Chess is an enjoyable game regardless of what other entities are better than you at it. It is a recreational activity first and intellectual object of interest second. Really, should I give up drawing just because I'll never be as good as da Vinci?
Once you're good enough, the tactics melt away and you just think about the strategy. This is true with any competitive game. It takes a long time, and a lot of effort[1] to get to the level where you can have this "fairness epiphany", though. Strangely enough, a good documentary on the process exists in the form of a manga/anime series, Hikaru no Go, following a Go player as he is first guided through games, then plays, struggling, himself, until he finally has the epiphany and realizes he needs no help from a computer (or, in this case, ancient spirit) to make him better.
> Once you're good enough, the tactics melt away and you just think about the strategy.
That just isn't true. Remember the famous game where Kramnik got mated by the computer? It is impossible to play chess without ever searching the game tree. Different players search it to different extents, but there's nobody who is so good that they know all the tactics in a game by instinct.
By the way, thanks for linking to that site. I saw that "playing to win" article a while ago, and was really impressed by it, but then I forgot the title.
One of the fashions among chess players in these days of computer dominance is to talk about how chess is actually all tactics (or, as they like to put it, all "calculation").
I'm not big into playing chess on a computer, but it is fun to play against a friend once in a while. Just because something is better suited for a computer doesn't mean that you can't enjoy doing it yourself.
Go is significantly more strategic and it is possible to do well at the amateur level with middling tactical skills but a good strategic sense (the best, of course, are excellent at both). One of the most important lessons that I have the hardest time getting through to my students with is you must ask the question every time you put a stone down "what does this gain me? Is it more important for me to play here, or to play somewhere else?".
You can crush someone with good tactical play who wastes moves locally in this fashion. The difference one stone can make is astounding.
where are you getting the idea chess isn't incredibly strategic, or that not every move in chess counts and has to be considered carefully for what it gains?
amateur chess players are mostly terrible at tactics, by the way. non-masters hang a piece every game, pretty much. (but usually their opponent doesn't notice)
Bobby Fischer was widely attributed as saying he played chess because he liked to crush the other guy's ego. That's really the attraction of it - beating someone up with your mind.
Bobby Fischer was not exactly your typical chess player. Even other chess players generally consider Fischer to be immature, obnoxious, offensive, and mentally ill.
I would not use Fischer as a gauge for anything but genius and madness.
There are literally millions of chess players, and the source of their enjoyment of chess likely varies from player to player as it does for any other human activity.
In his prime, Fischer was the archetypal chess player. Just because he was an insane genius does not mean that all the things he said were wrong.
Because he was so good, he could say things about the game that were controversial, but deep down a lot of patzers knew that what he was saying was right.
Sure, one's source of enjoyment from chess varies between players, but what both Scott McCloud and Fischer were pointing out is that winning a game of chess makes you feel wonderful, and losing one makes you feel bad.
I think virtually every chess player would be familiar with those feelings, and would concede that "crushing the other guy's ego" (or its corollary "not having my ego crushed") has a little bit to do with it.
Whether you are playing Spassky for the World Championship or a game of blitz with a friend, the emotions are the same.
I would agree that most chess players probably feel good when they win and bad when they lose.
However, there's a big difference between that and agreeing with Fischer's goal of "crushing the other guy's ego" or your earlier assertion that chess is about "beating someone up with your mind". I don't think that's true at all, or at least no more true of chess than any other game.
Also, I would strongly disagree with Fischer being "the archetypical chessplayer". From what I've read about chess players through the ages and from my personal experience, the overwhelming majority of chess players are nothing like Fischer.
Sure, you will occasionally find an obnoxious, childish, mentally ill genius, but that's the exception. Even non-genius chess players are generally no more childish or obnoxious than people in the general population.
And I see no evidence that the average chess player's motivation is anything like Fischer's motivation, except wanting to win and hating to lose. But that's the same for players of any competitive game.
I wouldn't say that most chess players are like Fischer personally, it's that chess has a tendency to consume players to some degree, the way it consumed him almost completely. That's what I meant by archetype.
Personally, I found the rush from winning a game of chess to have a different character to winning at some other competitive game, and I think ego has something to do with it.
Maybe I suffer from some of the same flaws Fischer did (without the same gifts).
Yes, I would agree that chess is a game that people tend to obsess over to a degree not found in most other games. Scott McCloud's story is evidence of this, and there are many others like it.
But even there, Fischer is in a class with few peers. There's obsession and then there's all-consuming passion, which is more of where Fischer fit in (at least until his resignation from the World Championship).
In my opinion finding a (sound) tactical chess combination is comparable to solving a mathematical proof. Chess tactics are logical, artistically beautiful, and devastatingly decisive. To gain an appreciation for them, try solving the problem below (it's a classic). Every move white makes has a specific purpose - no subjective, wishy-washy strategies here - just absolute truth on the chessboard.
This is the idea of correspondence chess. In many tournaments, computer aid is allowed for this reason. See the ICCF, which runs many sanctioned web-based chess tournamnets where computer aid is allowed. http://www.iccf-webchess.com/
Computer-aided chess though might be interesting: the human would focus on strategy and get help for tactical play from a computer.