Chess: A Short Meditation on Men, Women, and the Visible Universe
I watched a blind man play chess a few years ago. He was one of the hundred or so tournament players participating with me in the Vermont Open at the Mount Snow Ski Resort. He had a special board, which was smaller than a regulation-sized tournament set. The squares undulated up and down: all the white squares were raised, and all the black squares were lowered. Each square had a peg-hole in the center, where the various pieces could be firmly inserted.
The blind man ran his fingers over the pieces and board with the skill and ease that I have only seen concert pianists display as their fingers run the entire length of their ebony and ivory keyboards. I watched him as he literally felt the position into being in his mind, absorbing its complex intricacies and dynamics through a sense I do not use at all — even though we are both playing the same ancient game.
He would finally make a move on the board and call out its exact algebraic coordinates. His opponent would then be obliged to verbally repeat the exact move back to the blind man. Naturally, the blind man’s opponent was permitted to use his own board and pieces to play this highly visual game. The contrast between the blind man’s braille-like chess set and his opponent’s much flatter and more spacious tournament set could not have been starker.
The last game of the weekend tournament brought the two most unusual players together. While women chess players may not be as uncommon as blind chess players, there are not many more. For example, at this weekend’s tournament, we had one of each. Naturally, their individual games always attract a great deal more attention from their fellow players and bystanders, but a game that features both at the same time — well, that is a particularly auspicious alignment of the unusual, even the freak.
I know that neither one of these players would appreciate the use of the word freak. Nevertheless, I have been playing in chess tournaments, on and off, for half my life, which no doubt amounts to hundreds upon hundreds of games, and I have never seen a blind man and a woman play a game of chess together. From small three-game Swiss-style chess tournaments in L.A. to mammoth round-robin-style tournaments in N.Y.C., I have never witnessed the like. I might as well have been watching a mouse and an elephant sitting down to a game of Knights and Kings at the Bronx Zoo.
Mathematicians have calculated there are more possible, different games of chess that can be played than there are atoms in the entire known universe. Those of us who love the game see and feel its beauty. Chess contains freakishly endless combinations and permutations, its variety and depth a source of delight and shock. That weekend, as on so many other occasions, the interaction of men, women, and this surprising universe drew back the veil, allowing me a glimpse of something special.
Chess is truly infinite in its possibilities: male and female, seen and unseen.
