Progressive Chess
by Oliver A Ruebenacker
In the beautiful Town of Chessville, the game of chess has always been central to the life of the citizens. Back in the glorious days, children would learn the rules of chess at an early age, and then continue to learn the secrets of strategy and tactics throughout their entire lives. Games were played everywhere from the casual matches in the coffeehouses to the serious competitions of the professionals. Countless classes were taught and large numbers of books were written on the subject of chess. Naturally, back in the glorious days, Chessville produced a lot of native chess masters, who travelled to other cities to win competitions and became famous throughout the region.
The high regard for chess naturally extended to a high regard for chess masters and their games: Whenever chess masters played against each other, Chessvillians would write down all the moves, so that other chess players could repeat the game, admire the skills of the masters and learn from them. Soon, large collections of masters games emerged, and aspiring chess players would regularly consult these collections.
In the beginning, the collections boosted the carriers of young chess players, who uncovered many jewels from these collections and benefited greatly from witnessing the great ideas of the masters. A golden age started in Chessville, where even more and greater chess masters emerged. And that meant even more and larger collections of masters games.
However, the golden age came finally to its end, and the art of chess stagnated and finally declined in Chessville. This was by no means because the Chessvillians had lost interest in chess - on the contrary, chess was still their life and love. Rather, they focused so much on the glorious past that they lost their vision for the future. And so, the glorious days ended and the time of traditionalism began.
Traditionalism started because Chessvillians started to judge everything by whether they could find it in the games of the old masters. New ideas where rejected on the basis that the old masters had not embraced them. Consequently, memorization of old masters games was the principal activity of the students of chess. This developed to such a degree that at some point, a Chessvillian could be considered a chess master merely for having memorized a lot of games without even knowing the rules, let alone elements of strategy and tactics. Logically, such chess masters could not win any games outside of Chessville, but that did not matter to them, because to them only chess played in Chessville was worth considering.
So when a traditionalist would play a game, he would go through the games he had memorized and search for a position that looked similar to the position at hand, and then tried to make a move that looked similar to the move the master had made in that game. If no game was found that had a similar position, the traditionalist would give up and the opponent had won.
Now the problem was, of course, as each chess player knows, that a move that was good in one position could be quite bad in another position even though it looked similar. In fact, it could even be illegal. But then the traditionalist would argue that some great old master had made "essentially the same move in essentially the same position" - and that silenced critics. Chessvillians would trust some one who memorized many games without knowing the rules more than some one who knew the rules. Eventually, most Chessvillians started to believe that even learning the rules of the game was a task that could only be mastered by chess masters, and that one had to memorize a large number of masters games before one could be so bold and try to actually play a game. Due to this, only very few people played games, but everybody memorized masters games. Many Chessvillians were frustrated about this situation and so liberalism started.
Liberal Chessvillians had realized that playing chess was more than repeating what great old masters had played before them. So the liberals advocated the freedom to make moves in any fashion one liked. A game between liberals would consist of placing pieces on the board in whatever fashion pleased the eye until the board was full. It was never clear who was the winner, and often the players agreed that both had won. When liberals organized a competition, they always announced in the end that every player had won - with the possible exception of a few traditionalists who dared to show up at such events. Traditionalists accused liberals of arbitrariness while liberals accused traditionalists of lack of creativity and openness. So a new group emerged which tried to please both sides: The libero-traditionalists.
Libero-traditionalists tried to bridge the divide between traditionalists and liberals. They tried to argue that one could copy from the old masters, like the traditionalists did, and at the same time arrive at optically pleasing positions, like the liberals did. To show such a thing, they had to make an extremely selective use of old masters games combined with a very bizarre notion of what constituted a similar position or a similar move, or a pleasing position. This, however, did not stop them from becoming very famous, because on the surface, they seemed to please everybody, although there was no substance behind it.
Finally came the progressives. The progressives realized that chess was a game with rules based on reason. They realized that a child could learn the rules and play a game. They realized that some players were stronger than others, and that there were extraordinarily strong players rightfully respected as chess masters, but that these masters still might be unaware of some new ideas. They realized that there were elements of strategy and tactics which a normal person could learn at least in part to improve their skills and better appreciate the games of the masters. Progressives could learn from the masters but still develop their own style.
Society turned out extremely reluctant to accepting the progressives. Many did not understand the difference between progressives and liberals, or between progressives and libero-traditionalists. Many had already used the label 'progressive' to describe liberals or libero-traditionalists and saw nothing new when the progressives came - even many of those who called themselves 'progressive' were in reality liberals or libero-traditionalists. To the traditionalists, the progressives were too liberal and to the liberals, the progressives where too traditionalist. Many preferred libero-traditionalism, because it promised to deliver everything.
But all this did not deter the progressives, because they knew they had rediscovered the true meaning of the game, and they used it to great delight and benefit. They also knew that if ever there was to arise a chess master who would earn fame beyond the town, it would be a progressive.
Mr Oliver A Ruebenacker is a convert from Germany who lives with his wife in Cambridge, Massachuetts. Oliver has a PhD in Physics and works as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Biological physics.