Trifecta

Hello, World!

Chess is war, plain and simple. There’s no such thing as peaceful coexistence, no treaties, no ceasefires, no mercy. One army is going to be annihilated, better make sure it’s not yours. Don’t want to fight? Then step the fuck away from the board. Woah! Okay, maybe that’s a little too intense. It is just a game, after all. It’s supposed to be fun! But unlike most other games, “chance” and “luck” don’t apply. It’s a game of pure information. You can see every possible move and every possible plan that your opponent has available to him, and he can see everything available to you. There are no tricks, there are no lies. As Emanuel Lasker, one of the greatest to ever play put it, “On the chessboard lies and hypocrisy do not survive long.” You put your best idea down on the board and your opponent tries his best to refute it with an idea of his own. The person with the better idea wins. Every time.

So what am I going to talk about for 16 weeks? Well, I’m certainly not going to explain the rules of chess. I’m not going to talk about the theory behind certain openings or review any famous games. I’m not going to fill this blog with notation of games I’ve played (although it is a tempting way to fulfill word count requirements). I’m not going to bore you with in-depth analyses of some of my better games. Instead I just want to talk about chess. Anything and everything chess-related. The game has been around for 1500 years, so there’s plenty to talk about. I want to cover a little bit of its (d)evolution from a gentleman’s game into a “nerd sport”. You’ll see how the game was, for a short  time, another front of the Cold War, with the United States and the Soviets battling it out to demonstrate their superiority. I’ll probably touch on the influence that technology and constantly calculating computers have had on the Royal Game and how they’re shaping its future, for better or worse. We’ll cover one of my absolute favorite topics in chess, cheating, and we can see some of the more interesting (and peculiar) instances that have occurred.  I’ll show you some of the giant egos that chess has created, and we can all laugh sadistically when we watch those egos get crushed.  We’ll certainly take a look at the life of Bobby Fischer, one of the craziest (and greatest, in that order) players who ever graced the board. But most of all, I want to try to figure out what it is about the game that polarizes so strongly. What it is that captivates so many and causes so many more to absolutely despise the game. Love chess? Stick around. Hate it? Maybe I can change your mind. Either way, I’ll try to keep it interesting. Oh, and I might accidentally cover some of the things I promised not to talk about, but as Fischer so eloquently put it, “those rules are for the Communist cheaters, not for me.”

Dana’s Blog

Dana Mackenzie is a chess player (a National Master, to be specific). His blog screams chess, but not in the way that most chess blogs do. Yes, he blogs about major professional tournaments and speculates about the results. Yes, he analyzes individual games and explains them move by move. And yes, chess notation runs rampant throughout his blog. But Dana has a sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude when it comes to chess. The sidebar of his blog reads, “there will be mess-ups; that’s part of the game,” a sentiment with which anyone who has played chess at all is well acquainted. He takes chess seriously, that’s for sure. Anyone who has achieved the ranking of a National Master has to be serious about the game. But Dana’s love for the game comes through in his blogging more than any serious aspirations about chess improvement. Posts like “You’ve got Rybka, I’ve got Max” (http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?p=2050), in which he details his cat’s ability to play novel openings (complete with a picture of his cat and the caption “Foolish human! You cannot match wits with the Chess Cat!”) show his light-hearted, goofball nature. This is a chess blog that I actually enjoy reading. His wit and self-deprecating humor, combined with his expertise and insightful analysis make for a thoroughly rewarding read.

Dana has been blogging about chess nonstop for nearly six years. He manages to post incredibly regularly, averaging 6 or 7 posts a month, and frequently breaking into double digits. Granted, not all posts are strictly chess related (see: “Cute Kitten Videos 2” (http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?p=1977) and “Opportunity to Help Frogs” (http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?p=1235)), but for the most part he sticks to chess.  For a chess blog, Dana’s received a respectable following. After five years, he got his 100,000th visitor about a year ago in May 2012. Always self-deprecating, he was quick to point out that his wife’s blog, which started around the same time, received its 700,000th visitor right before he broke into six figures. But hey, 100,000 visitors to a chess blog is pretty darn impressive. Dana’s done pretty well getting his blog out there, too. Type in “chess blog” to Google and he’s the fourth blog in the search results. Alexa.com shows that 118 other websites link to his blog. He could probably throw some ads on the site and make a modest little sum of money. Buy some dinners, pay for a tournament or two, at least pay for the cost of hosting the site; but no, Dana refuses to put ads on his blog. Most chess bloggers line their sites with ads for the latest chess books, software, DVDs, training courses...anything that’ll put some change in their pockets (I’m looking at you, Polgar sisters), but Dana doesn’t blog for money, he blogs because he clearly just loves chess, and loves talking about chess.

