THE INTELLECTUAL QUALIFICATIONS FOR CHESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 4482, 25 March 1876, Page 3

THE INTELLECTUAL QUALIFICATIONS FOR CHESS.

Tke Spectator/has/an article. .on the above subject,-from which we make the-following extracts :— i i A great Chess-player died- the other day,; who was said to have injured his brain byplaying a-considerable number of games at once blindfold, and though we believe the •statement as : to the eause of death was'nn-j true, certainly it'is'"difficult to imagine a more wonderful intellectual feat than that of playing a game of chess at all; without the board, much less seven or games, at once. There can be no doubt that aman who could do this must be a man with very singular powers of vivid; concep-j tion of the positions on a chess-board ; and; the fact that almost all the greatest players can do this, shows very distinctly what the chief faculty which makes a great chess-; player really is,—namely, an nnusal capacity for so conceiving space and the various divisions of space, and the relative position of the objects situated in it, as to realise' completely how the change of any one object alters the reciprocal relations of all, without

verifying this by actual eyesight. In ordinary chess-playing, this power has reference solely to the future, and the player is assisted by the board before his eyes in conceiving what the successive changes are which will be produced by particular moves and the moves to which they should lead. In' fact, in ordinary play, all you have to do is to imagine distinctly beforehand for one, or two, or three, or four moves, according to your capacity,? the proper result of the change of position you are about to make. „ What the really great players can do is to keep so strong an imaginative hold of all the sixty-four squares of tht board and the various pieces distributed over them, that they do not need the visible register of what has taken place before their eyes, stncs they see in their , "mind's eye" not less distinctly how the ! pieces- actually stand, and much more distinctly what effect a slight change would produce, than the ordinary payer can see this by the help of his retina, and the board and the pieces. Unquestionably, then, it is the chief note of a good chess-player to be able to construct the effect of a various changes of place in his own mind, and withrut the help of a chess-board to work them out. A very strong player "by letter" may be avery feeble playerwhenheismatched against a present antagonist, because, with plenty of time for every move, he can work out the effects of each suggestion without putting any strain on his imagination. But in playing with a present antagonist, this is impossible ; he must foresee, or fail to see altogether; and no man can forsee well "without being able to construct the relative positions of the pieces fully in his

imagination, and to perceive all the moves wliich it is open to him and to his antagonist to make. That which makes a good blayer, therefote, is, in th emain at least, the same faculty which enables him to play, partly or wholly, without a board. With sufficient time allowed, and a board on which to work out all his conceptions, it is certain that a very wrak but industrious player might appear the equal of a very brilliant one, though, of course, he would take about ten times the trouble about his moves that his adversary would take. For even a great chess-plaper, then, hardly any great capacity is. requisite, except what is implied in the power to follow the game distinctly in imagination. jtfupjDose a man who could c-rry the board in his imagination, and distinctly vary the positions of the pieces in his imtion, so as to describe precisely the visib'e results of any change, and you suppose a great chess-player. There is no greater delusion than the . notion that chess is a game which calls the reasoning powers strongly into play. It is a strain not on the powers of reasoning, but on the power of distinctly imagining space: To plan an ambush, at chess is not to catch your opponent in a spot where your good sense tells yoiv tha* - I —r— ~ - ouw-tv-uiscern a move which he, from imperfect powers of constructing the game, is likely to make, without foreseeing the disastrous character of its consequences. There is no calculation of probabilities in chess, unless you speculate, which is always bad blay, on the weakness of your opponent, and make a move the, effect of which ought to be injurious to you, but by which, if he misses the right reply to it, you will gain a great advantage. In the true play there is no discipline of judgment at all, and no more that is implied in assuming that if your opponent sees an advantage he will ,take it, and that you can't have a piece at two places at the same time. These, no doubt, are, strictly speaking, acts of reasoning, but they are very simple ones, of which every man not an idiot is capable. The whole charm and mystery of the game lie not in the least in tho exercise of the understanding, but in the exercise of the space-imagination,—a faculty, no doubt, useful in way, but only one of the elements in true strategy. On the hand the power of a really great chess-player is in relation to a particular class of imaginative efforts far beyond the power on even very great Generals. On the other hand, in fifty other exercises of imaginative power, all needful for a good strategist, the great chessplayer may be so cleficieut that he would be a non-entity instead of a great General at the head of an army. There is a real analogy between the two kinds of powers, only it goes a very little way. Thus, a bad chessplayer will often fail to see that he is using a diece for two distinct purposes which can only be really used for one of them, —for instance, that he is using a pawn which is needed to cover his king from oheck to protect another piece, though in case the other piece were taken, the pawn could not be moved away from its actual position to revenge the loss : and a bad strategist might make a corresponding mistake and suffer for it. But the quickest of eye which would at once the blunder in such a double use of a military force for two distinct purposes, both of them essential to safety, yet not capable with each other would go a very little way indeed towards making a good stracegist. For this notion, then, that there is really a kind of strategy in Chess, there is a sound basis. But there is no such excuse for the vague popular notion that great powers of chess-playing imply the sort of craft necessary for statesmanship. ; As a matter of fact, the truly wonderful chess-players of the world have very seldom been remarkable for anything else. We thing we have shown that they ought to have v had at least the imaginative qualities of good geometricians, but we are not aware that they often have made great geometricians, and probably they would not have been likely to do so without unusual reasoning powers as well, which chess docs not either require or educate. Certainly, while there are plenty of instances of great politicians and great sratesmcn delighting in deep gambling, we cannot recall one who was known as a first-rate chess-blayer. Probably the highest chess imagination which the world ever L.uew would be compatible, and has been compatible, we takei!;, with extreme imbecility, even of the imaginative kind, in dealing with the affairs of life or the characters of men. ADd as for the power required to play a good game of chess, with ample time for each move, and full leisure to work out its effect on a board, it really is not remarkable at all. The only remarkable power displayed on chess is the power of anticipating or imagining the exact state of the board without seeing it; and that can only be properly displayed in blaying with a present adversary, and not playing very slowly either.