They Loved Chess Too!
- Apr 8
- 7 min read
Howdy! It’s The Chess Friends!
One beauty of chess is that you don’t have to be a serious chess player with a serious chess goal to play the game. Another beauty of chess is that it presents you with chances: chances to win or to learn, chances to relax or to engage your mind, chances to socialize or to enjoy a quiet moment, or chances to make some friends. It is up to you to take up those chances and use them.
Today, we will be talking about geniuses in their respective fields, who recognized the benefits of chess and took time from their busy schedules to play some games!
Who are those guys? Peshka will give you a hint:
Do you recognize them all? Let’s hear from The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, and The Legend Vivaan about each of these men, myths, and legends!
Benjamins are the BEST!
by The Man Benji
Hi Friends! Today I will talk about an American chess player. Before there were Hikaru Nakamura and Bobby Fischer, and even before there were Frank Marshall and Paul Morphy, back in the 1700s, there was another American legend who played chess! His name was Benjamin Franklin. What a great name!
Benjamin Franklin doesn’t need an introduction. We know him as one of the Founding Fathers of the US. He drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence! He established the U.S. Postal Service, and the first library and public hospital! We also know him as a scientist and an inventor! He invented bifocals and the lightning rod, and constructed the extension arm for getting that out-of-reach book from the top shelf. He was super smart and way ahead of his time, and, as many such people, he liked chess.
Benjamin Franklin likely started playing chess around 1732, when he was about 25. He liked playing in the evenings, and was so into the game, he played hours on end, stopping only when his candles went out! Oh boy, imagine Benjamin Franklin’s chess.com account: he would have a blitz party all night!
Though none of his games were recorded, we have a painting of him playing against Lady Howe in London.
Yes, that’s right! He used chess in his diplomatic endeavors! Later, when he served as a US Ambassador to France, he played against the Mechanical Turk (read about the Mechanical Turk in our early blog here)!
While playing chess, being the philosopher he was, Benjamin pondered the benefits of the game, and he published his thoughts in a 1786 essay “The Morals of Chess,” which he dedicated to his friend Mme. Brillion, for her kind way of playing, where she would point out if her opponent made a mistake and let them take their move back.
The Morals of Chess was one of the first chess writing appearing from an American, and some even consider Benjamin Franklin as the Founding Father of American Chess literature!
In the introduction to his essay, Benjamin argues that in chess, whether you win or lose, you always gain something. “For life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effects of prudence or the want of it.”
Benjamin talks about four specific traits that chess helps to nurture in those who play:
1) Foresight, which means predicting future’s likely outcomes based on the present situation.
2) Circumspection, which is basically thinking before you act, or what physiologists now call inhibitory control (read about it in our article here). But on the chess board, circumspection is even deeper: “the relations of the several pieces and situations, the dangers they are respectively exposed to, the several possibilities of their aiding each other; the probabilities that the adversary may make this or that move, and attack this or the other piece; and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke, or turn its consequences against him.”
3) Caution, or taking your time to think through ideas. He wrote that if you’re not prudent enough and you make a mistake, you have to accept the consequences.
4) Perseverance and “hoping for a favorable change”:
“The game is so full of events, there is such a variety of turns in it, the fortune of it is so subject to sudden vicissitudes, […] one is encouraged to continue the contest to the last, in hopes of victory by our own skill, or, at least, of giving a stale mate, by the negligence of our adversary.”
Between us, Benjamins, there is a fifth characteristic I would add to this list: Courage. Benjamin Franklin even wrote this in his journal, only about another game: “Courage is almost as requisite for the good conduct of the game.” The same can be applied to chess. We all need the courage to play on and to make risky decisions, and the courage to face the unknown and your fears.
Benjamin also wrote in his essay that chess isn’t just about being a skilled player, it’s also important to have good etiquette and sportsmanship behavior. Be gracious in victory and in defeat, and you can gain something more important: esteem, respect, and affection, “together with the silent approbation and good will of impartial spectators.”
After 250 years, his thoughts on chess still hold true today. When you read his essay now, it is as if a coach reminding you of what makes a good chess player during tournaments or casual games.
What can I say… I can only repeat myself: Benjamin Franklin was really ahead of his time!
