A must read for all chess lovers and for those who used to play in their youth . . . . My parents played because, well, what else was there to do when you have a new baby and don't have much money.
They taught me young and eventually I figured out how to win. My dad even had a few chess books. At middle school I taught most of the boys in the free period at the end of the school day how to play. I thought I was good. I thought I was the thing. Then I went to a USCF round robin in north Jersey. I found that I was a "D" player and I pretty much stayed a D player, even though I beat almost everyone I played at school. Then I met my (ex)husband. I said I was good. Then I learned what good was. He tried to teach me, but I didn't put the time in needed to become a better player. Almost thirty years have passed, our grown kids play (one beats me), he is Master, and me . . . I read about chess history. This book was a walk down memory lane and a look at an excellent game of chess. ( )

Shenk, David. The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated our Understanding of War, Art, Science, and the Human Brain. Doubleday, 2006.
Game addiction is a hot subject these days, whether it is poker, fantasy sports, or the computer game of your choice. In The Immortal Game, David Shenk makes a good case that chess was the first truly addictive game with worldwide impact. He opens with a story about the painter Marcel Duchamp, who at the peak of his career gave up painting for chess. On his honeymoon he so infuriated his bride by spending his time studying chess problems that she glued the pieces to the board and divorced him weeks later. Chess, more than any other game, has become a meme in almost every aspect of culture. Chess pieces adorn the coats of arms of Medieval European families. Chess became the focus of a controversy over representational art in Islamic culture. Its effect on the mind, for good or ill, has long been a matter of debate. Benjamin Franklin, the best chess player among our founding fathers, said, “We learn by chess,” and the game is frequently used as a teaching tool. Its addictive properties have also been a matter of concern: paranoia and schizophrenia seem to occur rather frequently among chess masters. One researcher has said that chess is the “fruit fly” for experiments in human cognition and machine learning. The book has some chess notation, but a reader who doesn’t play can ignore it. Informative. 4 stars. ( )

At this point in my life, I'm comfortable with the idea that I'll be a patzer forever. I like chess a lot, but the idea of sitting down with a book of openings and studying it seriously, like it was for a test, somehow makes the game seem too much like work, even though it's impossible to become even a mediocre player without giving chess some real thought. This attitude probably says something about how I view games as a whole, and in fact maybe even about my view on life in general, and Shenk, who's descended from marginally famous 19th century master Samuel Rosenthal, would agree whole-heartedly that your attitude towards chess says a lot about you. Chess metaphors are nearly ubiquitous in many fields of life, and no other game has captured the enthusiasm as well as the imagination of people.

In fact, that's a constant theme of the book, which traces the history of chess as well as its role as a sort of mirror for many literary, artistic, or cultural movements. The title is a reference to one of the most famous chess games in history, which film buffs will recognize from its appearance in Blade Runner. Shenk describes the players' moves and strategies in short chunks of a few moves at a time, interweaving episodes from the development of the game with broader changes in society. Some of Shenk's connections are interesting, others seem like stretches; it's one thing to conjecture that a possible source of the transformation of the limited Minister piece into the modern Queen piece was the rise of powerful female monarchs like Isabella, and another to assert a connection between prodigy François-André Danican Philidor's novel use of pawn structure to John Locke's theories of natural rights. Yet chess has been a favorite pastime of so many influential people that he can write that the development of the Hypermodern style was "closely connected to the early twentieth-century intellectual ferment that spawned the fiction of Joyce, Proust, and Kafka, the theater of Brecht and Pirandello, the fabulist tales of Jorge Luis Borges, the slapstick of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, the experimental music of John Cage, and the conceptual art of Marcel Duchamp" and not be exaggerating.

Interspersed with funny examples of chess in history, like Benjamin Franklin's chess diplomacy in London trying to prevent the Revolutionary War, are a few mini-biographies of some expected greats (I personally will never cease being fascinated with Bobby Fischer's saddening descent into ludicrous anti-Semitism), and also some really interesting stories I had never heard before. When discussing the nature-nurture question of whether chess genius can be taught or is merely an inborn endowment, Shenk relates the story of Laszlo Polgar:

"Perhaps the best-known example of mentored genius comes from Budapest, Hungary. There, in the late 1960s, psychologist Laszlo Polgar embarked on an unusual experiment in order to prove that any healthy baby can be nurtured into a genius: he publicly declared that he would do this with his own children, who were not yet born. He and his wife forged a plan to school their children at home and focus them intensely on a few favorite disciplines - among them chess. From a very early age, the three Polgar daughters, Zsuzsa, Zsófia, and Judit, studied chess for an average of eight to ten hours every day - perhaps a total of some 20,000 hours from age eight to eighteen.

