Chess is for intellectuals like me

About a month ago I had the terrible misfortune of becoming addicted to chess. That’s right, chess. That game that Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier play in the X-Men movies. I’m not sure how it happened – peer pressure, the prolonged horrors of Semester 3 CreComm, or maybe just an internet pop-up that I couldn’t minimize quick enough. In any event, I very quickly found myself retreating into the two-dimensional world of bishops and pawns whenever I had the opportunity.

At this point I’d like to state that I am not good at chess. I lack the patience and forethought required to truly excel at the game. To give you some frame of reference, I usually play against the computer of this site and I can win on “easy” about half the time. However, I have been forcibly and quickly annihilated every time I have tried on “medium.” Not particularly impressive. Yet my repeated failures have taught me a thing or two…

Two intellectuals play chess in Montreal.

1. Chess is hard: This isn’t a game that can be played without thought. If you are tired, disgruntled, or drunk, you will lose. This is obviously a generalization (who isn’t at least one of those things at any given time?), yet the sentiment remains true.

2. Chess is not relaxing: It’s tremendously frustrating. There is no worse feeling than setting up a perfect game only to blow it all with an imprudent move of a rook. It’s the board game equivalent of auto-failing an assignment you would have received an A on.

3. The history of chess is storied and fascinating: If you are as enraptured by virtuosity as I am, chess and the performances of its finest players will captivate you. It's incredible that a game involving 32 pieces on a board has enough complexity that it can be dominated by one man for over 20 years, and only a handful throughout the entire 20th century.

So, do I feel smarter since I began playing chess? Sharper? More enlightened? Not particularly. In fact, at the end of the day I still very much prefer relaxing with a couple laps on Mario Kart 64’s “Rainbow Road.” The cascading colours, the charming melodies, the perfect numbness.

But that doesn’t make me sound very refined, now does it?