According to my psychologist "Chess is just a game"

Laughing at a patient is disrespectful, unethical and unprofessional. If I were you I would file a complaint with the licensing board of psychiatry and find myself a new doctor.

 I'll take you up on this, Goldendog. The bridges, roads, cars, planes etc. are only good in taking people from point A to point B. They serve to bring people together, which in itself is good for the society. However, bonds between people are created by ideas much higher than the seemingly complex feats of engineering such as bridge or road building. People stay together because they share interests in "higher" pursuits, such as art, books, music and yes, chess.

In my opinion chess is an art, and a means of forging relationships. True, the top players are probably more concerned with becoming "the best in the world", or whatever, but for the majority of people on this portal we are here for the people. Otherwise we would be playing Chessmaster or some other software.

My wife just looked at this post and commented that "chess only brings geeks together." Oh well...

Exactly.

Then in that case, i propose that we destroy every school we have, and burn every book we have, as writing does not help society directly. The best writing does is record history. The other thing writing might do is for you to text message your friend. Is texting your friend useless?

So, i hereby propose we get rid of writing, and have all of us only learn to speak as speaking is the only useful thing for society (communication).

I also propose that we get rid of the idea that we need big words for big events. Why do we need to call a meeting a "conference". That's a waste of time, to say a 3-syllable word instead of the easier 2-syllable word, right?

Next, i propose we get rid of names, and only give ouselves numbers. To pronuciate a friend's name which may have 5-syllables is a waste of time. Calling him number 1-0-6-7-8-3 is easier and is more orderly.

Now, i propose we get rid of having fancy colours and patterns for our clothes. Being obsessed with fashion an clothes because of their design is a drug and addictive. I declare we should adopt the plain gray colour for all clothes.

Also, i declare that all cars be fitted with only steering wheels, brakes, pedals, and air conditioning, as listening to music is a waste of time and energy.

Dare i go on?

Where have you been?  The Chinese already did that a long time ago.

Johnson 123: We've been hitting the Zamyatin a little hard of late, haven't we?

Chess is partly just a game--the point about it bringing people together is also a valid point. It's the same reason I used to hang out in the arcade and play Gauntlet II when I was a kid--Gauntlet may have been just a game, but it was a great way to get together with friends b/c we knew we'd be there Friday nights. Once I got the NES version w/the NES Satellite we'd all come over my house and play it. It was a social exercise, not just a game. Chess is important for that reason--it's played by people all over the world, and many times banter over the chessboard leads to real friendships. AFAIK they still play in Washington Square in NYC, if you're there go check it out.

Chess also improves logic skills and thinking skills. Taking the easy way out in a chess game is a surefire way to get your ass kicked. Instead, the player has to think a move or two ahead, strategize, and then make the best move. A lot of life is like that--sometimes you can fly by the seat of your pants, but it's generally not the best long-term system of being.

As for what is useful to the world, that depends on your point of view. Engineers are great, but how many more gadgets do we *really* need? Doctors are great, but too many of them go into one specialty and if you need a general practitioner for a sinus infection but all the ones in your area are cardiologists, how good are they *really?* If money is the sole judge of societal worth, how much are the fat cats who pay themselves obscene bonuses really contributing to society at the end of the day? Saying what is useful or what is not is a subjective value judgement, and what one person values another doesn't.

RE the shrink: I'd find another one. Too many of them are on a power trip and push their values on their patients as the correct ones--that's very harmful in the long run. It'd be one thing if you were into illegal activities, but if she's simply not a chess player, she has no right to slam you for it. JMO.

Chess may be trivial, but all of life is ultimately trivial. We are born, consume resources, then we die. Those are the basic facts of life. Everything else is window-dressing.

Jim Bouton the former major league pitcher who wrote the amazing book "Ball Four" gave one of the best summaries of our obsessive nature and dedication to the games/sports that we love.   He said, and I still remember this from reading his book when I was about 13:

"You spend your life gripping a baseball and in the end, it turns out it was the other way around the whole time."

I don't think it can be said any better than that.

You should say (looking at your watch).....

In that case, I'm afraid our time is up for today.....

I'm puzzled as how this is supposed to be a response to my post. I never said chess was useless and ought to be expunged as non-essential.

In fact I implied that it had art-like merits, and that art is something we have always valued, traditionally.

I agree that it chess has that social quality of serving to bring us together. So does the sports page or the most vacuous TV show the next morning around the water cooler.

In this respect, the vehicle isn't mattering much, so chess's unique (or most worthy) attributes aren't really coming into play. Sudoku could do as much.

You also touched on a point I hear a lot in these forums: Chess is an Art. I would say that at its highest form as played by the finest exponents, it may qualify as art, but even at its best the game doesn't provide a medium even remotely as rich as words, paint, canvas, stone, sound, etcetera, and that whatever the very best players can make of the game as an artistic expression, the result compared to poetry, painting, sculpture, is so muted that I can't use the term "art" to embrace them all without some explanation.

I also put aside the "art" of pretty combinations, even though to see them played out pleases us even, I admit, aesthetically. It's more pleasant than artistic. Don't forget, it was Reti (I think) who said the beauty of chess lies not in the appearance of the moves but in the thought behind it; and it's that much-harder-to-grasp-aspect of the game that combined with an "artistic shallowness" (as I talk about in the previous paragraph) that makes "the art of chess" esoteric and hard to appreciate, as apart from the mere appearance of prettiness on the board.

Chess is like a walnut with an incredibly thick shell and after an immense amount of effort you end up with a pitiful bit of meat in the center, at least if it was "art" that one was after. If one is after fun and entertainment and challenges of many kinds, then the shell is thin and the meat, well, meaty.

In short, the appeal that chess is important because art is important, I do not find compelling.

[I had a thread many months ago on the chess and art and what is art, but just me and one other guy partook, so I deleted it. Maybe we've come full circle.]

If you want to smash the faces of everybody who says chess is just a game, you got mental problems.

Someone who says that "chess is just a game" is akin to an ugly person saying "real beauty is on the inside" ;-)

Chess is just a board game, but has a rich history of personalities and evolution.  

Any number of games involve just as many artistic and scientific skills as chess.  World of Warcraft, Halo, and NHL '95 for Sega Genesis (I am the Morphablanca of the latter by the way) all have snobbery intellectual elements involving tactics and strategy, but most people think of those as just games. 

Coaching a sports team, leading an army, and fighting in MMA are likewise similar to chess but with uneven starting positions, which is why upsets are so special.

"Psychiatry is JUST a mind game and psychology a second-rate mind game......."

Burning chess books, if endorsed as an international competition with rules/titles/rating levels, would also involve artistic and scientific skills as much as chess.

Tell her, "Psychiatry is nothing more than pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, practiced by quacks out to get naive people's money."

 But at least it pays the rent.

People who "pooh-pooh" Chess usually do not have the faintest concept of the immensity of the game.

Ask her if she is willing to guess how many possible positions there are after only 7 moves (4 for WHITE + 3 for BLACK) The answer in a round number is 3.2 BILLION+.

If the first question is too tough for her since it asks for a specific number, let her try a question with a simple yes or no answer, to wit. Are there more total particles in the entire universe than there are total possible Chess positions?

Answer: NO...there are, in fact MORE total Chess positions (approx. 2 times 10 to the 46th power) than there are total particles (protons, neutrons) in the entire universe (approx. 10 to the 80th power).

Can she wrap her head around that?

I would not have been a bad idea to challenge her to a game,especially if she was

cute.