CHESS.
BY A TENTH-RATE PLAYER.
MANY fine things have been said of Chess—of the immense mental power demanded and developed in its votaries; and our young imagination was wont to picture Stanton with his gold and silver "men," and his ebony and-ivory chessboard, the trophy of past victories, locking himself up in his cellar, turning on the gas, having a simple meal passed in to him once a day, and with a ream of blanks, pen, ink and Sarratti by his side, analyzing all possible combinations, and finally coming forth a very Epimenides, worn with a month's toil, but laden with wonderful problems in forty-two moves. But we have never yet seen any just appraisement of the ordinary chess attainment which we meet with in society. Let us try to fill up the gap.
We begin with an aphorism. Chess is a refiner, an educator in the minor morals, and as such deserving of dissemination among "the million." No one can play the game much without having his courtesy and forbearance put to the proof. We are not speaking of strict play: that is practiced only by the magnates of the game. Our statement has reference to the lax habit of those who find in Chess a recreation and a relaxation. Such players are continually laying themselves open to each other, and, though it is most unfair, are ever taking back moves. It is doubly unfair; for such a recalled move often reveals a carefully laid combination, which a blundering opponent may disconcert, and so discourages any effort to reconstruct it. At any rate, it is annoying; since, even though you are not playing with a lady, it may seem selfish to take "the chance advantage" for which you have been actually plotting. Courtesy and popular impression that the game is ruined if the Queen be lost, will lead one player to tell the other that his Queen is en prise, and to permit him to with draw her. But to us the loss of the Queen for anything like an equivalent but adds to the excitement of the game; for though it involves in an ordinary player the final loss of the game, yet the care and combination elicited from the poor struggling player is quite equal to the piece lost. It is in reality a lesson worth the price.
A player often points out to his opponent the dangerous advantages his inattention or incomplete analysis has opened up, and refuses to use them. This exhibits a covert sense of lofty superiority which is to us very galling. The loser, too, often chooses to shelter his defeat under an alleged oversight, or such a complete abstraction over his own absurdly incoherent plans, which were to win the game with a brilliant stroke, that he did not study sufficiently the moves of the other side. Your "if" soothes many a wounded chess-pride. It was such a natural remark, yet so sad in truth, which Maximilian made to his captors when he gave up his sword: "But for this treachery, yonder sun would not have set to-morrow before I should have received your sword instead of giving you mine." The emperor played for the empire with terrible odds against him at the close, yet he covered all his shattered plans and broken hopes with that simple remark. He must have been a chess-player, though we do not remember to have seen this noted among his many brilliant accomplishments. How often we have said, or heard others say, "If you had not slipped up on me so!" But the courtesy that gives warning in such cases is yet a bad thing, and ruins many a promising player, who, if compelled to play strictly, would be wary, and learn to avoid traps, gins, pitfalls, catches and snares which slipshod players drop into.
