Long live classical chess

Low participation in this season’s (2023) Club Championship of my local chess club in Norway has raised concerns on how to address the club's financial issues as well as future recruitment, which has consequences for the former, with a reduction in thinking time from currently 90+30 to 60+30 being suggested as a solution.

What arguments are put forward in support of this reduction in thinking time?

Most urgent seems to be the fear of falling behind the zeitgeist, the social development and that we have to adapt to the times we live in, because today everything goes so much faster than before, where elite players as well increasingly participate in rapid tournaments, eventually also with not insignificant cash prizes. Countless are the analogies, metaphors and parallels between ‘chess and life’, but how far should they be stretched?

Question: Is the statement that chess must follow the spirit of the times and social development a premise in an argument not yet made or the conclusion of an argument not yet made?

Beyond the parish pump of chess, unclear is why everything has to go so fast, where the chase after ever shorter chess games in many ways reflects the rest of society's development, where some take interest in an ever higher pace, in fact, to such an extent that one is hardly present in one's own life, not to mention others’. Has the ‘time crunch’ or ‘time squeeze’ finally caught up with chess? Who initiate(s) the bustle in the first instance? Who is the unmoved mover, in the words of Aristotle? What, then, is the aim of this eternal rush? Where to? What is the goal? The plan? Does the hustle and bustle serve a higher purpose?

Paradoxically, man as a species, as is well known, is going nowhere, but rather than making the best of our allotted time, we try to live our lives to the end as soon as possible!? Obviously, who comes first wins, but what was the prize again? In philosophy, on the other hand, the winner comes in last (Wittgenstein (1889-1951)).

The fact that some (nobody mentioned, nobody forgotten!) in the so-called world elite have problems with classical chess should not be someone else's problem? Are we about to make someone else's problem with classical chess our own? In the world of politics, people often talk about countries ‘natural to compare with’ but it is easy to forget that ‘natural’ and ‘right’ are not synonyms. Something being ‘natural’ only means the brain initiates an impulse, inducement or prompting, without requiring any justification, as distinct from whether something is ‘right.’

On what grounds do others take over, or ‘inherit’, elite players’ problems with classical chess?

Amid the hustle and bustle, aren’t we running the risk of losing sight of chess itself, and, not least, ourselves? That the only thing left is the adrenaline rush?

If adrenaline is the most important, perhaps we should as ourselves why we play chess in the first place: self-assertion? Ego-pampering? To gain understanding and insight (learning), create something or solve mysteries, find joy in fellowship during games as well as in analysis, the humor lurking in the surprises, the pride of getting in a preparation? What is left if everything is reduced to ‘I, me, myself and my adrenaline rush’? What about chess as sport, art and science? Won’t chess lose its artistic and scientific aspects if all that matters is adrenaline?

Watch Nakamura and Caruana blitzing in Ferguson, Missouri

And here's a game of really fast bullet chess

Compare that to standard tournament games (Grenke Chess 2019, 5h 40min long) 

Isn't it more satisfying to beat a stronger opponent in classical than rapid chess, because it requires more and because the element of luck plays a much smaller part, although luck even in classical chess cannot be entirely ruled out?

In his epistemology and theory of knowledge, Plato emphasised that ‘only what is lasting, is worth pursuing’, or, in other words, not fleeting sensory impressions but insight into the ideas (the non-physical, timeless, absolute and unchangeable essences of which all things are imitations), and which applies to the question of happiness, or ‘the good life’, as well (Gr. eudaimonia, ‘human flourishing’/‘good spirit’).

Today, happiness, in contrast to eudaimonia, (which stood for a well-balanced soul thought to consist of desires and will and controlled by reason, making it possible to take a blow without having to muster all one’s strength), is often construed in terms of monosyllabic words: ‘sex, drugs & rock 'n roll’, where emotions fluctuate from moment to moment; from top to bottom in no time. In the same vein, we could ask if increasingly shorter games are the way to nirvana?