And that’s what I want to do with my blog. I want to talk about everything I love about chess, from the style of the pieces, to the funny way the knight moves, to the thrill of realizing you’ve trapped someone’s queen. I want to complain about the parts of chess that I hate: quick draws, blunders, and opening preparation (especially the Ruy Lopez). But I also want to offer readers something to learn from my blog. I was afraid to even consider analyzing games before, due to the typically dry nature of such a post. But Dana has shown me that it’s possible to make an analysis something that’s actually fun to read. He turns the analysis into a narrative, delving into the psyche of the players and making humorous comparisons with pop culture in posts like “Chess Meets Zombie Apocalypse” (http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?p=2019). Dana’s a great blogger, and a pretty darn good chess player, too. His blog is consistently engaging and definitely worth following.

Dana’s Voice

Even in the short personal profile on his blog (http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?page_id=2), Dana’s voice jumps off the page. He’s a humble man with a goofy sense of humor. He lists his accomplishments and qualifications related to chess (National Master, two-time state champion, chess lecturer) and then immediately grounds himself, saying,

Don’t let all of that stuff impress you, though. Deep down inside, I’m just an ordinary player. I don’t play chess for money or glory, just for the love of the game.

Dana realizes he’s very accomplished in chess, and knows that that NM-title next to his name can be intimidating. So he goes out of his way to humble himself and make the reader feel comfortable. Right in his profile page, Dana sets up the blog to be almost conversation-like, just a chat between friends about the game of chess.

He continues his profile by talking about his “real life” career. He puts “real life” in quotation marks almost as a joke for other chess players. Any serious chess player (as Dana certainly is) knows the depths that a passion (read: addiction) for chess can reach. Chess seeps into your brain and takes hold. You think about positions in the shower, staring off and trying to figure out combinations and variations. You find yourself trailing off in conversations as an idea about a game you just played pops into your head. You have dreams (and nightmares) about chess. Chess is never far from the front of your mind, and Dana acknowledges this reality when he refers to “real life”.

Dana’s excitement for chess is uncontainable, and his blog certainly reflects it. In a tournament in October of 2012, Dana won a particularly hard-fought game with a beautiful combination, and his excitement is abundantly clear in his post about the victory, entitled “Parting With the Lady” (http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?p=1799). Dana starts the post with “What a crazy day at the Western States Open!” That opening hook immediately gives you a sense of his excitement, as if he couldn’t wait to write about the events of that day. Always humble, he explains that in his game, “[his opponent] played a beautiful piece sacrifice against me and had me crushed in probably twenty possible ways.” He goes on to set up the critical position of the game, in which he spots a particularly lethal queen sacrifice that ends up winning him the game. “I was higher than a kite after playing this combination!” I found this expression to be particularly well-suited to Dana’s personality. It does a great job of expressing his excitement while at the same time being just corny enough to match the delightfully nerdy picture of himself that he has on his blog. It shows his love for the game, and the satisfaction that he gets from it. His pride is nearly overflowing as he says that, “this game will absolutely, for sure, be a Chess Lecture.” That repetition of “absolutely, for sure” shows the extreme pride towards the game he played. He just played a fantastic combination, and he knows it. He’s so proud, in fact, that he titles the post “Parting with the Lady”, in reference to his brilliant queen sacrifice. But Dana doesn’t let his pride overwhelm him. He reminds himself that he probably shouldn’t have won by referring to the game as a “sensational swindle.” In that one beautifully alliterated phrase, Dana acknowledges his excellent combination and his extraordinary luck of being able to stay in the game long enough to find it. Dana is able to create a very friendly, humble voice in his blog that just makes you want to keep reading, to keep the conversation going.