A Rhetorician's Chess

Rhetoric is about sending the right message, and chess, in no small part, is about finding the right reply. The chess masters call a move that puts a stop to an opponent’s plans a “refutation,” a label that would trip any rhetorician’s alarms. The chessboard has been a symbol of argument, a symbol suggesting not only clearly and sharply defined sides and stakes, but forethought, study, and calculation. Even, just perhaps, beauty.

In a manner of speaking, this blog is a paean in praise of two divinities: Rhetorica and Caissa. These figures have been represented as patrons, guides, and deciders of the outcomes of their respective activities, rhetoric and chess.

Personification of an activity is a sign that, for its followers at least, it has become more than an activity: it has become an other, a thou: someone to relate to! Upfront, I acknowledge the gendered nature of those personifications and will explore that in another post. For now, I invoke these two figures without critical comment for their historical resonance and for the amplification they provide.

For all its wonders over its 1,500 years, chess has a serious perception problem: two, to be exact.

First, though played in some capacity by well over 600 million people worldwide according to a widely circulated statistic (though chess journalist Peter Doggers argues in The Chess Revolution [2024] that the figure may be considerably higher), that number represents only eight percent of humanity. That means around 92 percent of your fellow human beings cannot appreciate the wonders of a chess game!

Is this acceptable?

What resources in support of chess could be unleashed if many millions or billions more understood and loved the game, knew its history and could speak intelligently about any position they saw? Is that so much to ask?

What if every town of even modest size could be counted on to have a chess club with at least a few expert-level players who enjoy competition among themselves and teach the beginners and intermediates their knowledge? What would that mean for school chess clubs? College teams and scholarships? Various career paths in chess remunerative enough to support families?

(A passionate argument along just these economic lines is interwoven throughout Chess.com co-founder Danny Rensch’s fine memoir, Dark Squares [2025].)

That’s one. Second, many millions of chess players themselves suffer from an inability to perceive what’s in front of them in their own positions. Currently, there are only about 1,800 grandmasters, 4,200 international masters, 9,400 FIDE masters, and about 3,300 candidate masters. All FIDE Women’s titles total only about 4,600.

Let’s just make it easy and say there about 25,000 chess players on record who are playing at about “master” level or above. That’s only 0.004 percent of all worldwide players to reach these levels. For comparison, there are about 130,000 professional football (soccer) players and an estimated 270 million football (soccer) players total, giving us 0.05 percent of players who reach elite-level play.

Supposing there were as many as 1 million chess players worldwide who play at expert levels (roughly 2000 Elo), that’s a mere 0.16 percent of players who can experience chess at those levels and who can more readily appreciate the subtler ideas behind top-flight games.

Far too few.

So, many millions who play chess enthusiastically do not necessarily do so well. Many of them seek chess instruction, as many of us here are doing. And despite Bruce Pandolfini’s remark that “it’s well known that the best chess instruction is largely visual” (Polgár 11), a stubborn fact remains: verbal communication does significantly shape and guide chess perception, understanding, play, and improvement. Chess players everywhere call on memories of verbal instruction to guide them in their games.

In this way, chess improvement is facilitated by sending a message as well as by playing.

Rhetorica assists Caissa.

Rhetoric is about adjusting perception, and chess instruction is about adjusting perception of the board. That’s why I’ll also float a meditation on J’adoube, the polite French phrase that announces a player’s intention to adjust a piece, restoring the board to beauty and clarity before making a move. 

In a way, this blog is about the beautiful friendship between Rhetorica and Caissa. In the Middle Ages, Rhetorica was besmirched as “the harlot of the arts,” the ugly slur nonetheless seizing on a truth: she is indeed friendly to all who are friendly to her. Too, she judges her gifts to be available to all, but she will not give them freely. What currency will she accept? Only imagination and effort, and in copious amounts. She is amoral, but she has a code. And her goal is the same in all her friendships: to get her friends noticed, heard, and followed. When her friends shine, Rhetorica is happy.

Caissa, too, is amoral. She demands little else besides sitting with her, listening to her, learning from her, moving with her, marveling at her.

She does not demand, however, that her devotees love one another: the annals of famous chess competitions are filled with mutual and open (or just barely contained) animosities. Charges of arrogance, some well-founded, are leveled at masters from inside and outside the chess world. (“Are all chess masters egomaniacs?" was a good-spirited but barbed jest during one Fischer appearance on The Dick Cavett Show.) On top of that, the game suffers from a forbidding reputation: only the brilliant may apply.

All these perceptions hurt Caissa.

Caissa needs Rhetorica’s help.

Ben Franklin, an avid chess player and fan, famously recommended chess for its moral improvements, an argument we’ll examine later. But, of course, any moral improvement gained through chess comes from our deciding to engage it that way. Caissa’s amorality, for all Franklin’s eloquence, is settled. Caissa’s goal is to explore the loveliest of her 10-to-the-120th possibilities through faithful hands.

Caissa, then, seeks her own beauty. Goodness she does not, cannot offer. Beauty comes from working with the art. Goodness comes from us alone. That, I take it, is one of the enduring messages of the father-son film Searching for Bobby Fischer, a film we’ll examine using a rhetorical concept called dissoi logoi in another post.

This blog is designed to provide resources and tools for two purposes:

1. to help all of us to be more effective advocates for chess
2. to help chess players better appreciate how verbal chess instruction shapes their relationship to the game.

If you're a student of rhetorical history and theory, you may be gratified to see a favorite subject applied to so rich a thing as chess. As a player, you may enjoy learning more about what people are saying about our beloved game—and what that means for us as players now and for the game’s future when it is no longer in our hands. It may also make you a better chess learner.

Whatever your skill level in rhetoric or chess, I'll do my best in the coming posts to introduce important terms, show clear examples (of both rhetoric in use and of chess positions or games), and, bit by bit, equip you with new ways of describing the game—or describing the way the game is described!

At times, posts may be one-offs; others may be one of a series. Either way, each will be assigned a category and will give references for further reading. Finally, this blog will not follow any set agenda: some posts may be devoted to current chess events or simply to instructional materials (including books, videos, and online platforms). Some posts, I am certain, will be prompted by things overheard at chess club or said during casual games.

Rhetorica wants it all.

Finally, I'm excited that FIDE and the International School Chess Federation have dedicated 2026 as its Year of Chess in Education. Many more schools out there are waiting for chess clubs, chess competitions, and just good camaraderie over the board. Many parents who teach chess to their kids at home would love to see them play at school. Rhetoricians, chess supporters, and educators everywhere can make a wonderful case for chess in the coming months. A series on “justifying chess,” which can help get programs started, is also planned for this blog.

I look forward to your readership and to engaging with you about chess advocacy and instruction.

Reference

Polgár, Lázló.Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games. Introduction by Bruce Pandolfini. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2013.