As I walked into her office, I saw a flimsy little table that seemed to be straining to support the chess board that sat atop, with two correspondingly small chairs underneath the beleaguered table. The guru was behind a large desk with numerous diplomas and certificates hanging on the wall. There was a name plate on the desk that simply said Chess Guru, Phd.
“Have a seat!” she said, gesturing at the tiny table. I sat in one of the small chairs, just barely large enough to not be a kids chair. As she sat down in the chair opposite me, she pointed at the wall above the table and said, “I saw you were looking at that picture” I had not looked at the picture. I was still looking at the chess board, hoping it would not collapse the table.
“That is me and my friends eating dinner after the chess championship in 2006. On the left is Ivan, a Grandmaster, and the younger two are Greg and Swami, both of whom were some of the highest ranked players in their age bracket at the time.” “Oh, cool” I said.
I had gone to see the Chess Guru on a whim. I saw an ad stapled on a telephone pole downtown and thought it would be an enriching activity. She asked what my experience with chess was, if I thought I was a beginner or intermediate player, and I explained I knew nothing about chess.
“perfect” she said. “Lets Begin. See this piece? This is the queen. Its considered less important than the king, even though she is clearly a more useful, powerful piece. Women are used to this. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you! All the pieces work together to defend the king. The king doesn’t enter the fray except as a last resort, and you can see him coming a mile away. The queen, on the other hand, can attack from anywhere on the board, from any direction. Maybe the other pieces are just scared of her power, safer to side with the king.”
“Wow, ok. So who moves first?” I asked.
The chess guru rolled her eyes and huffed. “The chess board is a very restricted, hierarchical space. One side has to play first, then the other has to react. Some say this creates an unfair advantage for the first mover, but the truth is, unless your opponent plays a perfect game, whatever disadvantage you end up with is from your own mistakes. Never the less, fair is fair, and that is why I recommend that whoever goes first let the other side win, to offset any real or perceived advantage.”
“Doesn’t that take the fun out of it? Shouldn’t both sides try to win? How do you know if you are improving if you are always letting the other side win, or the other side is letting you win?” I asked.
“And this brings us to the crucial point. Listen closely. You think these are chess pieces on this board here?” she asked. “I do” I said. She waved a bishop at me, yelling “It’s just a hunk of wood molecules. Society decided this hunk of wood was the king, and this hunk of wood is the queen. These are all just abstract concepts. No reality to them.”
“Don’t the rules say which piece is which, and how they move?” I asked
“Don’t get me started on the rules!” she said. “I use to think there were rules too. But where do rules come from? Have they been around since before time began? Did God write the rules of chess on stone tablets? Or did people make the rules, for their own selfish reasons! You are sleep walking through a construct that only exists in your own mind. It is time to wake up.”
I sat for a moment, and my eyes wandered over to the photo of the young Chessmasters, and the Grandmaster. I noticed all the seats at the table were filled, and the guru was standing behind the table, like she was not actually eating dinner with them, just getting a photo. I realized at that point what I wanted to know was not the absolute truth about chess, but how the construct itself works. That was really what interested me. I don’t want to go to the park and tell the people sitting on a bench playing chess that the game they are playing isn’t real, I want to beat them at that game. So I said to my guru:
“I’ve seen people playing chess at the park. I want to know how to do what they are doing. I don’t care if its based on a fiction. I want to understand the facts that arise out of that fiction.”
She responded, in a quiet, profound tone. “That, I can not teach you.”
“but you are the chess guru” I said.
“I am” she replied.
“You don’t know how to play chess, do you.” I said.
“I don’t like complexity.” she said, sheepishly
“can I get my money back?” I asked.
her confidence returning, she barked,
“No!”
I got up from the tiny chair, walked out of the office, said bye to the receptionist, thinking it was well worth the money. She really was a guru.