THE “WIZDOM” OF CHESS

Hermione: “That’s totally barbaric.”

Ron: “That’s wizard chess.”

Chess used to be extremely popular in the USSR. It was considered an event of general public interest, and it always made front pages in sports sections of all major and minor newspapers, as well as it was regularly and unfailingly reported on television news. General public lived and breathed chess, and these two worlds, one of the chess players, the other of the “everyday” folks, were almost (even though not quite, technically) one and the same.

Not so in the world today. One cannot say that professional chess activity has subsided. After the deep crisis of the 1990’s, seemingly threatening to destroy the chess world altogether, chess has come back to life, and it has been visibly, a vibrant and exciting life, having magnificently survived the aesthetically morbid end of cold war, and the unstoppable onslaught of the computers, with all its ghastly ramifications. One can safely say that today’s chess life is thriving no less, and maybe even more exuberantly, than ever before.

But a strange thing has happened. A multitude of daily activities saturates the special chess-related internet sites and special chess publications, while the general media seem to be totally ignorant of it, either ignoring it completely, or writing about chess in a ridiculously crude, unprofessional, and unenlightened manner, as if chess were something alien and, yes, other-worldly. The magic world of chess has moved so far away from the “Muggle” world of general public interest, that this inevitable comparison has leapt into my mind, and stayed there. Chess is, to the regular world now, what the Harry Potter world of wizardry and magic is to the Muggle world in J. K. Rowling’s wonderful saga.

Perhaps, what I used to see as normal chess before has in fact become wizard chess… and there is no other kind?… Not anymore?!...

And once again, being quite content to be neither here nor there, I am much satisfied that, at the same time, I am both here and there, in a sense. As this applies to chess, although I am not part of the wizard world, it is so good to realize that I am still a wizard, that is, that, although removed from it, I have an understanding of it, which none of the Muggles seem to have. (As this transfers to everything else, I am indeed well pleased with my chess metaphor!)