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My Personal Zugzwang↗

therepublicofletters.substack.com

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”.

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow↗

Gabrielle Zevin·2022·★★★★★

I started with misgivings. Games in other media typically don’t work very well. A few early, minor nitpicks: Zevin talks about ‘ground pounding’ in 1985’s Super Mario Bros., which might adequately describe the act of jumping on enemies but doesn’t acknowledge it as the specific term for an important part of Mario’s moveset much later in the series. But this isn’t a book about games; it uses games and the industry as vehicle and metaphor for exploring other things—pain and mortality, collaboration and relationships. It does so wonderfully. Strong recommendation.

book·gamescollaborationrelationshipsmortalitypain