Speaking of tabletop games, chess is the only one for which I take any aesthetic attachment or even remotely yearn to play. I don’t care for card games, the gambling sort or otherwise, don’t care for checkers, life, monopoly or that whole blasted family entertainment dice and roll tradition in a sense that while hardly devoid of strategy or skill, the substitute doesn’t approach within a ballpark from the gamut I experience in chess.
Had Go been more popular outside of Asia, the boards pervasively found across casual homes, lodgings, cafe tables; more of the western populace initiated with the rules I most certainly long forgot - I could totally imagine Go occupying respectable head space. Alas …
(Strangely enough, I once or twice found quiet charming the D&D, that is, the Dungeons and Dragons dynamic involving several players at a friend’s house. I speak of the classic tradition with the fat decks of cards, all that equipment and supplemental bookkeeping where I normally prefer the self-sufficient minimalism of an otherwise complex game communicated wholesomely by a chessboard.
But that must have been a passenger thought. You clearly haven’t seen me around D&D circles in the last ten years, have you now?)
As it stands, I engage a game of Chess wherever avails a board and a sufficiently enthusiastic opponent, but still as obstinate as ever to play via apps. However much or however little I’ve tried to prime (or fool) my psychology for the sort, that same physical aesthetic impact plummets with the transformation of the physical environment into a touch and drag smartphone or tablet interface and the disappearance of a physical opponent whose body language forms an integral part of the experience, of my experience anyway; not to mention the centuries-long tradition.
I want the human aspect to it as when I imagine the Crusader challenging Death to a chess match at the beginning of The Seventh Seal, or Alice all those allegorical monarchs in the sequel. And I feel myself more human frustrated over my follies and an opponent there to receive and reflect that emotion like in contact sports.
But an underlying paradox propels me to ruminate over the prospect of playing remotely, just not via the mainstream methods which my prejudice discriminates kodem kal.
Don’t want to find myself in front of a screen for additional hours, however much that inhibits my skill level. So how to play remotely in a way that doesn’t spoil matters? Have we already discussed this? No? Maybe?
I’m unlikely to find an opponent willing to exchange the 1980’s style correspondence chess postal cards as I’ve written about years ago. Even my principles concerning digital matters - all too frequently and bizarrely misconstrued (as far as me not using a computer of any kind) by new acquaintances - recognize certain pragmatic limits.
So I’m not against computers or internet as means to assist remote chess, just not in a way that 1) compels my eyes to intensely consume the digital chessboard and 2) requires a consistently stable connection.
Now I lack such superpowers as mentallizing the entire chessboard layout. I require a physical board. Then it’s a matter of communicating moves by more primitive means as SMS, a phone call (which would assist in projecting those base emotions) or some otherwise non-distracting text protocol on a non-invasive device (property far from universal).
So that’s a work in progress. Though I might have stated the same a few years back.
Questions, comments? Connect.