Reframing "Moves" & Parallel Universe Chess

Chess Category: Instruction
Rhetoric Category: Invention, Framing

“A chess player is nothing without patience.”
—IM Jeremy Silman, The Amateur’s Mind

"Moving" Isn't Necessary

Do you make moves too fast? Maybe step away from “moves” for a while.

Try something else instead. 

Basic chess instruction begins with (1) the idea of the game, (2) the objective of the game, (3) the layout of the board, and, of course, (4) “how the pieces move.” Presenting “how the pieces move,” in one telling instance, fills an entire chapter in GM Raymond Keene’s primer, The Simon & Schuster Pocket Book of Chess (1988) taking up eighteen percent (!) of that book’s material—which also includes chess history, chess openings, middlegames, tactics, endgames, world champions, and other things. Pick up any beginner chess book you like, or any book of chess commentary, and count the number of times “move” or a variant appears! 

It may seem almost impossible to imagine chess instruction, or talking about chess in general, without this ubiquitous word. But, I argue, it didn’t have to be this way. Here is a clue: in his Manual of Chess, the longest-reigning World Champion, Emanuel Lakser, assuming no prior knowledge of his reader, describes the act of moving a piece in this simple yet provocative way:

The move consists of transferring a piece from one square to another. White ‘moves’ a white piece, Black a black one. (Lasker 5)

In these two sentences, Lasker’s description, “transferring a piece,” denotes an almost mechanical, but still human, action: taking a piece in hand, lifting it from one square, and placing it on another square—all according to a legally prescribed pattern. While his point was not exactly to critique “move” as a basic chess term (though as a professional philosopher, he might well have), Lasker’s placing it in square quotes, especially for those of us who know the game well, does a little defamiliarizing, even denaturalizing. Can we, for just a moment, put a pause on “move”?

Maybe imagine a world where we never needed “moves” at all?

Before we do that, let’s zero in on three facts. (1) A chess piece is a stationary object, i.e., it is an object incapable of placing itself. (2) Placing the piece involves the embodied experience of picking up a piece, carrying it, and placing it down again on a square other than the one it just occupied, or the embodied experience of touching a piece and sliding it across the board till it occupies another square. (3) Under one perfectly accurate and sufficient description, the game prescribes patterns of placing a piece. Speaking of “moves” is not necessary.

In fact, for every instance in which a chess “move” is mentioned, one may substitute “placement” with zero change to the game’s objective, board layout, or rules of play.

Lasker’s momentary disruption of our customary “move” language brings these three facts rushing forward. This is the beginning step of denaturalizing “moves.” 

If you can go that far with me, take another step. It might just change your game.

An Invention Tool - Parallel Universe Chess (PUC)

Imagine you are in a parallel universe. There, our three facts could very well have resulted in an entirely different fundamental descriptor of our beloved game. Instead of “move,” what if we spoke of “placement”?

• “Now let’s learn how the pieces are placed.”
• “The most common opening placement is 1. e4 e5.”
• “It’s your placement.”
• “Whose placement is it?”
• “That’s a good placement.”
• “Unbelievable placement here by Morphy.”
• “Mate in 3 – White to Place.”

How did Parallel Universe Chess happen? Let’s imagine that, in the days of Persia, where the game acquired its name after the shah (whence “chess” and “check” ultimately derive), and where the game’s highly detailed pieces took on more abstract qualities to honor prohibitions against representational images, players began to forget the game’s associations with war. Over the centuries, the pieces changed names to become associated with their patterns.

The elephant that would, in our universe, eventuate into the Bishop, instead becomes the “Xer,” after its pattern traced near the board’s center. The chariot, or rukh, becomes the Liner, after its legal placement along straight vertical or horizontal lines. The Queen is the Big Aster—after the asterisk pattern she enjoys—and the King is the Little Aster. (Curiously, chess consciousness in this parallel universe inspires the understanding that the size of a thing or the scope of its ability does not equate to its importance. [Imagine what that might do for discourse about abilities of all kinds.])

The knight figure becomes the Octagoneer, after its ability to be placed anywhere along a pattern of squares that roughly traces an octagon. Here, the chess literature will seem odd, but not unintelligible: it speaks of the piece as “being placed along the octagonals, the center of which always sits an opposite-colored square. When the Octagoneer sits at the center of the octagonal, it may be placed on any unoccupied square along that octagonal.”

(Almost certainly, teachers would encourage students to visualize the octagonal extending beyond the sides of the board so they could continue to follow the shape where the board ends in cases where the Octagoneer cannot be placed on a possible eight squares.)

By the way, this is my favorite instance of what becomes of one of our familiar pieces in the Parallel Universe. Nowhere in that universe will Lasker describe Octagoneer placement, as he does so strangely of the Knight in our universe, as “the shortest move that is not a straight one” (5), and there is no need whatsoever to talk of an L-shape move. In the parallel universe, the pattern is clear and obvious. No such odd instruction is required! (Rhetorica is urgent here: think of that!)

For the sake of completeness, the pawn becomes the Pronger, after its ability to be placed forward or to remove a piece from an immediately forward diagonal square. Because its placement pattern does not coincide with pattern permitting the displacement of another piece from the board—as is the case for pieces—one often has to slow down instruction a bit here, as one often does in our universe.

(Note on the image below: despite clear instructions, AI did not provide me with a Prong that is obviously smaller than the other pieces or an 8x8 board. In Parallel Universe Chess, the board is also precisely the same as ours.)

