Batty, you always have the most interesting finds!!! I do have a quick story of "draughts." Not playing beyond childhood myself, however, a friend of my father came to visits us shortly after he died when I was 16 years old. The friend explained to me how he and my father would go to local taverns and bring a set with them ..beginning casual play between themselves. During the course of a few drinks some of the other "old timers" would gather round and begin talking about how this player missed this move or the other missed another. My father and his friend would offer to play against all comers and to "give the a chance" they would allow them all to play against either my father or his friend as a team against a single player. My father's friend smiled at this.. "Naturally, after a half dozen moves, the ""team"" members would start to argue between themselves about what move next would be best.. until decision made by consensus lead them into disaster followed by defeat." It's a pity, I think, that a few dollars would probably never be won and lost in a tavern by two CONscientious gentlemen. :-)
The Black Death and Draughts.
in chess
Once upon a time I had an ignorant friend of mine who was absolutely sure and always eager to proofed it that silly computer game Heroes of Might and Magic is far more complex and hence superior to chess.
Yes, Poe describes the powers of
mind used in both games in "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue."
The claim about the quantity of written works concerning checkers is an interesting one. I wonder if he was correct in 1895? It certainly isn't true today.
One phrase I despise is "Jack was playing checkers, while Jill was playing chess."
I kinda understand chess. Somewhat.
Checkers is a complete mystery to me.
And apparently, browsing at Wikipedia, checkers has actually evolved quite a bit over the millennia. Despite Mr. Whites claims to the contrary.
@batgirl -
In your initial post, the last paragraph, from Tim Harding's book......can you attribute the quote beginning "...I don't remember a time when I did not play draughts.", i.e., who said that?
And Go is an even more complex and intellectually tantalizing pastime than Checkers, and still it doesn't appeal to me. 😀
Imo it's childish to say: This or that game is superior!", when in reality it all boils down to what an individual enjoys the most.
And Go is an even more complex and intellectually tantalizing pastime than Checkers, and still it doesn't appeal to me. 😀
Imo it's childish to say: This or that game is superior!", when in reality it all boils down to what an individual enjoys the most.
Most games are crap. That's an objective observation.
@RussBell
According to Harding, The Sheffield Evening Telegraph identified him as "our own interviewer" and the initials C.A.W. appeared at the end of the article.
🥂🦇👏
I have to say BG does it again :-) Great post, love it!
It seems to me that one in their youth, learns to play Checkers and then moves on to the more serious game of Chess. Perhaps in time begin able to experience some mastery of either.
Edgar Allen Poe's character is not
necessarily Poe himself. However.
Poe felt Chess involves superior
powers of concentration and calculation whereas draughts (however
they played it) could involve more
reflection and "throwing ones self upon the spirit of ones opponent."
I often wonder about poker.
Well, anyway, I think Poe perhaps
never enjoyed chess enough to
see its beauty? But I love Poe.
I happened across the following letter published in the NY Sun on Sunday, May 5, 1895:
Chess and the Mind.
To the Editor of The Sun---Sir: In your interesting cable letter from London April 28, Mr. Blackburne the wall-known English chess master, is credited with having said that the game of chess is "a dangerous intellectual vice." Also, "even If it were a form of mental discipline, which I doubt, I should still object to it on the ground of its fatal fascination." Again: "Chess is a kind of mental alcohol. It inebriates the man who plays it constantly. He lives in a chess atmosphere, and his dreams are of gambits and the end of games. Draughts is a better game. If you must have a game."
What Mr. Blackburne, says is true, as every expert at either game will doubtless admit. It is the inference in his last remark that I object to. The casual reader would conclude that draughts la a better game than Chess because it has no " fatal fascination," no "atmosphere." Don't let the readers of The Sun, I beg of you, run away with that unsound idea. The atmosphere of expert chessdom is not for a moment to be compared with that of expert checkerdom.
There is only one habit I have ever beard of that is to be compared with that of expert checker playing, viz., the opium habit. That I understand to be a greater time consumer and thought absorber than checkers. But as for chess, pshaw! It isn't in it for a minute. The chess players find time to go to the theatre occasionally, and if there Is a grand public celebration of any kind going on, he is apt to take an interest in It. Not so the true devotee of checkers. He gives no time to anything else on earth that he does not regard as so many lost moments. I have seen an aged man. so decrepit that he could not go out alone brought around to a checker resort a week before his death for just one more chance to try an old-time variation on the single corner game. There are several blind men in this vicinity, the one solace of whose lives Is the game of checkers. The chess habit is mild and colorless in comparison with that of checkers--I do not mean checkers as you see it played In lodging houses, police stations. engine houses, groceries &c., but that which is played by experts.
Mr. Blackburne is entirely right when he says "Draughts is a better game." It Is an older game. There has been no change in it since the building of the Pyramids. The changes and "improvements" in the game of chess have spoiled its history, There are more openings In checkers than in chess. It takes more moves to play a game of checkers than chess. The literature of checkers is greater than that of chess. Chess is largely a game of patience--strategy is subservient to oversight. Checkers is an exact mathematical problem. Philidor or Paulsen or Morphy or some great chess master has declared that the pawns are the life of the game. The moves of the pawns constitute the only resemblance between the two games. Compare the best chess problem you over saw, consisting of two pieces against two, with any checker problem of two against two (first position. for instance), and see the difference In the real (not the apparent) depth of the game.
The mind of Edgar Allan Poe grasped the difference In the games. He says: "The higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess." The Italics are mine.
Finally I assert that it is far easier to become a fine chess player than an equally good checker player. Take some of our well-known players, Hodges,. Pillsbury, Hyams, Issacson. all master chess players, but never able to become equally good checker players, though playing the game exceedingly well. I think any chess player who also plays checkers will tell you that with the same amount of practice he would rather take his chances against Steinitz or any other chess master, than he would against Barker, Freeman, Heffner, Reed, Wiley. Jordan, Ferris, Stewart, or stay other checker player in the first class. There is a far wider gap between the good and the best in checkers than there is between the good and the best players in chess. I would rather be able to draw a game of checkers with Barker than to win a game o chess from Steinitz,
Yes, Mr. Blackburne is right, "draughts Is a better game."
Yours very truly.
H. C. White 151 EAST TWENTY-NINTH STREET, NEW YORK, April 20, 1895.
While I'm not particularly interested in Mr. White's opinions, Blackburne's opinion is worth noting.
The following was excerpted from Tim Harding's Joseph Henry Blackburne: A Chess Biography, from an article that appeared in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, Nov. 26, 1887:
"...I don't remember the time when I did not play draughts. How I learnt I do not know, but I was a fair player, and when I was only 15 years old some of the strongest men in the country used to come to try conclusions with me. There is far more in the game of draughts than many people imagine --in fact, there is scarcely anyone nowadays who plays the game scientifically. It requires more exactness and caution than are necessary for chess; for in the latter if you make a slip you may possibly retrieve it, whereas in draughts there is no returning to the old position, and the first mistake is fatal."