November 16, 2018 • 36 mins
Will and Mango go deep into their chess cave to determine: what's the most dangerous styles of chess, why did the game move from the battlefield to the royal court, and if a billion people to play chess, can that stop an alien invasion?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess, well, well, what's that mango. So I was
reading the story about the chess player Bobby Fisher this week.
This is when he was young, and I guess he'd
won a US championship at the time, so he was famous,
but he was also just a kid, and he didn't
have that much money, and you know, he's kind of
a recluse, right. Actually I had read that he used
to play secretly online like later in his life, and
(00:23):
there was always so much buzz when somebody thought they
noticed his style of play and and and thought they
were onto and that they discovered that it was him. Yeah,
I feel like you'd see that pop up from like
Japan or Malaysia or wherever. There are these people who
were just like so excited to have played Bobby Fisher,
think they've played Bobby Fisher. But so anyway, he's young
at this time. He wants to go see a movie
and he doesn't have money for it, so he walks
(00:45):
into the Chess and Checker Club of New York just
to pick up a few extra bucks. I guess, to
hustle it, right, And I guess at the time it
was this uh, this large smoke filled crowded pool hall
type place but for chess, and Bobby's totally in disguise.
He's got a k he's got his collar off, sunglasses
and a hat. He looks ridiculous, but he does not
want to be noticed. So he asked a friend, like,
(01:07):
do you think you can just get me into a game?
And a friend asked the owner across the bar. And
remember it's smoke filled and like, Bobby's in disguise, So
the owner goes tell him, no, he's just a kid.
The hustlers will eat him alive, and so like, Bobby
Fisher is furious and he just stomps out, and this
is all reported. This is a real story. But when
his friend tells the owner who it was, that it
(01:29):
was Bobby Fisher who wanted a game, like, apparently the
whole crowd at the place has this audible grown and
this one guy goes, oh, man, I would have paid
hundreds of dollars just to sit across from Bobby Fisher
on a chessboard. Anyway, So I don't know much about chess,
but I do love stories about it. And we're gonna
get into the most dangerous styles of chess. How the
(01:50):
game moved from the battlefield to the royal court, and
even why getting a billion people to play chess might
be our best hope to keep away aliens. Let's dig
in the their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:23):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Manues Ticketer and on the other side of
the soundproof class writing down a list of chess openings
he's trying to master. Actually, can you read what he's
got on the white board over there, Mango, Yeah, he's
got the hillbilly attack, the monkeys burn, Hippopotamus defense. There's
something called the toilet variation. He's written. Definitely, Yeah, it
(02:46):
definitely says toilet variation. Well, those are all real chess
opening moves. But that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil,
who also happens to be a future chess master, not
a current chess master, but I'm confident of future chess man. Yeah,
he can do anything he puts his mind too. But
you know, chess is one of those things I used
to love as a kid, Like I played it on
my computer, we used to play it with relatives, but
(03:09):
I never got good at it, Like I'm probably as
good as I was in second grade, but I do
love like movies and books that involved it. I I
read this great book last year. It's really slim. It's
called The Chess Game and it's by the same author
that wrote The Hotel in Budapest. And you know, I
don't understand any of the chess strategy, but I was
(03:29):
totally enamored with how the main character plays these games
of chess in his head. Yeah, I mean, like that's
a real skill. I had heard about these two Silicon
Vallet guys who met for the first time. I want
to say it was Peter thiel And and somebody equally famous.
And the way the first time they met, they sat
down at a restaurant and one of them said, I
heard you like chess, and then called out an opening
(03:51):
play and they actually played a full game on an
imaginary board in their heads. Like just these two chess
savants would be the weirdest conversation to like, wait a
table on like just hearing people call out letters and numbers.
But you know what's crazy to me is, you know,
one of our friends, Dad's was a chess chance in Ecuador,
(04:13):
and there's these photos of him playing like twelve matches
at a time, just moving from board to board to
board and making moves super quick. And and then there's
like blindfold chest, which is kind of like what you're
talking about. But you know what's weird is that a
lot of people used to think that playing chess while
blindfolded can actually lead to brain damage, brain dampisode. So
why do they think that. Apparently it's just so exhausting
(04:36):
to keep track of all those pieces while also planning
out your next moves. And in fact, the Soviet Union
completely banned blindfold chess in because of that perceived danger.
And and actually one Russian player died during his attempt
to break the world record for a number of opponents
played wild blindfolded. What you're saying, people combine those things
like they blindfold themselves then play multiple games simultaneously. Do
(05:00):
people still do this? Yeah? And actually a new world
record was set less than two years ago. So this
chess grandmaster, his name's Timore Garyev, and he played forty
eight games of blindfold chess simultaneously over the course of
the three hours. Yeah, he actually won eight percent of
those games. And it's that ridiculous. Along the way, he
(05:23):
was actually riding an exercise bike the whole time, and
in the end he peddled apparently about fifty miles. Good lord,
I mean, I love that they just added the exercise
bike because they're playing forty eight simultaneous blindfold games. Wasn't enough.
I'm thinking though, maybe after Tristan masters the Hippopotamus defense,
that he's going to get on this blindfold chess train.
(05:45):
We'll see. Probably. Well, anyway, for today's show, we're going
to cover chess, so we'll we'll take a deep dive
into the history of the game, how the rules developed,
and why the iconic pieces look the way they do.
