Chess... hmm, reminds me of my one-time excursion into the shady/cliquey world that was my middleschool after school chess club;
I was about 9 or 10 years old and really the most interesting thing on my mind back then was how I could avoid the afterschool sports activitys. So, being the bright spark that I was I thought I'd have a go at the 'Chess Club' - game of skill and strategy as ancient as the oldest thing I knew about - which at that time was my dad, and the strange old geezer who used to cycle the wrong way up the fast lane of the duelcarridgeway on our morning run to school.
Anyway, the first session came and I was looking forwards to being shown the rudiments of how the game was played and understanding some slightly more advanced methods of humilliating your opponent. It was I who ultimately was in for the humilliation, however.
At this point I should point out how the chessclub kept score of the games played- there was a 'chess-ladder' fixed to the wall with (predictably) the names of all those playing, jostelling for position, firmly convinced of their own superiority of intent, their status as a credible humanbeing dependent on their ability to move off the proverbial 'bottom rung'.
So, my first game came along and after about 30 - 40 minutes I had comfortably decimated my opponents pieces and backed him into a corner before administering the coup de grace checkmate.
Buoyed up by my recent success, I validated my being by moving my name tag up one position from the bottom of the ladder, whilst my erstwhile foe tasted the bitterness of defeat and sank to the lowest of the low; sullied for evermore by this elementary failure in a battle of witts and guile.
The next game was a little different. My adversary (a spotty little oikk from form 12) and I sat opposite eachother, each eyeing the other with suspision and I wager I caught a glimpse of carefully concealed contempt directed at me. Evidently I could expect trouble; the game might even last untill next week! Even in my wildest speculations I had not counted on being thrashed so spectacularily and in so few moves.
Ten minutes later it was all over; Checkmate! (or for those of the younger txt generation 'chekm8').
My position on the ladder of success plumeted from the dizzying heights of penultimate to ultimate bottom and to make things even worse, my first opponent had moved on by winning a game of his own, so I did not evan have the solidarity of misery loving company. Still, it was early days yet and I was sure that as the weeks progressed our club organiser would begin to impart such subtle knowlege and cunning stratagems as to make the whole process an endevour to be inspired by. Wrong again.
In an effort to regain the shreds of my dignity, I began another game - with the same result - defeat! This pretty much marked out the pattern for the next several games, until crushed by my continuing lack of success (visible to all and sundry on the shining ladder of worth) I finally quit the chess club to find a more worth while persuit for my tallents - hockey, which as it turned out I was pretty good at.
Now, I must leave this view of the yester-year of my youth and reflect upon an important lesson in life which I realised later was summed up rather succinctly in my above tale. All of existance is a struggle to get off the bottom rung of society, to distance one's self from the lowest of the low, weather in employment or deeds and beliefs; everyday life is filled with such little pointers of our worth as an individual or part of a greater whole, some only visible to ourselves, others are in such plain view of everyone else that it can be quite a challenge to even admit their existance to yourself.
As analogys go, the ladder is a fairly obvious one, yet it is none the less an accurate one at that, but filled with such gems as: if at first you do not succeed, try, try again- or more interestingly for me- if you are totally rubbish at something, try something else, you might be plesantly supprised that there are many other things you might be good at or even excell at.
It was not until many years later I understood what lay at the heart of my abysmal preformance at the school chess club. It was not that I lacked ability to learn (as proved by my surviving to adulthood and gaining some reasonable qualifications and, eventually, a job I can live with), nor that the other kids were any better at chess than me. The simple and shocking fact was they cheated. I know, I know, how is it possible to cheat at chess? I mean, it's hardly possible to sneak an extra knight up your shirt cuff or rigg the pieces before you deal them hehe. No, these young people had read one of those 'how to win at chess in x number of moves' books and learned the winning formula by rote.
Indeed this revalation contains more than an acceptable amount of truth when viewed in line with the ladder analogy of life. No matter how hard you try at something there will usually be somebody out there who is better at it than you; if not now, then there soon will be. But how they came by their knowlege of how to be better at it than you is what is most important; there's no rule that says knowlege must be aquired by hard work and dedication to a cause, particularily if someother shmuck has done all the legwork for you.
I might not have learned to be a great chess player, but I learned that the quick and dirty route to a goal is usually the most efficient. The chances are that everybody else is up to the same thing, so if you don't want to be left on the bottom rung for the rest of your life, wise up and start taking advantage now!
So, in summation - Chess; not just a game for smart russian dudes and dumb supercomputers which can callculate pi to a million decimal places but couldn't co-ordinate bipedal appendages to remain upright for more than a few seconds. There's deffinately more to it than pushing carved figurines about a chequered board, oh yes indeedy.
