Major Acid's E-Rag
What Else Is There?
Volume 1, Number 8
Chess Life
Chess Life doesn�t leap at you from the magazine stands. J Lo and Depp (Ben who?) don�t mug for the cover shot. Or the insides, for that matter � do J Lo and Depp play chess? That�s a question that Mary Hart and her spawn are unlikely ever to ask. Chess Life is not oversized either, or crafted from paper thick enough to hold the garish splashes of colour that other magazines might. In fact, the magazine fades into the background, noticeable if you look for it, otherwise invisible. In that way, it is perfectly reflective of the place of chess in North American life today.
If anything, the February cover reinforces that invisible, embedded feel. The human face on the cover belongs to Gary Kasparov, a Kasparov embedded in lines of green 1s and 0s � the cypheric symbols of the computer age.
Kasparov is a holdover, the last remnant of that brief cultural ascendancy that chess enjoyed not that long ago. Reykjavik and Fischer and Spaasky started that ascendancy; Kasparov, facing off against IBM�s Deep Blue, ended it. Like so much we live with today, computers steam-rolled the world of chess. Yet Chess Life, and chess itself, isn�t about to disappear completely. Neither is Kasparov.
The greatest player alive, perhaps ever, is on the cover buried in computer imagery because he is at it again. At the computer, that is. Recently Kasparov played another match against another computer program, pitted his prodigious, darkly human ego and self-discipline against mindless, remorseless lines of code dubbed X3D Fritz.
This confrontation is the centerpiece of Chess Life�s February 2004 issue and the subject of a long article by Kalev Pehme, and Pehme sees that battle as a reason to whine about the ascendancy of the machine, the death of all that is good and true � of all that is human. Pehme consigns humanity to the junk heap and along with it such expressions of humanity as Chess Life itself. Consider this passage:
�For not only does this amazing technology create a new chess order, but it effectively puts an end to all chess magazines, and, by extension, all magazines and newspapers as well. For there is no possible way that mere printed words � can compete with virtual reality. This morning a grandmaster can write an article on an opening line, post it on the Internet immediately � and by day�s end thousands of people can be playing a thematic tournament in that line all over the world at the same time. Such a website is the end of Chess Life, and it is the end of everything from fashion to car magazines � Against that, what is the printed word�s appeal to human imagination?�
There is much to chew on in that quote and more in Pehme�s article, not the least of which is the irony inherent in the fact that Kalev Pehme is the editor of the very magazine he consigns to the garbage dump of human history.
The February 2004 issue is Pehme�s second as its editor, and irony seems to be his curse. In his first issue he wrote a �From the Editor� piece that included this gem reflecting on the level of writing that Chess Life had endured: �Oftentimes, the articles are replete with bad English, and that will stop as much as possible.�
I�d like to think he was being funny, and it�s possible, but even if he was, he still had to contend with the curious discontinuity that his promise to raise the literary quality of the magazine was printed in the same issue that announced the �Chess Journalists of America Awards for 2003.� Chess Life, it turns out, was chosen as the Most Improved Magazine � under the direction of one Peter Kurzdorfer, Editor.
Pehme has a tough act to follow, but irony notwithstanding, follow it he does with the X3D Fritz articles, his own and others; with Kasparov�s dissection of Tal, excerpted from a book by Kasparov; with the usual suspects such as columns on solitaire chess and seemingly endless dissections of recent notable games.
Because the usual suspects are still there for readers to look forward to, perhaps Pehme can be forgiven his peccadilloes. He�s just grumpy because the man/machine Kasparov proved wanting even though he drew his match with X3D Fritz. Pehme may worry that Kasparov has turned himself into a bloodless, second-rate � in other words, human � version of a computer program, but ultimately it is Pehme himself, and all his contributors that put the lie to his own grumpiness.
Chess is the ultimate expression of humanity, and Kasparov�s determination to beat a computer program is a purely human endeavour no matter the outcome. Computers may be able to compute the �best� line of play, unfazed by time pressure or ego or fear, but computers will never be human, and, Kasparov aside, chess is a contest of human on human. For as long as the game is played that way, played by those who are antithetical in their very nature to the perfection of the lifeless machine, played by those who are defined by their essential imperfection, so then Chess Life or some analog of it will survive.
J Lo and Depp and Mary Hart�s telegenic legs notwithstanding.
Chess Life is published monthly by the United States Chess Federation and sells for $3.75 USD or $4.95 CAD.