I think I've always been curious about this. And then
a little later we'll try to figure out why Russians
are so good at chess, as well as why computers
might be the best players of all. And now, of
(06:05):
course we'll take a look at how playing chess can
affect your brain and just what kind of smart it
actually makes you. Anyway, that's right, so let's jump right
in and talk about the history of chess, because it
actually goes quite a ways back. So most historians believe
in early version of the game was invented in India
about fifteen hundred years ago, and the first known mention
of anything involving chess appears in a text from five
(06:28):
and then about a century later, the game made its
way to Persia, where a few different variations involved. So
the exact rules of the game and the appearances of
the pieces hadn't been formalized at that time, but the
pieces did have these established identities that aren't that dissimilar
from what we're used today. So one of the main
differences was that the game didn't lay out a royal
court like it does. It was more of a battlefield
(06:50):
back then, with the king being the only piece shared
between the ancient version and the modern version. I'm curious, like,
do do you know what the other pieces were in
the old battlefield version? Yeah, so instead of ponds you
had these infantry pieces. Nights were cavalry, and and bishops
were elephants. I think our rooks were actually chariots as well.
And what about the what about the queen? Was the
(07:10):
queen part of the game at that point. That's a
different story. I mean, well, we'll get to that in
a minute, but the short answer is that the piece
would later become the Queen. It was actually called the
vizier or or the advisor. So if you think about Jafar,
the villain from Aladdin, like, that's basically what the piece was,
and he was the top counselor to the ruler. But
you've got to remember the rules of the game hadn't solidified,
(07:32):
so most of the pieces didn't move exactly like they
do now. So the Advisor, for instance, could only move
one square diagonally, which made it this much weaker piece
than today's Queen, which can obviously, you know, move any
number of squares in any direction she wants. Yeah, that's interesting.
So how did the weakest piece in the game pretty
much become the strongest because the queen has you know,
(07:53):
better moves than the king, right, I mean, I know
the King can move in any direction just like the
Queen can, but he only moves one square at a time,
which is just I don't know that must that would
piss me off if I Yeah, but he's probably got
gout over sense, you know. So the upset and power
didn't actually happen until after the game had spread west
(08:13):
to Europe in the early eleventh century. And once the
game hit Europe, that's when it shifted from that army
on the battlefield to members of the royal court. And
for a while most of the pieces still moved more
or less according to the original rules, but that changed
sometime in the fourteen hundreds or so when this unknown inventor,
I think it was either in Italy or Spain, introduced
the rules we know today, and the most important revisions
(08:36):
he made were to the Bishop and the Queen, which
until then had been sort of the weakest pieces on
the board except for the ponds and something. These pieces
were less restricted in their movement and a whole lot stronger,
and it was one of those changes that just made
the game so much faster and more interesting to play.
And that makes sense, and I could see how those
would go over well in terms of the actual game play.
(08:57):
But it's a little bit surprising because if you think
about it, make the queen the most powerful piece on
the board, it feels pretty progressive for you know, think
about this was medieval times you're talking about. That's true,
and there were tons of sexist players that did kind
of excuse the change there and said that the strength
was only in her defense of the king. That's when
her power came up. But but the reality is that
(09:19):
queens were getting more powerful on the chessboard at the
same time they were getting more powerful in real life.
So so you think back to the fourteenth and fifteen centuries,
the ladies that were coming to power all over Europe,
where people like Elizabeth First and Mary Tudor and Queen Isabella.
That's pretty cool to see that that would, you know,
be mirrored on the chessboard. But so I actually want
to stick with the chess pieces for just a minute
(09:40):
and talk about how they got these iconic designs that
we're all used to seeing at this point. I mean,
you know, you think about the horsehead knights and the
castle shaped brooks, because obviously, during those centuries of innovation
and development that you were talking about, the game was
really spreading through all different regions and cultures, and there
was actually no standard chess set to play with. I mean,
(10:01):
the basic setup was there. You had a board with
sixty four squares and thirty two pieces, and you know,
I guess they made pretty similar moves, but what those
pieces actually looked like, or how they felt, or even
what they were made of. I mean, all of that
very dramatically depending on where you were playing the game,
and so all of these countless varieties of styles worked
well enough for a while. But you come upon the
(10:24):
nineteenth century and the game has become so popular that
chess clubs and competitions began cropping up all over the world.
So you can imagine it actually got pretty confusing when
players from different cultures would sit down for a match
and then realized that none of the opponent's pieces looked
familiar to them, would be so weird and very strange.
But and it's still just so strange that the game
(10:46):
evolved somewhat similarly in so many places, and that this
was really the big difference. But you fast forward a
bit to eighteen forty nine and there was a British
architect named Nathan Cook who built this standardized set. Now
it was called the Staunton Chess set, and its pieces
are actually the ones that we still know today. So
I'm curious, like, if Nathan Cook made the set, why
(11:08):
is it called the Staunton set? Like who is donton? Yeah,
well you'd think it might be called the Cook Chess set,
but he actually decided to forego that fame and in
favor of practicality. So there was a guy named Howard
Stunton who was a major player in the London chess
scene at the time, and he'd organized these tournaments and
clubs and was really considered one of the best players
(11:28):
in the world. And so Cook knew how respected Staunton
was in this chess community, and so he approached him
and asked if Staunton's name could be used to market
his new designs, and of course Staunton was flattered and
agreed as soon as he saw the pieces, and so
the set was a huge hit with the public, and
really since the nineteen twenties it's actually been the required
(11:49):
set for all worldwide chess organizations. Huh, I didn't realize that.