One could only imagine the chase after ever shorter chess games transferred to other areas, say philosophy or music: ‘Squeeze in as many notes as possible per second, irrespective of quality.’ Did anyone say music experience!? (The chess equivalence would probably be ‘bullet’ (1-minute games)). Some may still remember the American blues musician B. B. King's (1925-2015) supreme mastery over the single note? Why would chess be any exception?

What about chess heritage? Are rapid games the ones that spring to mind when we remember players and tournaments, places visited, where we went out, what we talked about? What we want to leave to future generations? And what about the relationship between time spent on a move and the quality of the move? (A fixed relationship may not be present, but experience testifies to a certain connection nonetheless). Will rapid games be replayed in, say, 50-200 years?

If adrenaline is the most important goal, why not cut the chess altogether and keep the clock only with the thinking time 0+1, so we get the rush we are looking for and can get back home as soon as possible? It's not the chess we are looking for anyway, is it? Some express cautious optimism that 60 + 30 is a step towards even faster chess games, but why stop there?

From a philosophical point of view, the very notion of progress and development—an idea that gained momentum with the British philosopher of science Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) whose ‘knowledge is power’ (scientia potentia est) was about controlling nature to improve the lot of people—has come under increasingly strong pressure where more and more people doubt whether the ‘development’ is ‘moving forward.’ In what sense are increasingly shorter games thought to be progress? An improvement? Compared to what? To whom?

The question of reduced thinking time is, perhaps, ultimately a question of value and personal preferences, but the argument can easily be developed: The objection to increasingly shorter thinking time is neither about having enough time to find ‘the best move’, nor that ‘chess should live in a bubble’, but about the transcendence of chess, a philosophical, and to many perhaps a foreign, concept.

‘Transcendence’ means ‘surpassing’, ‘the state of being beyond normal perception’, and just as with classical literature or classical music, there is a timeless quality to chess games, classic, as well as generally good games, that does not make them attached to one place, but still relevant beyond the time in which they were produced, and not linked to the concrete and up-to-date ‘here and now.’

The fact that we keep returning to the classics makes them, in a sense, ahistorical: We play through classical games, because we can still learn from them; we read classical literature, to relive past experiences; we listen to music ‘written a long time ago’, because it still evokes feelings and moods. And the list easily expands: philosophers still debate issues formulated by Plato.

Regrettably, chess is relentlessly physically demanding where the younger guard inexorably pushes the older one aside, But this may to some extent be remedied by staying in shape. Worse is that the pursuit of ever shorter games is perhaps symptomatic of an unfortunate development seen in other areas as well: The ability to pay attention, resist or persevere seems to be seriously weakened, whether we are talking about defensive ability or reading and arithmetic skills (the PISA survey 2022 (Norwegian scores) is anything but uplifting) where the key word is something as old-fashioned and outdated as effort over time. Fancy technology is of little help without the ability to stick with it or put in the necessary effort.

Not knowing any better, one could almost get the impression that there are no alternatives, that no one has free will and that we are not the subject of our own actions: if society moves at a breakneck pace, everything else must also move at a breakneck pace. It cannot do otherwise.

Isn't it paradoxical that a pensive game like chess is often played as quickly as possible? What doesn't that say about our times? In many ways, the fascination with rapid chess is reminiscent of mass tourism: We don't stop to linger, to dwell, but to see for the sake of seeing: if it is Tuesday, it’s Paris, France. It's called ‘development’ but aren't we rather talking about liquidation? Have we become so busy that we're about to liquidate ourselves?

Why not let chess be a haven from all the hustle and bustle otherwise surrounding us? Or is the goal also to suffer a heart attack (preferably two!) during the games, because otherwise we wouldn’t ‘keep up with the times’?

Previous articles by Rune Vik-Hansen

• Mind Games: Who is Doing the Playing?
• Pattern Recognition — Fact or Fiction?
• Chess and Luck
• Is Chess a Sport?