Lo and behold, they all became chess "geniuses." In 1991, at age twenty-one, Zsuzsa (who later Westernized her name to Susan) became the first woman in history to earn a grandmaster title through qualifying tournaments. The second child, Zsófia, also became a world-class player. Judit, the youngest, became at age fifteen the youngest grandmaster in history (a record previously held by Bobby Fischer), and was considered a strong candidate to eventually become world chess champion."

That's fascinating. The later parts of the book concentrate on the relationship between chess programs and AI. From Alan Turing onwards, many of the most prominent AI researchers have used the problem of chess to focus on different aspects of artificial intelligence, and many now-fundamental techniques such as alpha-beta pruning were given test runs in chess programs. Shenk discusses the question of what exactly Deep Blue's victory over Kasparov means in terms of "true" AI - given the rise in Freestyle competition, which he doesn't mention, I personally don't see that the rise of computers means people are obsolete at all - but it's an interesting question to ponder. Games like checkers have been definitely solved to where AIs can't lose, but no one would argue that AI success in one domain means that it's "smarter" than people. That will take a lot more sophistication on a computer's part, and I don't expect there to be a bright line. Chess, as Shenk movingly and convincingly shows in this book, may be an excellent metaphor for all kinds of things, but it is also our tool, as are the computers that play it, even if our attitude towards it reveals more about us than we might like. Here's the second half of Borges' poem The Game of Chess:

"Slight king, oblique bishop, and a queen
Blood-lusting; upright tower, crafty pawn--
Over the black and the white of their path
They foray and deliver armed battle.

They do not know it is the artful hand
Of the player that rules their fate,
They do not know that an adamant rigor
Subdues their free will and their span.

But the player likewise is a prisoner
(The maxim is Omar's) on another board
Of dead-black nights and of white days.

God moves the player and he, the piece.
What god behind God originates the scheme
Of dust and time and dream and agony?" ( )

It's not often that I take a chance on a book, despite tepid (at best) reviews, but this one was exactly the book I wanted. Perhaps it's because I'm an chess neophyte who tires easily with dry history and leans more towards the artistic bent of life than the merely formulaic, but overall this book is as satisfying a perspective of the game of the chess as I could hope for.

First off, dispense with the sub-titular segment "A History of Chess." Yes, it is a history of chess; it makes no qualms about being the history of chess--in fact, it makes clear the contested origins and development of the game--but it should not be approached as a history of chess in the rigorous academic sense. It should rather be approached as a journalist's fascination with the game, fueled by his famous chess master ancestor. I believe this fact is what divides the satisfaction from a chess aficionado and someone who is interested in a guided tour of a heavily anecdotal celebration of the game and some of its more notable players and enthusiasts. In the book, the author makes the point that he never really had the urge to become a great chess player, but he did have the drive to become a great chess writer.

The structure of the book is the selling point for me. Between the 12 chapters of quintessential journalistic volubility, we get a step-by-step breakdown and commentary of the so-called "immortal game," which took place in London in 1851. Having never heard of this game before (remember, I'm a novice at best), these interpolated developments kept the main text of the book fresh and the unfolding game intriguing. Delaying the game like this also set up the final move for maximal effect. I leaned back in my chair with a grin, saying, "Ahhhh!"

I also must say that I'm pleased the text didn't just turn into a fanboy homage to Bobby Fischer. Of course, Fischer has his time on the stage--how could he not?--but Marcel Duchamp shows up perhaps more than anyone else. It seems David Shenk made the right move (thank you, thank you) in leaving it to Frank Brady to offer the wanting public some Fischer fodder.

If you're an amateur chess player, looking to know a little more about the game you're learning, this is it. If you don't know anything about chess and are looking for a starting point, this is definitely the book (it even includes the rules of the game in the appendix). If you simply like anecdotal histories that cull quotes and interesting tableaux from famous figures, this is it. Entertaining, engaging, inspiring. having read the coda and written this review, I'm ready to play some chess! ( )

I read this book upon a friend's insistence, and was happy I did. The book details the history of chess quite finely, and does it through the lens of a much-heralded match in the game's storied past. There were two bits of information I found illuminating: 1) The queen increased her power via new moves in response to historical female figures gaining and exertion of power, 2) the "en passant" move, which I had not previously known. While reading the book, I played some chess games online and downloaded an app, and summarily got my keister whupped. I still enjoy chess, but mastery is far off. I'll continue my quest for domination in the Scrabble realm. ( )