I'm Terrible at Chess.

Why I Keep Playing

I love chess. It has a deep history, tracing back over a millennia to the games of Chaturanga in India and Shatranj in Persia. It’s elegant. It has drama and scandal and intrigue and a colorful cast of grandmasters. Even with the tremendous fields of machine learning, the game is beautifully analog. There is something deeply human about two people squaring off, facing down the same mathematical explosion of possibilities, bringing order into something chaotic, speculating and guessing and testing and counter-testing. There is sacrifice. There is cost-evaluation and trading. There’s just plain-ole-gut-instinct. It’s blistering fast and painfully slow. I love nearly everything about chess.

However, there’s one problem: I’m terrible at chess.

You need to believe me. I have absolutely no natural talent whatsoever. I am extremely bad, though it’s not for a lack of effort. I was in chess club in middle school. I’ve read books on chess. I’ve watched lectures from Gary Kasparov. I’ve gone down the YouTube rabbit hole, watching countless Magnus Carlson and GothamChess videos. I watched players explain and breakdown positions. There have been several times in my life that I’ve really really really tried to get better at chess. But each time, I start an inevitable losing streak and my efforts fizzle out like a can of seltzer water that’s been open all day. I don’t —in short—have a “knack” for chess.

But here’s the rub.

My chess hero, José Capablanca, who encouragingly said, “You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player”

I think chess is a good thing. And I think that I would be a better person if I played chess. Or, to put in a different way, the Carter-who-I-want-to-be can play chess with skills sufficient to enjoy the game’s finer points (which include, but are not limited to, occasionally winning).