So what was the revolutionary about the Stunt set? Like
I I get that it became the standard, but why
is that? Exactly? Well, this had a few things going
for it, so for starters, it it wasn't wholly unfamiliar
because Cook had studied a bunch of different popular chest
sets that were in use at the time and use
(12:10):
those common traits really as starting points for his own set,
and then from there he would look to inspiration and
the architecture of Victorian London, which was the city around
him at the time, and also for some reason, from
the ruins of ancient Greece and Rome. And so take
the Night for example, The Night and the Staunton set
is a great example of that influence. Like it's the
(12:31):
only piece in the set that isn't an abstract representation
of something, and instead it looks like a pretty realistic
horse head. And that's because it's pretty clearly inspired by
a sculpture on the east pediment of the Parthenon. So
that carving depicts horses pulling the chariot of the moon,
goddess of Greek mythology, and so that's supposedly what the
Staunton Night is based on, like this horse that drew
(12:54):
the moon across the sky each night, which is such
a weird mishmash of things, right, like Victorian London, you've
got like Greece and Rome because the culture is like,
so what else was Cook doing? All right? Well? I
actually found this breakdown in the Smithsonian of the Staunton set,
and here are a few of the key features. According
(13:16):
to the article, it says, um, while some variation is tolerated,
there are several key distinguishing characteristics that define a set.
As a Staunton, the King is topped with a cross,
and as the tallest piece, it serves as a metric
for the height of the other ones. The Queen is
topped by a crown and a ball, the Bishop has
a split top, and the rook is a squat castle turret.
(13:39):
And so with all of this, Cook really established this
clear and simple language with the forms that he was choosing,
which not only made them easy to recognize, but pretty
cheap to produce as well. And so I'm betting that
all of that together is probably why the Staunton said
is still, you know, really the global standard today. All right, well,
I know we want to jump ahead in the timeline
(13:59):
and talk a little bit about the rise of chess
in Russia, but before we do that, I do want
to run quickly through a little of its history in
the US. And as you might imagine, the game made
its way stateside thanks to European columnists, but despite the
fact that Ben Franklin was a huge chess fan, the
game really didn't catch on until the mid nineteenth century.
And what turned the tide was that this American chess player,
(14:21):
his name was Paul Morphy. He managed to beat all
of Europe's chess champions in this international tournament. It was
the first time this had ever happened. So people's patriotism
just kind of kicked in at that point and it
did its thing, and from then on chess became super
popular in the US. Of course, not everyone was happy
to see the game takeoff. And why is that? I mean,
(14:42):
I read this hilarious old article from this eighteen fifty
nine edition of Scientific American and the author basically treats
chess like the sinister, corrupting influence, almost like it's the
fortnight of its time. And so this is how the
author describes this very real danger of chess. A pernicious
excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over
(15:03):
the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have
been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this,
it may be asked. We answer, chess is a mirror
amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind
a valuable time and might be devoted to nobler requirements,
while it affords no benefits whatever to the body. A
game of chess does not add a single new factor
(15:25):
the mind. It does not excite a single beautiful thought,
nor does it serve a single purpose for polishing and
improving the nobler faculties. You know, those were really the
good old days when the greatest threat facing the youth
of America with the pressure to join a chess club.
When you talk about it all, Well, now that we've
heard from the critics, let's talk a little bit about
some of the game's biggest proponents, which of course are
(15:48):
the Russians. So but before we get to them, let's
take a quick break. You're listening to part time genius
(16:08):
and we're talking about the enduring appeal of one of
the world's oldest games, chess. So well, one thing I
noticed this week is that it's suspiciously large number of
top ranking chess players all hail from Russia or some
other Soviet republic, and that includes chess grandmasters like Anthelie
Karpov Gary Kasparov, And it really made me wonder, like,
why do the Russians have such a dominance for chess. Well,
(16:31):
that's interesting, and so of course was digging into this
in our research for this week. But chess first spread
the Russia along the Persian and Indian trade routes. And
that was way back in the seventh century or so,
and it was popular from the start, but it didn't
really become a national pastime until much later, when we're
talking like the nineteenth century or so. Now, this was
during the Russian Revolution when Lenin and the Bolsheviks took
(16:54):
power and Lennon was a big player and he really
loved the game, and Stalin would be after him. But
the real mastermind behind the country's chess movement was Lennon's
commander of the Soviet Army, this guy named Nicola Kurlenko. Now,
he opened these dedicated chess schools, he organized competitions and
really paved the way for these first state sponsored chess tournaments.
(17:16):
And this was back in So you fast forward a
decade and you've got roughly half a million amateur players
that have signed up for these state chess programs. It's
pretty remarkable how quickly it grew. Yeah, so it sounds
like there's this big push from the state and that's
what sort of kick started Russia's love affair with chess.
But why were all those Soviet leaders and think are
(17:36):
so into chess in the first place. Like, was it
just because it's a strategic game, and and they were
kind of seen as great schemers. You know, I'm guessing
the strategy involved was a big part of the appeal
for them, so that that's probably true. But I also
read this article in Slate that suggested there might have
been a little bit more to it, so I just
will read a little bit of this. The author of
(17:57):
the piece was Chris Beam, and he was described being
the appeal of chess. So he writes the Soviets saw
chess as embodying their revolutionary ideals. It was a game
of skill, and the USSR prided itself on intellectual talents.
It was also cheap, which meant anyone could play it,
and it's back and forth dynamic reflected that dialectical concept
(18:18):
of history espouse by Marxism. You know. Never mind the
irony of playing with imperialist symbols like kings and queens.
That is funny, you know, I have thought about that.
