A couple of days ago, someone by the name of Alekhine’s Cat followed me on Twitter. It was weird because this person had no followers. That alone intrigued me, but not as much as the reference to Alexander Alekhine, the great chess world champion who beat Capablanca. You see, I was trying to decide if I was going to follow this strange person since I now have a new theory that I’ll follow pretty much anyone, at least until they annoy me. But the guy had zero followers and that seemed strange.

A single tweet to him resulted in a series of tweets back that mostly confused me. He said, for example, that Alekhine’s cat was named Math, although as far as I can tell it was named Chess. (Note: both are terrible names for cats; they would be hard to distinguish; I would go with something like “chess piece.”) He also said that Alekhine was killed because he was suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer. That doesn’t appear to be true, but many people want to think it. Finally, he tweeted, “I am two degrees of separation from playing Alekhine over the board and you are three.” I told him he lost me, so he tweeted, “I’ve played someone who’s played Alekhine over the chess board and you’ve played me.”

There was an interesting mystery. I’d only every played two chess players who were really good. One was a master and the other may be one by now. So I figured it had to have been one of them. In order to know that you had played someone who played Alekhine, you would have to be a club player. That ruled out most of the good players I’d played against. So I went into his twitter feed to see who he was following and other than bizarre people like Carrot Top (who I’m willing to admit is wrongly vilified), I found that he was following David Luoto. That narrowed it down to Bob Portlock and Paul Bishop. I don’t know Bob to play chess, but the conversation was so bizarre, you’ve always got to include him. But it has been so many years that I’d talked to Paul, I’d forgotten just how bizarre he is.

Paul is an interesting guy. But in terms of chess, he is exactly the kind of person that makes me rarely play the game with humans. To me, it is a fascinating game of problem solving that opens your mind to creative thinking. To most players, it is about destroying the opponent. That was definitely the case with Paul. And I’ll admit, I’m not above that. When I really started to take chess seriously in graduate school, it was very rewarding when I started to beat people who previously mocked my playing. Now I find playing chess with a computer rather fun because I can force certain games to be played, although admittedly, the computer never really surprises me. Also, I find teaching children to play quite rewarding. In general, chess education is horrible.

Of course, I would love to play chess with Paul, as long as he was willing to approach it as a game rather than a contest of manhood. I’m very out of practice, but even at my best: my opening game was sloppy, the middle game was pretty tight and aggressive (it’s the best part of the game as far as I’m concerned), and as with most amateurs, my end game was pathetic. It’s strange, but I’ve often found that I could hold my own up to the end game against a strong player, but in the end game, that’s where they destroy you in short order.

All of this is a prelude to pointing out that on this day in 1836, the great chess player Wilhelm Steinitz was born. Let me just quote from what I wrote last year:

Happy birthday Wilhelm Steinitz!

It is hard to say who invented baseball. This is partly true because, like most games, it evolved over time. But if there was a single inventor of baseball, I think the title has to go to Alexander Cartwright, who was born on this day in 1820. He was a volunteer firefighter and as a group they used to play “bat and ball” games. One day, he and some others decided to created a more complicated game that would appeal to adults. He started with the rules of rounders and altered them, although you can still see clear similarities. My favorite change: you can’t throw a ball to get a runner out. That was probably necessary, because Americans are animals and allowing that rule would probably have caused millions of spinal cord injuries by now.

Cartwright is a responsible for a number of other aspects that define the game today. These include: the diamond shape of the infield; foul balls; uniform base distances; three strikes; and nine active players. The game hasn’t changed that much since then.

Cartwright was a curious fellow. In 1849, he decided to go to California to join in the gold rush. But he never made it there. Instead, he landed in Hawaii, becoming the of Honolulu fire chief in 1850. He lived there the rest of his life, continuing to promote baseball. In this capacity, he became an adviser to the last king of Hawaii, Kalakaua.

Over the years, I have wondered why I like baseball so much. I understand that football is an extremely boring game. But much the same could be said of baseball. Certainly basketball is exciting, but its constant motion can be numbing. What I think distinguishes baseball is that it is clean. The ball is pitched, the ball is hit, the ball is fielded. There is no duplication of effort as there is in football. Everything is spread out so you can see it all. And above all, it is a civilized game: umpires are there to determine the timing of events, not to stop the players from brutalizing each other. But I will admit: I like baseball because I like baseball. It suits my temperament.

Happy birthday Alexander Cartwright!