Chess Learning in the Parallel Universe

In all cases, students would be trained to see both pieces and patterns of placement at precisely the same time. When they look at the board and see the Xer, for example, they keep looking for—and readily finding—Xs.

In Parallel Universe Chess, even beginning students automatically assign more value to developing board vision than our players tend to do at first. They look for shapes. And, because they have simply never been asked to think of their turns as “moves,” they hardly ever feel rushed.

Here a few other distinctives of Parallel Universe Chess.

• Blundering is a term reserved for failing to see all the way through to a certain combination. Simply “hanging a piece” because “I didn’t see it over there” is almost unheard of.
• Picking up pieces and putting them down is the most customary way to take a turn. Sliding, when done, is reserved to introduce a brilliant combination. It is not merely an indifferent preference for piece transfer, as it is in our universe: rather, it is a signal of an artful solution. It is always done slowly.
• Players do not speak of positions. Instead, they speak of com-positions—placing things together resulting in a new and hopefully interesting arrangement.
• Players never speak of taking or capturing a piece. Nor do they even remove a piece, as it is too closely associated with movement. Instead, Parallel Universe Chess players speak of deleting a piece, sometimes striking a piece.
• J’adoube never happened. In Parallel Universe Chess, practice follows connotation. When a player “places” a piece, one does so as the word suggests: deliberately, carefully. Everybody knows this.
• Blitz does develop, but relative to the game as it evolved in this universe and to the more patient culture it helped to foster. Blitz games never reach a pace where placing the piece is done sloppily.
• Freestyle happened way, way before Fischer’s time. The universal preoccupation with “placement patterns” simply sparked the idea much, much earlier. Ruy Lopez created several favorite openings that were being patiently explored in the 960 different starting positions.

Back to Reality—And Our Own Boards

Chess instruction is full of exhortations to “take your time,” a good idea many of us ignore to our game’s detriment. One chess coach’s favorite saw is “Time is your seventeenth piece.” (A lovely metaphor I happily pass on to you. For Caissa’s sake, give it some thought and share it with your friends!)

You surely have picked up the argument implicit in our little intuition pump (or “persuasion machine”; see video below) above. Rhetorica, I think, is asking Caissa to consider reframing, especially for her novices, how she presents herself. In doing so, Rhetorica advises students to assume a different relationship to the game, one where time is a gift shared by both players. That time allows for the careful thinking about the next placement in the game as each player works on their respective com-position.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942-2024) explains "intuition pump," an invention tool

I have a feeling that training ourselves to think of our turn at chess as a “placement” rather than a “move” would slow down our thinking almost on its own. Often, when we organize our space, we like to take time to think about that. And if we are organizing space on the chessboard—as we undoubtedly are—then we may find ourselves thinking about that carefully, since where our pieces are placed has everything to do with the outcome of the game.

While thinking about the game as “placements” may take away some of the intensity, and perhaps some of the cortisol, that the warlike conception of “moves” tends to encourage, we will likely gain a sharper relationship to the space in front of us and appreciate the more artful aspects of the game. Evaluations like “a masterful stroke” and epithets like “the Mozart of chess” will hardly seem strange, as the game’s art aspects are a matter of course.

Conclusion: Play Parallel Universe Chess

I am not exactly proposing a fundamental shift to our game’s most basic vocabulary. “Move” talk is probably here to stay. Nor am I asking us to rename the pieces—changing Bishop to Xer or Knight to Octagoneer, for example—or to change the idea of the game from a battle between two equally powerful armies. I will return, however, to Parallel Universe Chess in a later entry, to explore more of the character of this game. But, in the meantime, maybe you can explore it, too.

What I propose is a new set of terms for chess players and instructors to facilitate sharper board vision, piece understanding, and habits that support careful deliberation. Reframing “moves” as “placements” can help us reconceive our turns at play, turning them into opportunities to savor our time to create, plan, and test.

For the same pedagogical purposes, giving the pieces new nicknames out of Parallel Universe Chess, too, may remind players to see the patterns of placement the game allows. If Caissa has room for the French "fool" (our Bishop) and for the German "jumper" (our Knight), she has room for these, too.

In therapeutic terms, reframing introduces cognitive dissonance: you are suddenly alert to two competing views of the world that co-exist in your one mind. To be restored to a healthy outlook, at least one of these views of the world has to go. Because it calls for such a decisive reckoning, reframing is one of Rhetorica’s favorite “forcing moves.” (Or is that “compelling placements”?) For certain purposes at least, Rhetorica invites us to make a choice between one way of seeing a board (one that calls for a move) and another (that calls for placing a piece). 

True, the outside world of chess in our universe is not going to budge from “move.” A truly drastic shift would be needed before that happens. But, while players are pliant and open to instruction, a reframing, such as Parallel Universe Chess, can allow players formed under a discourse of “moves” to take on a clearer vision of the board, to the improvement of their game.

À la Mr. Rogers, players can “make believe” they are in a Parallel Universe, where historical events and game-playing habits took a different turn. If you tend to move too hastily, allow me to suggest retreating in your mind—where all chess players must go—and land in the Parallel Universe. Don’t play chess. Play Parallel Universe Chess: place, don't move. Your opponent won’t know the difference.

But you might.

A Toolkit for Teachers and Learners

 If you choose to introduce Parallel Universe Chess to your students—or to enter that universe yourself when it’s your turn to play!—here are some terms to guide you.

Reference

Lasker, Emanuel. Lasker's Manual of Chess. New York: Dover, 1960.