But I know chess is hugely popular in Russia, even
if it no longer has state money behind it. And
there's actually this one famous chess supporter in particularly who
I want to talk about, not only because he's done
(18:40):
a lot to keep the game relevant for Russian citizens,
but also because he's just a super weird guy. His
name is kirsn uh Illium's in off, which I know
I mispronouncing. He was president of the World Chess Federation
from all the way up until just last year, and
that's when he was finally ousted in favor of a
new pres in it, it's a pretty impressive run those
(19:01):
of what makes him such a weird guy. So there
are actually a bunch of things, but honestly they all
kind of hinge on one in particular, which is that
Kirsen claims that he was abducted by aliens, and I'm
just gonna let him explain what happened. And this is
what he said an interview about a decade after the abduction.
It happened on September sev I was taken from my
(19:23):
apartment in Moscow and taken to the spaceship and we
went to some star and after that I asked, please
bring me back because the next day I should be
back and go to the Ukraine. They said, no problem, Kirson,
you have time. Oh no, no problems. I guess he
got napped by some considerate aliens. I mean, not every
abductee is so lucky, is that? Yeah? Usually there's more provings.
(19:46):
These weren't just any aliens. They were the sophisticates that
invented chess. Apparently that's true. You know, I didn't realize
that this was even a theory. So do people really
think chess was created by aliens? Well, at least one
guy does, because in that same interview, Kerson went on
to say, I am not a crazy man. My theory
is that chess comes from space. Why because the same
(20:07):
rules sixty four squares black and white, and the same
rules in Japan and China and Qatar and Mongolia and Africa.
The rules are the same. Why I think maybe it
is from space. I mean, I don't want to challenge
somebody that was in power for that long, but I
have to say his evidence feels a little bit thin
to me. I mean, we just tracked the spread of
(20:27):
chess across different continents, so I feel like jumping straight
to the aliens theory it feels a little off to
me for some reason. So Kirson did leave the door
open for at least one other possibility, and in this
interview with the observer. He admitted that there were actually
two options, and this is how he put it. Each
year archaeologists find evidence of chess in America, India, Japan,
or China played under the same rules from a time
(20:49):
without planes or the internet. Look, the chess board has
sixty four squares and ourselves are made of sixty four pieces.
All this shows that chess comes either from God or
from UFO. So curs. Yeah, it's basically a toss off. Like,
the only thing we know for certain is that chess
wasn't invented by humans. Is such a strange story. I mean,
why even tell people about this? I mean, the aliens
(21:11):
just kind of took him on this joy ride through
the Solar System and then dropped him off in time
for a meeting him. It seems pretty uneventful for what
it could have been. Yeah, but you've got to remember
he remained president of the Chess Federation for another twenty
years after the incident, So I guess the story really
didn't bother people. And as for the trip being uneventful,
there was at least one part that had some real
(21:31):
and lasting consequences. Oh yeah, what what's that? At some
point during the journey the alien suggested to Kirrison that
it would be a really good idea for him to
build this extravagant city dedicated to all things chess, and
so he went home and did that. But he built
an actual chess city. Yeah. So at the time Kirsen
had this second job, he was president of the Republic
(21:53):
of Calmakia, which I guess it is a subject of
the Russian Federation, and using his cloud as leader, Kierson
was able to build his chess city on the east
side of this Buddhist town called Alista, and he went
all out right, like, the city has a chess museum,
this huge open air chess board, it's got a swimming pool,
enough chess sets to host year round tournaments. It's actually
(22:16):
hosted several championships in the year was built, I guess
in But Kirson's real goal was to use Chess City
to boost the popularity of the game so that the
total number of chess players in the world would rise
from six hundred million, which I guess is where it
is approximately now, to a full billion. Wow, I mean,
that seems like a big goal. So what was so
important about hitting a billion players? Apparently that's the number
(22:39):
of players needed to stop aliens from destroying the planet.
I mean, it just gets weirder and weirder. So how
did this guy stay in office for multiple decades? I know,
I I guess he was just really serious about it,
and like, I don't know. I found this interview that
he did with The Independent. This is back in two
thousand and ten, and he kind of just flat out
(23:01):
says that playing chess is the key to preventing this
alien attack. And he writes, above us, they're all looking
at us, and maybe they will get tired of us.
And suddenly he tails off, making dramatic gesture of destruction.
How can we save ourselves from them only through intellect,
concentration and spiritual energy. If a billion people are in
these chess centers playing chess, the world will still have
(23:23):
positive energy. All right, Well, I admit it. I mean,
I'm invested in this now if the fate of the
world is at stake on all this. But I have
to know, did Kirrison get to a billion players? Like,
did the Chess city work? It did not, so and
the whole thing is mostly vacant today and it barely
gets any use. And what's particularly sad about it is
that Kirrison actually cut the town's food subsidies to help
(23:45):
pay for this fifty million dollar complex. So now Chess
City is is really just a monument to the local
government's disregard for its citizens. Yeah, that's kind of a bummer,
But you know, I don't want to dwell on all
these neglectful politicians or even the alien invasions. As weird
as that story was, and I feel like we should
talk about a few chess stories that are a little
more upbeat. What do you think I'm for it? First?