This is kind of crummy day for birthdays. I’m not Tarzan but Maureen O’Sullivan was Jane, and she was born on this day in 1911. Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was born in 1912. Songwriter Bob Merrill was born in 1921. Heaven’s Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite was born in 1931. If he’s alive on that spaceship, he’s 82 today. And Dennis Hopper was born in 1936.

Film producer A. C. Lyles is 95 today. Computer scientist Alan Kay is 73. Blues legend Taj Mahal is 71. And comedian Bob Saget is 57. Here he is discussing the most disgusting joke of all time “The Aristocrats.” I recommend not watching it:

The day belongs to an unusual man: chess great Wilhelm Steinitz who was born on this day back in 1836. He pretty much single-handedly changed chess into what it is today. What I mean by that is that it used to be all about clever combinations. But after him, it became a game of position. That isn’t to say that clever combinations weren’t still important. But the focus of the game became controlling the board.

This is something that annoys me to this day about the way that I was taught to play chess. The idea that you can teach a child the moves and just expect them to figure out the rest is madness. It is like telling a child you are going to teach them how to play the piano and then only show them that this key is a C, this key is a C-sharp… No one would consider that a music education and yet that is the extent of most chess education. In fact, it’s even worse. There is a kind of social Darwinian aspect to it. Step one: teach the moves. Step two: see if anyone figures out the games. Step three: properly teach the game to the survivors.

It was only in graduate school that I learned to play chess. And I did it by studying master games. By trying to understand why they moved this way rather than that, I finally figured out the nature of the game. At that point I got so that I could beat people who previously had trounced me. All that was missing between my being a hopeless player and being all right, was an understanding of the game that I think I could teach a child is a short period of time. What’s key is that without this knowledge, you end up in games that are extremely frustrating. After a few moves you are in a position were even your best moves are bad.

Combine the lack of proper elementary chess instruction with the hyper-aggressive style that is encouraged and you end up with a game that very few people enjoy. Although I enjoy the game, I don’t much like the people I’ve played against. I’m not an aggressive person. My interest in chess is more academic. In a sense, reading those master games was perfect for me. It can be as thrilling to analyze a game as it is to listen to a symphony. Thus, I have no interest in destroying my opponent. My desire in playing is to have a good game. As a result, I commonly have opponents redo bad moves. I don’t ever recall anyone reciprocating. This seems to be because of this aggressive chess mentality that teaches that the purpose of chess is to crush the opponent. I recall one time allowing an opponent to take five moves back before eventually beating me. He was very full of himself after the game. And that’s fine with me because I think he’s pathetic.

Anyway, the point of all this is that understanding positional play and the overall theory of the game makes it fun to play. It also makes it beautiful and even artistic. And we largely have Wilhelm Steinitz to thank for that. Of course, this style of play would have come along eventually. But the fact is that he is the one who did it. Unfortunately, over the last 50 years, this has been taken to extreme to the point where serious players spend much of their time studying openings that can go up to 40 moves or more. This more than anything is the reason that computers are now the best “players” in the world. That’s why I think we need to move on to something like Chess960. But for the average player, chess is still a great and fun game, and that is largely thanks to Steinitz.

So happy birthday Wilhelm Steinitz!

It has been a strange and hectic day today, so I am just going to offer up a few thoughts.

Mickey Spillane was born today in 1918. I more or less knew that. What I didn’t know was that he only died a few years ago—in 2006 at 88. He was a favorite of Ayn Rand, who had a great love for pulp junk, which is more or less what Spillane wrote. But I don’t claim to be an expert. I haven’t given up many hours of my life to consuming his products. But in his way, he was as good as Elmore Leonard. Admittedly, that isn’t saying that much.

It’s Ornette Coleman‘s 83rd birthday today. I don’t really understand him. He seems to try very hard to upset me. He is probably brilliant, but we all have our limits, and he is one of mine.

Raul Julia was born this day back in 1940. He unfortunately died very young back in 1996. I especially remember him as Gomez Addams. But he was generally wonderful—especially in Kiss of the Spider Woman. There are others. I wish he had lived longer; we certainly would have received another 20 or so films.

Bobby Fischer, on the other hand, lived a good deal too long. Born on this day back in 1943, he lived long enough to show everyone just how crazy he was. However, he did leave a great legacy in terms of his games, which are far more interesting than the games of most grandmasters. This is due especially to his incredibly aggressive play with black. He also understood what was wrong with modern chess and his invention of Chess960 shows how the game could continue to be relevant in the decades to come.

And this all reminds me that life is meaningless and Fischer would have been happier if he had just played more chess, which of course is a meaningless way of spending a life and that is the whole point.