When we were about 10, one afternoon a week we would pack away the school books and the whole class would be taught how to play chess. I even pestered my parents to buy a cheap Chess set but apart from my fellow pupils, nobody else knew how to play it.
After leaving middle school, the chess dropped by the wayside and occasionally i would find someone to play against and i even had an electronic chess set so i could play against the computer but the magnetic pieces quickly got lost and knights and bishops were replaced by girls and football.
Memories of my short lived Chess career was revived by the picture of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi playing a game of chess against the World Chess President, carefully contemplating his next move while Tripoli burned.
I wasn't ever very good and apparently nor is Gaddafi according to the Chess President who said that he held back and offered a diplomatic draw because 'winning on a visit would be embarrassing' which was probably a wise move.
It does seem that there is a long list of famous chess players with a less than savoury reputation such as Stalin, Menachem Begin, Napoleon, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ivan the Terrible, Franco, Goebbels, Henry VIII, Rudolf Hess, Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, William Joyce, Machiavelli, Bin Laden, Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, Tito, Kaiser Wilhelm, William the Conqueror and Bono of U2.
My teacher told us that learning chess would serve us well in life because it would teach us to think ahead of the possible consequences of our actions but that is quite an impressive list of chess players who didn't take that message on board.
If only someone had hid the chess pieces from a young Adolf and Bono we could have avoided WW2 and the awful Zooropa album.
There does seem to be a casual link between knowing the rules of chess and rising up to become a Nazi, despot or over hyped singer so maybe we should be looking in chess clubs for the next big bad.
5 comments:
I'm glad that you have got these things off your chess(t), Hanz.
I never conquered chess myself. Draughts was my only achievement, them and snakes and ladders.
Then conforming to strict rules was never one of my strong suits. I'm sure that that failing will catch up with me one day!
Cheers.
Chess is an instructive and profound game which teaches the fundamentals of strategy and tactics in conflict. The list of despots and high achievers in politics and world events just shows that such knowledge and skill can be used for many ends. The suggestion that the insights offered by a game like chess or literature like sun tzu or the prince (both of which i'm sure the were familiar texts to the people in your list) should be prohibited would not lessen the amount of evil in the world it would merely blind the majority of the population to its motives and mechanisms of action.
The best at chess back then was an Indian kid and he was unbeatable. I would like to see what became of him. Either a managing director somewhere or planning to take over the world i imagine.
Hanz - give this game a try if you've a hankering to get into the world of strategy games, but are put off by the Bono-associations of chess...
http://www.burleygames.com/index.php/kamisado
Declaration of interest: The bloke who invented it is a good mate of mine... but it is a devilishly clever game, and quite addictive.
Experienced chess players give it a try thinking expecting it to be a piece of piss, but they soon realise it's a lot more complex than it looks.
I had a quick look at it Cheezy and will look at it properly when i have a bit more time.
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