(24:08):
A quick break? Okay, Well, so chess may not be
your best hope for a stemming off this alien division,
(24:28):
but the game still has a whole lot going for it,
Like plenty of studies have shown that playing chess can
improve your focus, it can help you hone your decision
making skills, and of course it's a great way to
strengthen your memory, especially if you play it blindfolded. But
before we get to the mental benefits, let's talk about
some of the more surprising things we found out about
the game, and and maybe we've never noticed before. You know,
(24:50):
one thing that stood out to me is how resilient
the game is. Like it stands up to scrutiny more
than just about any other game out there. You know,
people over the years have tried to I guess like
saw of chess for for decades and decades, but the
game always seems to elude them. I mean, there's always
another move you never considered a new way to win
or even lose at chess. And remember that's true even
(25:12):
after we built computers specifically designed to decode the game
and really select the best possible move for millions and
millions of different scenarios. Isn't that exactly what it means
to solve chess? Like, if we're able to compute every
possible sequence of moves and counter moves and all these
different forms of match can take, then isn't the game
(25:32):
effectively solved? Well, I mean that's actually the thing, because
even if you had the most powerful computer in the world,
it still wouldn't be able to calculate all the unique
games that could be played. And this just seems unimaginable,
but the possibilities just scale up way too quickly. So
for example, after both players have moved one time in
a game of chess, there are four hundred possible boards
(25:55):
set ups, but after the second of the turns, the
number of possible games shoots up to just under two
hundred thousand. Now after three moves there are one hundred
and twenty one million possible outcomes, and so on and
so on until you get to the current best estimate
for the total possible number of chess games, which is
(26:15):
a staggering ten to the one hundred and twentieth power.
So to put that number in perspective just a little bit,
there was a great breakdown that I found from Popular Science,
and here's what it says. There are only ten to
the fifteen total hairs on all the human heads in
the world, ten to the twenty third grains of sand
on Earth, and about ten to the eighty one atoms
(26:36):
in the universe. The number of typical chess games is
many times as great as all those numbers multiplied together.
An impressive feet for thirty two wooden pieces lined up
on a board. That is unbelievable. You know, uh, when
you look back at the kind of like endless complexity
of the game, you know it's really no wonder that
(26:57):
it gives our brains such a workout. And actually read
the study from a while back that found that experts
who played chess actually used both sides of the brain
while solving chess problems, and not just the analytical right side.
Oh wow, but this only happens and I'm guessing like
really experienced players, that's right. So the researchers gathered eight
international chess players and then eight novice players, and then
(27:19):
they took fm r I brain scans while the subjects
worked their way through two different tests. And first they
had to identify geometrical shapes and then they had to
determine whether or not the pieces on the chessboard were
in a check situation. And the results from these tests
were really unexpected because they showed that while the novice
players had only used the left side of the brain
to process this task, the expert players had used both
(27:41):
sides of the brain. So this is what the lead
researcher explained. Quote. Once the usual brain structures were engaged,
the experts utilized additional complementary structures in the other half
to execute processes in parallel. Wow. So did this dual
processing improve the expert's performance at all? Yeah, it actually
made them much quicker at solving the chess problems. The
novices were, but it is worth noting that the parallel
(28:03):
processing only occurred during the chess problems and not during
that geometry test. So it really seems like all the
extra practice that the experts had given their brains was
this nice boost, but only when it came to chess.
You know, it's interesting to hear that, because I was
actually reading about how playing a lot of chess can
actually be a detriment to players sometimes, like rather than
being beneficial to them. And how's that. Well, it's because
(28:27):
of something called the einste Long effect, which Scientific American
describes as the brains tendency to stick with solutions it
already knows, rather than look for potentially superior ones. So
scientists researching this effect really love using chess players as subjects,
and that's because they provide a really clear way to
see the effect in action. So as an example of this,
(28:49):
some studies present master chess players with a chessboard that
has two possible solutions. You've got this well known maneuver
that can win the game in five moves and a
less common but actually much faster, three step solution. So
the players were told to win the match in as
few moves as possible, but once they had spotted this
(29:09):
familiar five steps strategy, they actually seemed unable to recognize
the much quicker solution. And it wasn't that the three
step move was really obscure or anything like that, but
because those same players were actually presented with a similar
setup where the three step move was the only way
to win, and then in that scenario, the players recognized
the strategy right away. So in that first experiment, it
(29:30):
really was the einstell Lung effect at work. And you know,
the players weren't able to see any of the other
options because they had this cognitive bias for the move
they knew best. That's really fascinating. But I also like
that even chess masters can learn something to do better
the next time around, because like, there are that many possibilities.
Like I actually think that's why so many schools invest
in their own chess programs. It's one of those rare
(29:51):
hobbies that can boost your cognitive ability well also teaching
you these coping skills like how to win or lose gracefully.
Although I do have to say the one time my
son got hit at school, it was in his first
grade chess club. He came home with dirt on his face,
and I was like, Henry, how that happened? And he
kind of gleefully said, oh, I took the second grader
as queen, so he kicked me in the face. For Henry,
(30:16):
it seems like he was okay with that. He'd rather
win t face. Oh. You know, and there are so
many places where they're teaching it really young to kids,
like in Armenia, for instance, Chess is actually a required
subject for every kid who's six years and older. And
that's kind of awesome, even though it probably means the
poor Matt teachers wind up pulling double duty and teaching
chess as well. Right, Yeah, But I have a feeling
(30:37):
it's worth it to them anyway, because, you know, as
one Armenian teacher explained, Chess trains logical thinking. It teaches
how to make decisions, trains memories, strengthens willpower, motivates children
to win, and teaches them how to deal with defeat.
