The game of chess compared to social truths
Although board games may appear to be merely a means of recreation and a trivial factor of American culture, they actually represent much more. One specific game worthy of study is chess, which serves a much more fundamental purpose than that for which it is generally given credit. Chess not only has historically formed one of the chief means employed by societies to draw its collective bonds closer, but it also conveys many truths of politics and gamesmanship, while shining a light on economic solutions as well as foreign relations. In Making Your Move: The Educational Significance of the American Board Game, 1832 to 1904, by David Wallace Adams and Victor Edmonds, there is given a preliminary explanation of how board games, in a general sense, have the capability of bringing to the surface social mores. One such more demonstrated in the game of chess involves traditional protestant values such as "hard work, piety, frugality, and perseverance, then success was just around the corner" (Adams and Edmonds 363). Chess, unlike many games, stresses such qualities as perseverance and frugality. It is not essentially a game won with bold, romantic moves in the opening, but rather with careful patience in the end game. Chess involve
s calculation and hard work, but these must be courted by a sense of inherent piety and understanding. If a player gains a reputation for exchanging queens in a game, an especially weakening example of such an equilibrium, this can certainly affect a person's reputation, which can have dramatic effects on the opponent's strategy. Banking on a player to play consistently on reputation is essentially incorporating a large margin of chance into an equation which can operate more efficiently without such an incorporation. However, according to Adams and Edmonds, it is a natural human tendency to incorporate chance because society, as a whole, will strive in all ways to find ways to ameliorate positioning, and chess players are not exempt from such a desire. "Beneath the surface of optimism one finds that a steady undertone of desperation resounded beneath the scattered cries of lucky triumph" (Adams and Edmonds 366). Despite the fact that chess need not heed to the improvision of chance and luck, these qualities are likely the ones people fallaciously accredit for their successes ! On a broader basis, chess has also served the functional purpose of providing an arena for various nations to compete in quasi-battle rather than in actuality. Each year, the World Chess Federation along with the Unites States Chess Federation, sponsors tournaments open to all ethnic backgrounds and origins. Competition is a battle of the mind--a battle of wits--as opposed to the horrors of war. Players realize that it is prudent, careful tactics that win the game rather than bold moves of brutality and ignorance. General Omar Bradley even noted once that war should be thought of as a chess game. Much like in the intricate process of volleying to get ahead in American society, chess can not be won in the opening, but it can be lost
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Approximate Word count = 1232
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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