"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players"

I love playing chess. But don't worry: if you don't play chess--and not many do, especially these days in the U.S.--my comments are for you, too. And have no fear: This blog is not about teaching you how to play chess or urging you to do so. And it's not about defending geeks who just wanna have fun. No, I'd just like to share some random thoughts about how playing chess has given me insights into my role as a player on life's chessboard.

I taught myself at an early age how to play chess from reading a library book and began playing competitively in high school, where I became the club president and team captain. I joined the Peninsula Chess Club in Newport News that met on Thursday nights in the cafeteria of Warwick High School (where I would later teach and eat lunch for 22 years) and joined the United States Chess Federation, and for several years I played in rated tournaments at our club and other sites in Virgina, North Carolina, and New York, rising slowly to the level of an average to a-little-above-average Class B club player, below the Class A's, and our one Expert (we could boast of no Master). This was actual over-the-board play with three-dimensional chess sets and opponents we looked in the eyes and shook hands with. I've been a high school teacher for the past 36 years, and during most of that time have sponsored the chess club. Aside from my few games at the school chess club, all of my many other chess games these days are against often anonymous online players and robots.

The chess hero of my youth, of course, was Bobby Fischer, just five years my senior, a chess prodigy who won the U.S. Championship eight times, starting at age 14, once winning with a perfect score (no losses or draws, never duplicated), becoming the world's youngest Grandmaster at 15 1/2, and by the 1970s, the most dominant player in the world, beating a swarm of Russian greats who had tried to gang up on him, achieving his pinnacle of success as he was crowned world champion in 1972, the only American world chess champion of modern times, although Paul Morphy of New Orleans was recognized as the world's best player and unofficial champion in 1859. Unfortunately, like Paul Morphy before him, the rest of Fischer's life after reaching the top was a sad and tragic.

Chess is a board game played on an 8 x 8 grid of alternating light-and-dark shaded squares (same as a checkerboard); each side, White or Black, has 16 pieces, 6 different types with varying strengths and movement-capture capabilities. The King is said to be "checked" when attacked and "checkmated" (the object of the game) when not only attacked but also unable to escape what would be its capture on the following move. However, the King is always spared such an indignity. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw including a "stalemate," which occurs if a King is not in check but obligated to move although any move would place it in check, sort of a paradoxical double jeopardy.

All of this may sound complicated to a someone who doesn't play chess, but learning how the pieces move and capture is easy, something most children can quickly accomplish, and the remaining rules are not difficult to understand.

Playing chess involves concentration, focus, planning ahead, moving, diagnosing, attacking, counter-attacking, risk-taking, capturing, retreating, problem solving, waiting, coordinating and manipulating forces of various strengths in time, space, and sequence--all for the common purpose of bringing a single task to a successful conclusion.

Yes, as Shakespeare tells us in "As You Like It," "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." The "chess game" of our life is competitive, requiring all these skills throughout its different phases, whether competing in sports, earning grades, getting hired, earning, saving, and spending money, fighting creditors, courting lovers, marrying wrong, raising children, divorcing, remarrying right, grand parenting, parenting adult children who return to the nest, retiring and dying. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and sometimes we call it even. Sometimes dying will take care of itself, and it can happen any time as suddenly as a two-move checkmate.

Shakespeare tells in the same speech that as we act on life's stage, we have our "exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages": infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, old man, and second childhood. I'm definitely in the "old man" phase, I fear, and not looking forward to a "second childhood." But I will continue to fight the fight, drawing upon the skills I've developed over the years playing chess. Each chess game is a brief "mini-life" of its own whereas we go through our one allotted role on life's stage in slow motion. If I get another life after this and can retain these chess playing skills, maybe I'll do better the next time out. I hope so.

This is the truth as I see it, and you got it from "Tom Stroup's Blog, "Straight Up"!