It's the only school subject that can do all of this. Oh,
I really love that idea. Well, how about we knock
(30:58):
out this fact off and and then get Tristan to
show some of his opening moves. He's been perfecting. So
for a while now, we've known that elite athletes tend
to live longer than the rest of us, and that's
really not the big of a surprise, But research now
shows that elite chess players also have a survival advantage
(31:20):
over the general population. A team of Australian researchers looked
at players from twenty eight countries and specifically over a
thousand players who reached international chess grandmaster status over a
period of nearly seven years, and then they compared the
survival data of those people to fifteen thousand Olympic medalists,
and not only did they find that both groups had
significant survival advantages over the general population, but that the
(31:44):
difference between the two was not even statistically significant. Oh wow,
that's pretty interesting. Alright, Well, years ago I remember reading
about how, you know, before the age of the Internet,
people used to play chess by mail or what's called
correspondence chess. So you'd make a move, put that move
in the mail, and then your opponent would do the same,
and you go back and forth and games could take
years to play. And actually this kind of sounds fun
(32:07):
to be able to do this with a friend who lives,
you know, across the country or whatever. But what surprising
is that even today, the US Chess Federation estimates they
have about three thousand members still playing correspondence chess. Don't now,
of course, some play by email, and there are even
tournaments for correspondence chess with rules like each player is
given thirty days of reflection time over ten moves, you know,
(32:29):
to really speed things up. I guess. So I was
reading recently about how chess became popular among captured or
wounded soldiers during World War Two, and you know, the
rules of war is so interesting to me sometimes, you
remember learning about the Geneva Conventions, which are often thought
of today is sort of the way war crimes are defined.
But the Third Convention set out how prisoners of war
(32:51):
would be treated, so in addition to how prisoners would
be treated physically, it also had sections on recreation and
stated that the captors should encourage the intellect show diversions
and sports organized by prisoners of war, which makes it
not that surprising that a quiet game that could take
hours of days to play and was understood around the
world could take off at a time like this. So
organizations like the Red Cross would even send chess sets
(33:14):
around the world to prisoners where there were even organized
chess tournaments and were so weird. But I do think
that one aspect is pretty cool. Yeah, all right, we
mentioned earlier the similarities between elite athletes and chess players. Well,
did you know that the World Chess Federation actually conducts
drug tests and they do this pretty routinely, and this
is because there's a push for it to be part
(33:36):
of the Olympics and so this is actually required by
the IOC. But there's some interesting studies around the effects
of you know, so called smart drugs on the ability
to play chess. Now, specifically drugs like modafinil and riddle
and so Madefanil is a drug we've talked about actually
in an episode. I guess it's been quite a while,
(33:56):
but it's commonly used to help with sleep disorders, and
riddlin is commonly used to treat things like a d
h D. And the findings from some of the studies
on these players was really interesting because weirdly, players on
these smart drugs were often losing more games than those
who were not taking these but this was actually because
the players on them, We're taking more time per move
(34:19):
and just running out of time. So once they took
the time out as a factor, they found that these
players were actually playing better. So it's one of the
researchers put it, these substances may be able to convert
fast and shallow thinkers into deeper, but somewhat slower thinkers. Huh,
that's really interesting. Well, we talked about how long chess
has been around, and I was reading about some of
(34:40):
the oldest strategy books on chess, and this one from
way back in one had some pretty awesome advice. The
book suggests strategies such as playing with your back to
the sun. Why because that could blind your opponent. It
also suggests that if you're playing by a fire at night,
you should use your hand to create a shadow over
the board so that your opponent won't be able to
see his pieces clearly. Wow. You know, I had a
(35:03):
couple of facts about weird chess tournaments and a couple
of other things. But looking over there at Tristan and
seeing the size of the smirk on his face, I've
never seen him smirk that big because I know he
loves this fact, because he loves to play dirty. Whenever
he competes, he plays so dirty, such a dirty guy.
But anyway, I'm gonna have to stop us there and
give you today's trophy, Mango, thank you so much. Well,
(35:26):
all right, well, if you've got any great stories about
chess or any facts about chess that we may have
left out today, we always love to hear those from you.
If you can email us part Time Genius and How
Stuff Works dot com, or you can always hit us
up on Facebook or Twitter. But from Gabe, Tristan, Mango
and me, thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening.
(35:55):
Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works
and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
does the exact producer thing. Gabe Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(36:17):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, and if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Do we do we forget Jason?
Jason who
I guess, well, well, what's that mango. So I was
reading the story about the chess player Bobby Fisher this week.
This is when he was young, and I guess he'd
won a US championship at the time, so he was famous,
but he was also just a kid, and he didn't
have that much money, and you know, he's kind of
a recluse, right. Actually I had read that he used
to play secretly online like later in his life, and
(00:23):
there was always so much buzz when somebody thought they
noticed his style of play and and and thought they
were onto and that they discovered that it was him. Yeah,
I feel like you'd see that pop up from like
Japan or Malaysia or wherever. There are these people who
were just like so excited to have played Bobby Fisher,
think they've played Bobby Fisher. But so anyway, he's young
at this time. He wants to go see a movie
and he doesn't have money for it, so he walks
(00:45):
into the Chess and Checker Club of New York just
to pick up a few extra bucks. I guess, to
hustle it, right, And I guess at the time it
was this uh, this large smoke filled crowded pool hall
type place but for chess, and Bobby's totally in disguise.
He's got a k he's got his collar off, sunglasses
and a hat. He looks ridiculous, but he does not
want to be noticed. So he asked a friend, like,
(01:07):
do you think you can just get me into a game?
And a friend asked the owner across the bar. And
remember it's smoke filled and like, Bobby's in disguise, So
the owner goes tell him, no, he's just a kid.