Now, I’m going to turn it over to Sarang, who brings us to the early 20th century.
E=mc2 Meets Checkmate
by The Myth Sarang
Guten Tag! It’s me, The Myth Sarang! Wondering why I said something in German? Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German physicist and developed the formula E=mc2, which inspired the title for this part of the blog.
Before we get into any chess, let’s briefly review what this equation means. E=mc2, which Einstein discovered in 1905, comes from his theory of special relativity and expresses the relationship between Energy (E), Mass (M) and the speed of light (C) in a vacuum. This formula simply tells us that matter is concentrated energy: even a tiny amount of mass can be converted into a huge amount of energy because the speed of light squared (c2) is a huge number, around 300 million meters per second squared. Pretty cool, right? Now let’s move to his chess career.
What makes Einstein’s chess story interesting is the contrast between his brilliance and his attitude toward the game. He was friends with 2nd Chess World Champion Emanuel Lasker. Though chess was never a major priority for Albert, his friendship with Emanuel brought him around the chess world. In interviews, he reportedly said he did not have time for games and preferred to avoid activities that required extra mental effort after work.
There are also a few famous stories about Einstein playing chess against other physicists, especially J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project and father of the atomic bomb. People saw chess as a very fitting match for his way of thinking, because both chess and physics include lots of pattern recognition, creativity, and careful planning.
Now, let’s take a look at Albert Einstein vs J. Robert Oppenheimer, the battle of physicists that happened at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey in 1933. The game started off with Einstein playing the Ruy Lopez, and Oppenheimer responding with the Morphy. It was a pretty regular game until one point where Albert Einstein found a beautiful tactic. Shoutout to Chess.com for all images and GIFs used in my part today.
In this position, the material is equal. Einstein is attacking. Can you find the move that wins material for Einstein?
He played the move 13. Nxg6! If Black takes with the pawn, White takes the rook on h8 and is up an exchange AND a pawn! Against other moves, White either just wins a piece or can play Ne5+ with mate soon. Here’s a GIF of the whole game:
That’s all from me today, Chess Friends! Now let’s hear from The Legend Vivaan about some of the most legendary entertainers of all time!
Sinatra, Bogie, and Bacall
by The Legend Vivaan
“I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet
A pawn and a king
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing
Each time I find myself
Flat on my face
I pick myself up and get
Back in the race”
Were you swinging as you read that? “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra came out in 1966, and, as you can see, it features some chess lyrics!
Frank earned 11 Grammys, 4 Golden Globes, and an Academy Award in his amazing career. You can’t go through the Great American Songbook without hearing Frank. He was the King of swing and his music continues to influence many top entertainers today. A few of his hits are “My Way” (which Seth MacFarlane covered as Mike the mouse in the movie “Sing”), “Fly Me to the Moon”, “New York, New York”, and “The Way You Look Tonight”.
As for chess, Frank loved to play. He played with US Champ Walter Browne and World Champ Anatoly Karpov! Frank’s chess teacher, Humphrey “Bogie” Bogart, was one of the greatest American actors ever.
Bogie was about a 2000 ELO chess player and often brought chess into his movies. He starred in “Casablanca”, from 1942, which is considered one of the greatest movies of all time. Though it wasn’t in the original script, Bogie insisted his character have a scene where he is studying chess and playing. This scene set the stage brilliantly for the rest of the movie, navigating challenging decisions during World War II. Did you know Bogie was actually a USCF Tournament Director? How cool is that! He and his wife Lauren Bacall, an incredible actress, and co-star with Bogie in many films including “To Have and Have Not” (1944) and “The Big Sleep” (1946), used to play chess together regularly, and Lauren was a strong player as well!
The pair of them actually appeared on the cover of “Chess Review” magazine in June-July 1945, to sponsor the Pan American Congress! Bogie and Lauren had a famous game that is still looked at today: Humphrey Bogart vs Lauren Bacall (1951) To Have and Have Not! Bogie also had a famous draw against top GM Samuel Reshevsky during a simul in 1956: Samuel Reshevsky vs Humphrey Bogart (1956) Play It Again, Sam.
That's all for today folks! We hope you learned something new about some legends in other fields who also loved chess and used it to improve in their fields!
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, The Legend Vivaan
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