|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Online Chess
Place Your Ad Advertise to Single insert:
The Mall
|
Endorphins Perry The PawnPusherBy Rick Kennedy
"Endorphins." I enjoy Grandmaster Robert Byrne's weekly chess column in The New York Times. When I'm at the Club, I like to play over the games he annotates - paper in one hand, pieces in the other, optional coffee with cream at the elbow. On a good day I can go a half hour or so without an interruption. "Chess and brain chemistry." I looked up from the board and snapped my head back quickly. Someone across the table was leaning into and squinting closely at the other side of my newspaper. I lowered the Times and raised my eyebrows. Perry the pawnpusher. Of course. "A science article there on how the brain works," he mumbled, not having the good sense or manners to even blush at being found out. "Interesting," I returned, without any enthusiasm. I sipped at my coffee, and tried to look bored. Maybe he would get the message and go away. Maybe my opponent would offer me Queen odds in our next Club championship game, too. "Says here, 'Scientists have been exploring a group of naturally occurring brain proteins that have potent analgesic properties, and a host of potential medical applications,' " he continued, unabashedly. "'They are called endorphins.' "That explains a lot." Perry said that with heart felt conviction. I had planned on saying it, myself, slathering it with sarcasm. He just wasn't getting it. Lost, that is. In any event, the remark seemed to stop his conversation -- which was timely, since I had left Karpov adrift in a sea of variations, and time trouble approaching, at that. With grandmaster commentary as a beacon to light the way, I watched the past and future World Champion tumble past tactical tidal waves on the board and slip by some shallow strategic shoals, until he made it safely, at long last, to the full point. Byrne's a fine writer, and Karpov's play can be sheer poetry. I let my breath out in a sigh of relief. "That's what they think, isn't it?" asked Perry, scratching his chin. He was still there. "I mean, not about chess. They don't say that, the scientists. About chess. But it could be." He squinted, to focus. "Why people like chess." Poetry? Winning? Escape? What? "Brain chemicals. Gotta be those things that makes chess fun." Perry wrinkled his nose and thought hard. He should have thought first, and then spoken. His suggestion was ludicrous. I grasped my hands behind my back, tilted my head upwards, and mentally reached for a quote from deep in my past. At the old chess studio, all students - before learning the moves, before playing their first game - had been required to memorize and recite a quote from Dr. Tarrasch, the eminent Praeceptor Germaniae. "Listen to this, Perry. It's from a great teacher. 'Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies its peculiar charm.' Follow me so far?" He nodded. I wasn't so sure: his eyes were wide, but his face was blank. "'Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys - if not the greatest one - of human existence.' Note the lack of any reference to brains and proteins, by the way," I added with satisfaction. "'It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke.'" Right about that, Doctor. "'But in chess everyone can, everyone must, be intellectually productive and so can share in this select delight.'" I opened my eyes and was back in the Club. "That is why we enjoy chess, Perry." He shook his head slowly. "You make it sound so dry. Like school. Like work." He grimaced, and then grinned. "Chess is a game, a fun game." As an after thought, he added, "You can take it serious or not, of course." I suddenly remembered a quote from Botvinnik, and I wanted to rap him across the knuckles with it: "Chess is the art which expresses the science of logic." So there, young man! But he was still talking. "So the things that we do each day that tell the brain to make these chemicals - the ones that make us feel better - those things have got to be good for us. The scientists are saying so, right here." He tapped the paper with his folded up wire rims, like some off beat college professor winding up a lecture. "And by my thinking, that has got to include chess." We were getting nowhere. "What do you think of the rest of the story, Perry - like the part with the 'host of potential medical applications'? How does that fit in with your chemical chess theory?" I moved my hands to frame the future in front of me, then peered through the looking glass. "I can see it now, Perry. Someday we can expect to go to the doctor with a headache - or a pain in the neck - and he'll get out his prescription pad and say something like 'take two pawns and call me in the morning'?" I laughed heartily and almost dropped my coffee in my lap. I took a final sip, and choked mid-swallow when I saw him nodding in agreement. "Why not?" he asked. "Works for me. Might work for you, too. Looks like you're getting a little tense there, too." He might have inferred that by how tight I was suddenly grasping the mug. I admit to a fleeting contemplation of how to bounce it off of his forehead. Clueless until then, Perry was suddenly scurrying for the exit. "By the way," he offered over his shoulder before he disappeared, "you left out the rest of the quote from Tarrasch. "It goes 'I have always had a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.' "That Tarrasch, he really knew his endorphins!"
|
The Chessville
The
Take lessons
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