The hustlers will eat him alive, and so like, Bobby
Fisher is furious and he just stomps out, and this
is all reported. This is a real story. But when
his friend tells the owner who it was, that it
(01:29):
was Bobby Fisher who wanted a game, like, apparently the
whole crowd at the place has this audible grown and
this one guy goes, oh, man, I would have paid
hundreds of dollars just to sit across from Bobby Fisher
on a chessboard. Anyway, So I don't know much about chess,
but I do love stories about it. And we're gonna
get into the most dangerous styles of chess. How the
(01:50):
game moved from the battlefield to the royal court, and
even why getting a billion people to play chess might
be our best hope to keep away aliens. Let's dig
in the their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:23):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Manues Ticketer and on the other side of
the soundproof class writing down a list of chess openings
he's trying to master. Actually, can you read what he's
got on the white board over there, Mango, Yeah, he's
got the hillbilly attack, the monkeys burn, Hippopotamus defense. There's
something called the toilet variation. He's written. Definitely, Yeah, it
(02:46):
definitely says toilet variation. Well, those are all real chess
opening moves. But that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil,
who also happens to be a future chess master, not
a current chess master, but I'm confident of future chess man. Yeah,
he can do anything he puts his mind too. But
you know, chess is one of those things I used
to love as a kid, Like I played it on
my computer, we used to play it with relatives, but
(03:09):
I never got good at it, Like I'm probably as
good as I was in second grade, but I do
love like movies and books that involved it. I I
read this great book last year. It's really slim. It's
called The Chess Game and it's by the same author
that wrote The Hotel in Budapest. And you know, I
don't understand any of the chess strategy, but I was
(03:29):
totally enamored with how the main character plays these games
of chess in his head. Yeah, I mean, like that's
a real skill. I had heard about these two Silicon
Vallet guys who met for the first time. I want
to say it was Peter thiel And and somebody equally famous.
And the way the first time they met, they sat
down at a restaurant and one of them said, I
heard you like chess, and then called out an opening
(03:51):
play and they actually played a full game on an
imaginary board in their heads. Like just these two chess
savants would be the weirdest conversation to like, wait a
table on like just hearing people call out letters and numbers.
But you know what's crazy to me is, you know,
one of our friends, Dad's was a chess chance in Ecuador,
(04:13):
and there's these photos of him playing like twelve matches
at a time, just moving from board to board to
board and making moves super quick. And and then there's
like blindfold chest, which is kind of like what you're
talking about. But you know what's weird is that a
lot of people used to think that playing chess while
blindfolded can actually lead to brain damage, brain dampisode. So
why do they think that. Apparently it's just so exhausting
(04:36):
to keep track of all those pieces while also planning
out your next moves. And in fact, the Soviet Union
completely banned blindfold chess in because of that perceived danger.
And and actually one Russian player died during his attempt
to break the world record for a number of opponents
played wild blindfolded. What you're saying, people combine those things
like they blindfold themselves then play multiple games simultaneously. Do
(05:00):
people still do this? Yeah? And actually a new world
record was set less than two years ago. So this
chess grandmaster, his name's Timore Garyev, and he played forty
eight games of blindfold chess simultaneously over the course of
the three hours. Yeah, he actually won eight percent of
those games. And it's that ridiculous. Along the way, he
(05:23):
was actually riding an exercise bike the whole time, and
in the end he peddled apparently about fifty miles. Good lord,
I mean, I love that they just added the exercise
bike because they're playing forty eight simultaneous blindfold games. Wasn't enough.
I'm thinking though, maybe after Tristan masters the Hippopotamus defense,
that he's going to get on this blindfold chess train.
(05:45):
We'll see. Probably. Well, anyway, for today's show, we're going
to cover chess, so we'll we'll take a deep dive
into the history of the game, how the rules developed,
and why the iconic pieces look the way they do.
I think I've always been curious about this. And then
a little later we'll try to figure out why Russians
are so good at chess, as well as why computers
might be the best players of all. And now, of
(06:05):
course we'll take a look at how playing chess can
affect your brain and just what kind of smart it
actually makes you. Anyway, that's right, so let's jump right
in and talk about the history of chess, because it
actually goes quite a ways back. So most historians believe
in early version of the game was invented in India
about fifteen hundred years ago, and the first known mention
of anything involving chess appears in a text from five
(06:28):
and then about a century later, the game made its
way to Persia, where a few different variations involved. So
the exact rules of the game and the appearances of
the pieces hadn't been formalized at that time, but the
pieces did have these established identities that aren't that dissimilar
from what we're used today. So one of the main
differences was that the game didn't lay out a royal
court like it does. It was more of a battlefield
(06:50):
back then, with the king being the only piece shared
between the ancient version and the modern version. I'm curious, like,
do do you know what the other pieces were in
the old battlefield version? Yeah, so instead of ponds you
had these infantry pieces. Nights were cavalry, and and bishops
were elephants. I think our rooks were actually chariots as well.
And what about the what about the queen? Was the
(07:10):
queen part of the game at that point. That's a
different story. I mean, well, we'll get to that in
a minute, but the short answer is that the piece
would later become the Queen. It was actually called the
vizier or or the advisor. So if you think about Jafar,
the villain from Aladdin, like, that's basically what the piece was,
and he was the top counselor to the ruler. But
you've got to remember the rules of the game hadn't solidified,
(07:32):
so most of the pieces didn't move exactly like they
do now. So the Advisor, for instance, could only move
one square diagonally, which made it this much weaker piece
than today's Queen, which can obviously, you know, move any
number of squares in any direction she wants. Yeah, that's interesting.
