Chess with friends5/30/2023 It’s strange to think there is such a disparity among the levels at which this game is played, but there’s such a straightforward beauty to chess that makes every game feel meaningful, regardless of the stakes. And yet, chess, despite its simplicity, was so captivating that even Death became entranced by the game. In the end, it didn’t matter if the knight won or lost, because all he was doing was delaying his inevitable death. He plays the same game that I play on my phone while standing in the elevator, but while my victory stands to gain me a handful of points for my chess score, his stood to save his life. Overwhelmed with the feeling that he has not yet had the chance to do something meaningful with his life and hoping to complete some act of redemption before he dies, the knight encounters Death and challenges him to a game of chess to prolong his life. In Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal, a knight returns from the Crusades to find his country ravaged by the plague. I know that chess played a symbolic role during the cold war, and some people have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of perfecting the game, at times at the expense of their own sanity. It’s nice to think of chess as this secret little world that I get to share with those close to me.īut, I have recently come to realize chess is so much more important than a casual pastime. There’s a sense of community among people who play chess-even with those who, like me, aren’t particularly good at the game. It’s nice to talk to each other about newly discovered strategies, strange moves that our opponents made, or critical moments when we slipped up in a game. I recently found out that a lot of my friends have also been spending their idle time playing chess online. I play chess to turn my brain off for a bit, the same way others might scroll through social media or play Candy Crush. Despite chess’s reputation as an intellectually challenging and complex game, I try to take the opposite approach. But I stay true to my desire to avoid becoming a chess guy by refusing to learn anything new about the game. As I try to fall asleep, my mind is flooded with images of queen trades and blundered bishops. My homework is frequently interrupted by my longing to play just one more time before I move on to the next problem. In class, I hide my phone under the desk and sneak in a rapid game when the lecture hits a lull. Before I’ve even had a chance to fully wake up, I’ve already done a daily puzzle. And by the time I got to college, I figured my chess-playing days would finally be behind me.īut now, I start and end my days with chess. None of my schools were particularly competitive at chess, so I never felt pressured to up my level of intensity. I had a sort of a knack for getting fourth place-never quite good enough to beat the people who were really into chess. Up until college, I was a part of every chess team at every school I attended. And since then, I’ve been hooked.īut this is not the first brush I’ve had with the hypnotic checkerboard. The culmination of this excitement resulted in several GamePigeon requests for games of chess. Prior to this purchase, I had stubbornly professed the superiority of my Google Pixel, so when my texts suddenly turned from green to blue, a lot of my Apple-supporting friends became very excited. It all started because I got a new iPhone at the start of this year. Despite this, over the past few weeks, the game has swallowed up my free time and invaded my thoughts. I never wanted to be a chess guy-someone who obsesses over midgame strategies, remembers the names to all the openings, and talks about high-profile matches with friends.
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