much for the outsiders. My life-long inspiration is John
McPhee and the other great literary non fiction writers who can make
any subject under the sun extraordinaryily compelling.
  

    
I emphatically agree with the determination point, one of my own hobby
horses through the years. An old joke says you don't need brains to
play chess, you need buttocks. But more to the point, do you find it
enjoyable? For some people, the exploration that reveals its vast
beauty is fun enough that the hours go by like they do when reading a
great book, with no sense of great effort. If chess (schach) makes you
go 'Ah!', and you've got a thousand hours to devote, then you've got
all it takes to become expert at it, good enough to play a blindfold
game.

What part of writing this book gave you the most 'Ah!', David?
  

    
There were quite a number of spine-tingling moments in my research:

When I learned about the distinct number of possible chess games -- 10
to the 120th power.

When I learned that my ancestor had indeed been a dazzling player in
Paris for many decades -- and had beaten the likes of Anderssen and
Steinitz.

When I learned that this ancestor had been part of a study by the
legendary Alfred Binet which used chess to learn startling new truths
about how memory works. 

When I discovered the extent of Benjamin Franklin's obsession wih the
game.

When I learned about the deep connection between chess and the early
Islamic Empire.

Those are a few. I really was pretty steadily stunned for several
years as I did my writing and research.
  

    
OK, now I have to bite. How obsessed *was* Mr. Franklin?

I think Pat's question "do you find it enjoyable" is right on.  At the
risk of this sounding like a dumb question... so what is it that
people love so much about chess?  

I don't really mean that in a trolling, "you're so stupid" fashion,
but more of a anthropological question -- I can imagine a lot of
reasons but I wonder if there are trends in what usually attracts
people to chess.
  

    
Franklin played chess incessantly, and probably spent so much of his
adult years in Europe in part due to the superior level of play there.
He used chess in diplomacy, played with his lovers while they bathed,
and frequently leaned on chess as a metaphor. He wrote an essay, "The
Morals of Chess," about what he saw as its many benefits. 

I think what draws people so deeply into the game is the chance to
escape into an alternate universe. The distraction from real life is
total, which I don't think can be undervalued. And rather than mindless
distraction, it is a very mindful experience. The mind is engaged,
totally, and there's really no telling where a game will lead after the
first several moves. There's a feeling that you are heading out on a
journey but you're not quite sure where you're going.
  

    
Yes. It's a perfect world of well defined rules that apply equally to
everyone. It's so thoroughly engaging, demanding such complete
concentration in serious competition, it offers a brief vacation from
the sordid reality of life's problems and injustices. I think that's
why high school chess clubs are famous nerd magnets.

That escape can be neurotically abused, like many other avenues of
escape. For people who need to flee reality, chess can be their
passport, but I don't think chess is the cause of that need.
  

    
Oh, before I forget, I'll mention that "The Morals of Chess" is
included in David's appendix. I mean, his book's appendix.
  

    
Could we go back to Alfred Binet? Thanks to Fine's book, the Freudian
view is well known throughout the chess community, but your book is the
first I've heard of Binet's connection to the game. 

Would you say more about that, and what led your research in that
direction? 
  

    
When I was a young kid in a troubled family chess did indeed strongly
appeal to me as just that -- an alternative universe that was
challenging but consistent. (Pieces could not have tantrums and break
the rules.) As a player I was better than average for my age, but not
top-notch. I loved to replay the old games from books (using the
"Descriptive" notation then in use.)

Which reminds me ... there's been a lot written lately about people
starting chess programs in schools (particularly in disadvantaged
areas). While other activities might work as well, chess does seem to
have the ability to inspire self-confidence and discipline in kids
whose environment has not been favorable to such formation. 

Seems to me the immortal game is good for at least a few hundred more
years!
  

    
One of the interesting things about 20th century and later chess is
the intellectual cachet of the game - Turing chose it as the test of
"true" intelligence for a machine if it could play chess as well as a
human, I believe.  And you also see this after WWII when manufacturing
capability, materials technique and buying power brought wonderful
chess sets out for the general consumer - like the Peter Ganine chess
sets with their elegant medieval allusions, that really say "culture"
in a big way.
<http://wesclark.com/am/gothic_chess_set.jpg>

David, were you interested/did you find other modern metaphors like
those researching the book?

(Of course now that computers beat people at chess, it seems to have
fallen from grace somewhat as a 'true intelligence' test, and we have
The Simpsons chess sets...)
  

    
Chess to me was a grown-up thing to do, something that my father and
grandfather played, so of course I wanted to play it too.  I loved
playing grandpa, but fun as the game was, for me it was secondary to
the fact that I played it with him.  And when after quite a few years
and many games, I finally beat him once (and he swore he wasn't holding
back), it was a great thrill.  I thought I was pretty hot chess stuff.

But after he passed away, I tried a few games with some high school
friends, and quickly realized that they were playing at a whole
different level, and with a degree of competitiveness that was so unfun
that it soured me on the game for decades thereafter.  

I was surprised to remember how much fun it was when my niece and
nephew asked me to play it with them last summer.  If they really get
into it, it won't take them long to start beating me.  But I won't
mind--it seems only fair to give back to the next generation the fun
that was given to me.
  

    
A short excerpt from chapter 7:

In the 1890s, as part of what would ultimately emerge as a career-long
dedication to the definition and measurement of human
intelligence, [Alfred] Binet was trying to understand the dynamics of
memory. He became fascinated by blindfold chess players and their
awesome displays of visual memory. Exactly how did they do it? 

