DOES CHESS DRIVE PEOPLE INSANE OR DO INSANE PEOPLE FLOCK TO CHESS?
The number of atoms in the observable universe is 10 to the power of 80, a substantially large number that is difficult to comprehend within the finitude of our consciousness.
In his now legendary paper on programming a computer for playing chess, the mathematician Claude Shannon in 1950 proposed something astonishing from his research. It was a number hidden within the almost infinite realm of chess, making the observable universe seem small. Packed into 64 squares, 16 pieces for each player, six of them unique, creating a potential 10 to the power of 120 possible chess games.
Now, of course, many of these games are in fact useless and will never be played, but some games have come to shape and influence our world, going beyond the limits of human comprehension. How could this player possibly see six or seven moves into the future and checkmate me with ease? Perhaps all legendary chess players are mad.
Monomania, the abnormal enthusiasm for a single topic, is also a technical term for a type of mental illness that stems from the obsessive preoccupation with one idea, a detrimental manifestation of paranoia.
But to the chess grandmaster monomaniac, it is the heart and soul of their life. They gain unusual pleasures from their study and exhaust their mental capacity to its limits to try, attempting to understand the best possible move in sequence. With so many possibilities in the game of chess, it is easy to see how it attracts many monomaniac minds.
Paul Morphy
To put it in the words of the most accurate chess player ever, Paul Morphy, “The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.”
Born on June 22, 1837, in New Orleans, Morphy was a self-taught player with a sense of the game unseen by any other players at the time. After wiping out the American competition, Morphy then travelled to Europe in 1858, where he beat several chess legends, including Adolf Anderssen, who was considered the best at the time.
During this tour, Morphy engaged in a rather humiliating chess exhibition against Europe’s best, where he played eight opponents all at the same time, blindfolded! Winning six games and drawing two, the brain of Morphy lived for chess, but his soul, as he would soon come to find out, was detrimental.
After the Civil War tore his family apart, Morphy fell into mental derangement, believing that his brother-in-law, who had defrauded him of the legacy of his late father, was out to kill him. His mind was now concentrated on avoiding being murdered, in fear of being poisoned, only eating at the hands of his mother and sister, and rarely leaving the house. Local residents on Canal Street in New Orleans would see Morphy muttering to himself, smiling at his own conceits, and swinging his cane at people who entered his imaginative bubble. Morphy died at the age of 47, found dead in his bathtub after suffering a stroke.
Wilhelm Steinitz
Another interesting case of chess’s reign of pure insanity is Wilhelm Steinitz. Born May 14, 1836, in the Austrian Empire, Steinitz was a brilliant chess prodigy who dropped his study of mathematics for chess. Known as the father of positional chess, he conquered the game— beating Anderssen just as his contemporary Morphy had once done. Steinitz is most famous for being the first ever world chess champion after a victorious finish against Johannes Zukertort in 1886. He was also undefeated in match play for over 30 years, from 1862 to 1894, thanks to his theory of chess, which was decades ahead of everyone else.
Following his defeat by Emanuel Lasker, Steinitz suffered a panic attack and was hospitalized. The following November in 1896, Steinitz played a rematch with Lasker in Moscow, where he suffered yet another defeat. Shortly after, the first-ever world chess champion went insane, even being defeated by the inmates at his new home, the Moscow Sanitarium Mental Hospital. Steinitz’s insanity led him to believe that he moved chess pieces at will by emitting electrical currents, that he moved through God’s will, but thankfully, it was electricity that governed his health, with bolts of electricity from his cereal to keep his mind in shape.
Steinitz spent the rest of his mad days confined to the white walls at Bellevue Hospital, passing away with no money in his pocket on Aug 12, 1900.
Bobby Fischer
Perhaps the most devastating, interesting, and famous case of chess’s drive to insanity is America’s tragic chess genius, Bobby Fischer. Robert James Fischer, born in Chicago, Mar 9, 1943. Fischer began learning chess at the young age of six, swiftly becoming a national master at the age of 12. At the age of 14, he became the youngest player to win the U.S Chess Championship, and just a year later, he became the youngest chess grandmaster in history.
In 1972, Bobby Fischer was selected to represent the U.S in the World Chess Championship, held in Reykjavík, Iceland. The championship being like no other, embodying the Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, who dominated chess. The Soviets lived, and breathed chess, it was the pinnacle of intelligence and wittiness. He knew that he was being used as a political tool, “I have been chosen to teach the Russians some humility.”
After defeating several Soviet chess grand masters in the tournament, coming out victorious, Fischer returned to the U.S as a symbol of American pride. The socially awkward Fischer was a new celebrity, appearing on the biggest talk shows and every major newspaper.
Set to defend his title in 1975 against Anatoly Karpov, Fischer refused, knowing he was being used as an American pawn, ready to be sacrificed and discarded if he lost the highly anticipated rematch. Fame didn’t bring him anything other than isolation, paranoia, and a burning hate for the game he once sat at the top of. He was largely misunderstood, and deeply traumatized as a child. Perhaps nobody truly understood Fischer, he was as mysterious as he was brilliant, and his withdrawal from the public sphere was necessary considering his hostile political beliefs and intense skepticism of his own country’s government affairs.
In his new home of Reykjavík, Iceland, Fischer said in a famous 2002 interview, “I hate chess very much. I don’t need the money, I don’t need it… I hate chess, I hate chess. Because I know what chess is all about. It’s all about memorization. It’s all about pre-arrangement. Creativity is lower down on the list.” The former chess champion and icon of American capitalism during the Cold War died at the age of 64 from kidney failure.
Chess is a very easy game to learn, but nearly impossible to master unless you’re a computer. Yet still, no human has ever been able to defeat the almighty computer. Chess requires intense mental focus, strategy, theory, and a special type of logical deduction and prediction that many sane people wouldn’t dare to attempt.
Chess has made many grandmasters go insane, considering the game’s solitary nature, and its required mental capacity, it isn’t hard to see why many grandmasters’ thoughts are filled with the game of chess. Thinking of better possible moves from games they played years ago is not healthy for the conscious. Despite the insanity that occurs at the highest level of chess, beginner-level chess is a great way to showcase innate brilliance, logic, strategy, and your own theories displayed on the 64-square board of almost infinite potential. Just make sure to avoid pursuing a high rank if you want to keep your sanity and soul intact.
