Jeremy Gaige and the Ethics of Chess

     Jeremy Gaige of New York is considered by many to have been one of the most important chess archivists, having found and compiled many hard facts about chess events and chess players both famous and obscure. He lived to be 83 but back in 1961 when he 34, he was considered a newcomer to chess.
     Here's an article written by Gaige way back in 1961 that has nothing to do with facts but everyhing to do with a chess-players' eternal conundrum.

     I came upon chess much as a lamb that comes upon a pack of wolves and does not run away — showing more obstinacy than good sense.
     Trained by profession and inclined by temperament as a journalist, my forte is not abstruse spatio-mathematical relationships but verbal relationships — despite any present evidence to the contrary. (Surely, even an obstinate lamb is entitled to be diffident, even awkward, when first addressing the wolves in their own lair.)
     Being of a curious turn of mind, I decided to find out all I could about chess, being so ignorant of the subject that I didn't realize the extent of my own ignorance nor, therefore, the formidable undertaking that lay before me. I was to discover it soon enough.
     My exploration began on two fronts: 1) A few offhand games at the homes of friends who were scarcely better players than myself, and 2) Books dealing with the history and background of the game, ones such as Edward Lasker's Adventure of Chess, Fred Reinfeld's The Great Chess Masters and Their Games — a wonderful book — and his anthology The Treasury of Chess Lore.
     It would be unjust to charge these two articulate apostles of the game with mis-representation, even though they do write with highly contagious enthusiasm. Let's say rather that, in my new-found infatuation, all good and noble aspects of chess and chessplayers were avidly and reassuringly seized upon. Does a lover search for blemishes in his beloved?
     High fellowship and the cultivation of Yankee virtues were promised by the genial Dr. B. Franklin, late of Philadelphia. Sir George Thomas emerged as a paradigm of sportsmanship.
     Oh, there were warnings enough about the darker aspects — no, not of chess, I don't want to believe that — but of chessplayers. But all omens were ignored, for a time. Advice from Bishop Lopez to arrange the board so that the light shines in your opponent's eyes and Alekhine's resignation by throwing his King across the room — these were brushed aside as amusingly exceptional eccentricities, by one thoroughly tolerant of them.
     Ignored too were the exchanges between champions and challengers. Surely, their correspondence must assume a sovereign place in any anthology on the art of invective, or else of evasion — usually a grand combination of the two.
     Perhaps the first ominous crack in my calm assurance that all chess is for the best came when I was taking a lesson front Grandmaster Rossolimo.
     He asked me to see who was ahead in pieces. Since there were only a few captures, I took the lazy man's way of reckoning the difference in material strength counting the pieces off the board.
     Like a mother bear trying to break one of her cubs of a potentially fatal habit, he said sternly: "Never count pieces off the board. Strange things can happen."
     I looked up alarmed but puzzled. He explained: "While you're looking at the board, your opponent or his friend can add or subtract 'captured' pieces, giving you a false idea of your material strength."
     A short while later, an opponent of mine, I found, would habitually squirrel away the first piece captured whenever he won the second or third piece in a game. A glass of beer, I discovered, does an excellent job of concealment, especially for White pieces. (Dark beer may be recommended for the Black pieces.)
     The more I played and came to love the game, the more I came to wonder about its players.
     Talk about excuses, why those made by chessplayers would cause Congressional investigations if they were made in any other sport! Imagine the resulting rumpus if a prizefighter went into the ring in that deplorable state of health from which a losing chessplayer almost invariably claims lie is suffering.
     Imagine the somberly scolding editorials that would follow a football player's running out of the stadium with the time-clock to keep his team from losing. And yet the story of Pleci running around a tournament room with the clock for similar reasons is lovingly treasured by chessplayers. One can only wonder why.
     In my own case, I was perhaps fortunate in finding an opponent so much stronger than myself that he could give me odds of a Rook and still beat me most. times. Gradually, the odds were reduced, first to a Knight, then to Pawn and Move and finally to no odds. With the pieces even, he would still beat me most of the time.
     Gradually, however, his margin of victories decreased. And this opponent, who had been so sporting and tolerant of my inadequacies, became progressively more crabbed. My victories were attributed to being lucky — an old song — and to grabbing pieces that were overlooked, even if they were "overlooked" in the course of a modest three or four move combination. He naturally ascribed his own victories to superior strategy.
     Finally, the great day came when I won three games out of four. My opponent became more and more irate and, at the end of the fourth game, he could stand it no more.
     "Honestly, I don't enjoy playing you any more," he said, in a soft, sinister voice that nicely blended sorrow and anger. I could well believe him, but that apparently was not what he meant, consciously at least.
     I was treated to a long lecture on the necessity of not "always playing to win" but of making moves of the utmost delicacy. Translation: When the ends can no longer be achieved, the means become ends in themselves.
     In view of this lack of sportsmanship among so many chessplayers, matched perhaps only by that assumed by professional wrestlers, I would pose (but not presume to answer) a philosophical question: Is there something inherent in the game of chess itself that evokes this de-sertion of sportsmanship?

     There is indeed something inherent in the game of chess itself that evokes this de-sertion of sportsmanship. But that is actually something good and probably the main reason why I play chess.

     When you play long time controls over the board (e.g. a game that lasts for 5 hours), it can become a big fight. Your strengths but also your weaknesses are there with you. They're not only chess related but many are part of who you are.

     When you win you're on fire, because you did so using your strengths. But when you lose it's like the sea. After the game, you have to dive deep under the surface, look straight at those weaknesses, no matter how much it hurts and resurface stronger.

     Some players can't do this, either because they're not willing to see that they're not perfect or simply because they don't know how that mechanism works. Chess acts like a mirror. Only if you look at it..

     I guess this is the case with other sports too, but because in chess the emphasis is on the mental abilities rather than the physical ones, the mirror effect is stroger.

gg;)