Addiction vs. Mental Stimulation

by Heinz Jürgen Gassner
(Earlville, Illinois)

This is to supplement Kevin's original article from 10/6/10.

When I was growing up there were two forms of electronic entertainment available: black and white TV with over the air broadcasts, and my little portable Radio Shack AM "Flavor radio". Like most parents, my father believed that too much time in front of the TV was bad for you, and color TV was bad for your eyes. Cable TV was out of the question, and it could be viewed as the new "addiction", as a person could sit in front of the tube 24 hours a day. Back then it was hard to play chess with anyone, and as a 12 year old who had just started learning the game, I looked forward to a chance to play against my dad when he wasn't working double shifts. Most of the summer days were spent playing baseball in the park behind our house, or when no other kids were available, I just shot hoops in the driveway.

Now with today's digital world and the Internet, a person can sit in front of a computer and become addicted to just clicking the mouse. You can become wrapped up in the simplest of whirlpools, such as updating your Facebook or Twitter status every time you have a new thought, and not just from in front of a computer....now most cell phones have those applications built in. There are an endless library of free games to download, or easier yet, to just play online. Then these same applications want you to involve your friends to get them to play, similar to the requests on Facebook.

I signed up on Facebook just to reconnect with old high school and college friends. Expecting to have some meaningful exchanges, I was sadly disappointed when old acquaintances accept a friend request, yet no exchange of conversation or even ideas ever takes place. There exist more requests to accept invitations to be in their online Mafia family or contribute to their Farmland games than any questions about how life has been treating you!

I think we can all relate to how quickly time slips away when you are sitting in front of a TV, a computer, or even just checking your email. So let's look at chess from an online perspective vs. playing in real life and real time. When I started working in my first factory job, you had a 15 minute break and a half hour lunch. Some people just relaxed and talked about their weekend, others played cards for dimes and quarters at a feverish pace. Most of these card games were more luck than skill. When I first found out that there were one or two coworkers that knew how to play chess, an exciting feeling rose up and made me feel alive. A challenge was to be had! A challenge existing of pure skill and mental ability and a chance to try and be the best, even if it was just in a small environment; and this made me feel great. Playing a complete game in 45 minutes was not always possible, so we either wrote down the position at the end of lunch, or when we had a Polaroid camera available, a quick snapshot did the trick. Those 45 minutes a day game me something to look forward to....an exhilarating feeling that I could only describe as a passion for the game. Was it an addiction at that point? I have to say no, because it did not rule my life or change any of my behaviors towards my responsibilities at home, at work, or at school.

As with many friendships, people’s responsibilities change and friendships drift apart. After three years of playing chess every day, I found myself without a chess partner. After an absence from the game, I started playing again, but this time I had the Internet. I tried Yahoo games, and as Kevin mentioned in his article, you can play 24 hours a day, but there is no meaning, no excitement. There are no faces or regular players, only random boards and once you “get up” from a table, you have exited the game and lost. At least that is what it was like then. Still lacking a regular partner who was available to play when I had time, I found Chessworld.net four years ago. Here was the ability to play as little or as long as you wanted to as long as the other player was also online. If not, then you were basically playing an electronic chess by mail game, or two, or 50.

For those of you who play regularly on this site you see the benefits of this site. You can play with people from all over the world, at your leisure. Games are saved, moved are tracked, scoring and point systems are known before you even challenge a player. This site by far offers the best chess playing opportunities and challenges. Am I addicted to this method of playing chess? Again the answer is no. Am I addicted to chess as a game itself? Let’s look at some of the behaviors that Kevin mentions in his article. And by the way…Robert T. Tuohey, M.Sc. must be a comedian not a researcher. I’m hoping that most of his article was sarcasm, because George Bush is an idiot, even if he did learn chess since he left office!

First of all, which world leaders have the opinion that chess an addiction? Are these the same leaders who prefer that no one challenges the government with independent thought? Any activity that stimulates the brain on a level higher than browsing by operating a mouse or a remote has to be good for continued brain health and development. Studies show that one form of prolonging Alzheimer’s disease is to exercise the brain with difficult puzzles. The game of chess can have difficult puzzles against a worthy opponent.

My opinion is that an addiction is an activity that controls every aspect of your life. It is an activity that you let take precedent over most other things in life. Thus if your wife is divorcing you because you are playing chess, or because you are at the bar every weekend, or because she is catching you in bed with other women, you have an addiction to chess, or to alcohol, or to sex. If you would rather play chess than have a conversation with your significant other, then you have a chess addiction. If you got sidetracked on your way to the grocery store by way of Central Park to play chess, you may have a chess addiction.

For many of us who play chess on a regular basis, I think we can sum up the two reasons why we seem addicted to the game. The first is that we crave mental stimulation. You can sit down and do math problems and there exists a definitive answer to the problem, but chess….ah there can be a variety of perceived “correct moves”. The sweetness of playing chess, especially with another person is the human factor. People favor certain pieces in different situations. I almost always prefer a bishop over a knight, but there are some closed games where a knight is needed to facilitate a series of moves for a win. Also the exchange of a bishop and a knight for a rook and a pawn….not my favorite cup of tea even though others give it no second thought. People do not always react the same, and moves can be made that appear totally illogical but still have purpose. As humans we do not always act in our own self interests, and thus “the sacrifice” is born to the game of chess. Give up a little now for more later. A prime example of why Gary Kasporov was able to beat Deep Thought.

The other reason we seem addicted is we have a passion for the game. It isn’t because I am that good at it, because in the world of chess players I am only average. For the most part I don’t know the names of the openings like many players do. For me the passion exists because it is one thing out of many that my dad taught me and I can do better at it than he ever did. It is also a passion because I can make a mistake and still recover when my opponent makes a mistake. If I lose anyway, then there is another game to be had. Life is not as forgiving as a chess game.

This fairly completes my rambling on this subject, and I agree with Kevin that chess is meant to be a fun game. When you do lose a game and don’t feel a gain in respect towards your opponent, and instead are getting more pissed off, maybe you do have an addiction instead of a passion, and this isn’t the game for you.

http://www.chess-sets-and-more.com/chess-addiction.html