chess

Mardean Isaac on a thousand games of chess played badly on purpose. He doesn’t study openings or review his own games, and rides the chess.com rating see-saw up and down forever, which he recognises as a way of never finding out how good he could be. The essay starts with his father and great-grandfather, detours through Kubrick, and lands on zugzwang: the position where you have to move and every move makes things worse. He also has views on the bishops (untrustworthy) and calls rooks “the chestiest of pieces”.