MARK RUBERY CHESS

The following passage is from the excellent book by Robert Desjarlais -’Counterplay-An Anthropologist at the Chessboard’

‘Players invest toil and sweat in the struggle and remember the thrills and agonies of an intensely fought game for years afterward, in precise, storylike terms. Recollections of individual chess games can be thought of as what psychologists would term “personal event memories.” As psychologist David Pillemer explains it, such personally situated, experientially detailed memories involve “a circumscribed, one-moment-in-time event rather than an extended time period or series of repeated experiences.” They also tend to retain “a vivid, life-like quality through the years.” Weddings, national tragedies, significant conversations, and climactic sporting events are the kinds of happenings that make for personal event memories. Chess games as well.

The passions that course through a game help to render the memories lasting. At the same time, the temporal, ritualistic structure of chess lends itself to the narrative recall of what happened during a game. Chess games have clear beginnings and endings, clear-cut temporal structures, and a tangible, segmental architecture. This built-in narrative design makes it easy for people to develop narrative accounts of what happens during a game. That in fact is what they often do, either by themselves or in the company of others: “I got off to a good start, but then I landed in trouble in the middlegame . . . . ”