The conventional wisdom at the time, endorsed by Binet, was that
strong visual memory was based in photographic-type recall. It
ap-peared that great chess players somehow had a highly advanced
ability to form mental pictures of chess pieces and boards and to
preserve those pictures in their minds. They had, Binet theorized, an
extraordinary “inner mirror,” which would forever reflect back to
them, move by move, every successive configuration of the board.
This notion was sup-ported by more than two thousand years of memory
literature and sci-ence that depicted memory as being visually based.
The ancient Greeks, with no printing press and no pen and ink, had
developed the art of mnemonics—mental tricks that relied on
visualization to remem-ber large amounts of detail. Typically, a
mnemonist would “deposit” difficult-to-remember information into
imagined compartments, seats, or rooms. 

Now Binet wanted to determine how such memory tricks actually worked.
Inspired by the work of the British anthropologist Francis Galton, he
had developed a passion for exploring the healthy working mind, as
opposed to the pathology of mental illness. The blindfold chess study
was one of his first as assistant director of the Laboratory of
Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne. His subjects included the
ac-complished chess masters Stanislaus Sittenfeld, Alphonse Goetz,
Sieg-bert Tarrasch, and the dean of French chess, Samuel Rosenthal. In
Binet’s laboratory, they were questioned intensively about what they
“saw” when they played chess blindfolded. The results were surprising
and instructive. Binet was humbled to find that his “inner
mirror” the-ory did not pan out. Astounding chess memories, he learned,
did not resemble a collection of photographic snapshots. They were
much more abstract than that, more geometric, and more meaningful.

The intricate chess positions, it turned out, were not stored in chess
masters’ brains as distinct photolike snapshots, but as a more
abstract set of integrated patterns—like a musician’s chords or a
computer programmer’s code. What looked like a chaotic field of
data to the nonexpert was to the expert a coherent, meaningful song. “I
grasp it as a musician grasps harmony in his orchestra,” offered
French master Alphonse Goetz. “I am often carried to sum up the
character of a position in a general epithet . . . it strikes you as
simple and familiar, or as original, exciting and suggestive.” 

In the mind of Goetz and the other chess masters, each portion of
every game triggered impressions, feelings, and observations as
mean-ingful to them as pieces of a car engine are to a mechanic, or as
cloud formations are to a meteorologist. In these players’ minds, there
were no sterile boards or carved wooden chess figurines—only
evocative configurations that were familiar or somehow resonant.
Ultimately, it wasn’t even the chess positions themselves that they
were warehousing so much as the impressions they sparked.

This insight was not inconsistent with long-standing visual notions of
memory, but it provided a key clarification: visual memory
operated not by recording a multitude of snapshots, but by encoding
information in a meaningful context. It turned out that mnemonics was
not so much visual as it was meaningful. Great chess players, then,
were not simply finely tuned camera-computers, adept at acquiring
and processing visual data with superlative efficiency. Rather,
Binet’s study proved their craft to be supremely human — a combination
of resonant feelings, meaning-ful experiences, and rich memories.
Studying chess memory proved that abstract thought and memory were
fully entangled with human feeling. 

A further surprising revelation of the Binet chess study was the
de-gree to which photographiclike recall of visuals could actually
hamper visual memory. “Some part of every chess game is played
blindfold,” ex-plained leading German player Siegbert Tarrasch in a
letter to Binet ex-plaining his thought process. “The sight of the
chessman frequently upsets one’s calculations.” This comment echoed the
sentiment of other top players. What they remembered was not a tactile
reproduction of the pieces on the board, but rather an abstract sense
of each piece’s prop-erties and movement. In fact, it was the mediocre
players striving to recall actual pieces on a board who inevitably fell
short. Binet’s photographic theory had not only been wrong; the truth
was quite the opposite. 
  

    
Elaine,

There's a lot about Turing in this book. It sounds like you already
know how fascinated he was by chess. The game was intertwined with a
lot of his ideas about what computers could be.

Yes, a big part of my research was to show not only the history of the
game, but its long active influence on cultures over the centuries. In
the 20th century, this story includes the birth of computers, the
development of AI, the conception and development of cognitive science,
and some other cool stuff. 
  

    
I don't think I mentioned this before, but one of the things that
really drove me deep into the chess world was the way that you could
(in theory!) win or lose a chess game entirely on the basis of what
happens out in the open. Unlike so many of the "social information"
games and activities that normal kids seemed good at, like football,
baseball, card games or finagling for social status, there really isn't
any hidden information in chess. If you can shut out the distractions
coming from your human opponent (who is probably trying to use all the
social human weirdo tricks he or she can to confuse you), you have a
completely fair chance to win.  

The amazing potential for a comeback from certain defeat is another
draw in chess. Your opponent can have you dead, obliterated, without
hope -- but you can find a way, if you try hard enough. Your opponent
may be making a mistake in pressing his huge advantage too quickly, and
there may be a way to weasel it out...or aim for a draw. Which reminds
me of another fun chess fact: chess games are always lost, never won.
There are no known forced victories for white or black in the game, and
each game should therefore end in a draw. Anyone who makes a
"brilliant" move is therefore just responding to a weak move -- maybe
an astonishingly godawful move -- by the opponent. The chess world
admires those who have the ability to see weakness where others miss
it...

(Sorry I've been away for a while...I got lazy!)