Concerning Chess

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the
world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the
most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an
aimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us
say, a promising politician, a rising artist, that you wish to destroy.
Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and unreliable--but teach him,
inoculate him with chess! It is well, perhaps, that the right way of
teaching chess is so little known, that consequently in most cases the
plot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside. Else we should
all be chess-players--there would be none left to do the business of the
world. Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards while the country went
to the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, our
bread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible
mates. The whole world would be disorganised. I can fancy this
abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that the
cabmen would go trying to drive their horses in Knights' moves up and
down Charing Cross Road. And now and again a suicide would come to hand
with the pathetic inscription pinned to his chest: "I checked with my
Queen too soon. I cannot bear the thought of it." There is no remorse
like the remorse of chess.

Only, happily, as we say, chess is taught the wrong way round. People
put out the board before the learner with all the men in battle array,
sixteen a side, with six different kinds of moves, and the poor wretch
is simply crushed and appalled. A lot of things happen, mostly
disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze of
pieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing
that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which is
neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But clearly
this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can
understand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end;
how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for? It is
like starting athletes on a race, and leaving them to find out where the
winning-post is hidden.

Your true teacher of chess, your subtle chess-poisoner, your cunning
Comus who changes men to chess-players, begins quite the other way
round. He will, let us say, give you King, Queen, and Pawn placed out in
careless possible positions. So you master the militant possibilities of
Queen and Pawn without perplexing complications. Then King, Queen, and
Bishop perhaps; King, Queen, and Knight; and so on. It ensures that you
always play a winning game in these happy days of your chess childhood,
and taste the one