So how did the weakest piece in the game pretty
much become the strongest because the queen has you know,
(07:53):
better moves than the king, right, I mean, I know
the King can move in any direction just like the
Queen can, but he only moves one square at a time,
which is just I don't know that must that would
piss me off if I Yeah, but he's probably got
gout over sense, you know. So the upset and power
didn't actually happen until after the game had spread west
(08:13):
to Europe in the early eleventh century. And once the
game hit Europe, that's when it shifted from that army
on the battlefield to members of the royal court. And
for a while most of the pieces still moved more
or less according to the original rules, but that changed
sometime in the fourteen hundreds or so when this unknown inventor,
I think it was either in Italy or Spain, introduced
the rules we know today, and the most important revisions
(08:36):
he made were to the Bishop and the Queen, which
until then had been sort of the weakest pieces on
the board except for the ponds and something. These pieces
were less restricted in their movement and a whole lot stronger,
and it was one of those changes that just made
the game so much faster and more interesting to play.
And that makes sense, and I could see how those
would go over well in terms of the actual game play.
(08:57):
But it's a little bit surprising because if you think
about it, make the queen the most powerful piece on
the board, it feels pretty progressive for you know, think
about this was medieval times you're talking about. That's true,
and there were tons of sexist players that did kind
of excuse the change there and said that the strength
was only in her defense of the king. That's when
her power came up. But but the reality is that
(09:19):
queens were getting more powerful on the chessboard at the
same time they were getting more powerful in real life.
So so you think back to the fourteenth and fifteen centuries,
the ladies that were coming to power all over Europe,
where people like Elizabeth First and Mary Tudor and Queen Isabella.
That's pretty cool to see that that would, you know,
be mirrored on the chessboard. But so I actually want
to stick with the chess pieces for just a minute
(09:40):
and talk about how they got these iconic designs that
we're all used to seeing at this point. I mean,
you know, you think about the horsehead knights and the
castle shaped brooks, because obviously, during those centuries of innovation
and development that you were talking about, the game was
really spreading through all different regions and cultures, and there
was actually no standard chess set to play with. I mean,
(10:01):
the basic setup was there. You had a board with
sixty four squares and thirty two pieces, and you know,
I guess they made pretty similar moves, but what those
pieces actually looked like, or how they felt, or even
what they were made of. I mean, all of that
very dramatically depending on where you were playing the game,
and so all of these countless varieties of styles worked
well enough for a while. But you come upon the
(10:24):
nineteenth century and the game has become so popular that
chess clubs and competitions began cropping up all over the world.
So you can imagine it actually got pretty confusing when
players from different cultures would sit down for a match
and then realized that none of the opponent's pieces looked
familiar to them, would be so weird and very strange.
But and it's still just so strange that the game
(10:46):
evolved somewhat similarly in so many places, and that this
was really the big difference. But you fast forward a
bit to eighteen forty nine and there was a British
architect named Nathan Cook who built this standardized set. Now
it was called the Staunton Chess set, and its pieces
are actually the ones that we still know today. So
I'm curious, like, if Nathan Cook made the set, why
(11:08):
is it called the Staunton set? Like who is donton? Yeah,
well you'd think it might be called the Cook Chess set,
but he actually decided to forego that fame and in
favor of practicality. So there was a guy named Howard
Stunton who was a major player in the London chess
scene at the time, and he'd organized these tournaments and
clubs and was really considered one of the best players
(11:28):
in the world. And so Cook knew how respected Staunton
was in this chess community, and so he approached him
and asked if Staunton's name could be used to market
his new designs, and of course Staunton was flattered and
agreed as soon as he saw the pieces, and so
the set was a huge hit with the public, and
really since the nineteen twenties it's actually been the required
(11:49):
set for all worldwide chess organizations. Huh, I didn't realize that.
So what was the revolutionary about the Stunt set? Like
I I get that it became the standard, but why
is that? Exactly? Well, this had a few things going
for it, so for starters, it it wasn't wholly unfamiliar
because Cook had studied a bunch of different popular chest
sets that were in use at the time and use
(12:10):
those common traits really as starting points for his own set,
and then from there he would look to inspiration and
the architecture of Victorian London, which was the city around
him at the time, and also for some reason, from
the ruins of ancient Greece and Rome. And so take
the Night for example, The Night and the Staunton set
is a great example of that influence. Like it's the
(12:31):
only piece in the set that isn't an abstract representation
of something, and instead it looks like a pretty realistic
horse head. And that's because it's pretty clearly inspired by
a sculpture on the east pediment of the Parthenon. So
that carving depicts horses pulling the chariot of the moon,
goddess of Greek mythology, and so that's supposedly what the
Staunton Night is based on, like this horse that drew
(12:54):
the moon across the sky each night, which is such
a weird mishmash of things, right, like Victorian London, you've
got like Greece and Rome because the culture is like,
so what else was Cook doing? All right? Well? I
actually found this breakdown in the Smithsonian of the Staunton set,
and here are a few of the key features. According
(13:16):
to the article, it says, um, while some variation is tolerated,
there are several key distinguishing characteristics that define a set.
As a Staunton, the King is topped with a cross,
and as the tallest piece, it serves as a metric
for the height of the other ones. The Queen is
topped by a crown and a ball, the Bishop has
a split top, and the rook is a squat castle turret.
(13:39):
And so with all of this, Cook really established this
clear and simple language with the forms that he was choosing,
which not only made them easy to recognize, but pretty
cheap to produce as well. And so I'm betting that
all of that together is probably why the Staunton said
is still, you know, really the global standard today. All right, well,
I know we want to jump ahead in the timeline
(13:59):
and talk a little bit about the rise of chess
in Russia, but before we do that, I do want
to run quickly through a little of its history in
the US. And as you might imagine, the game made
its way stateside thanks to European columnists, but despite the
fact that Ben Franklin was a huge chess fan, the
game really didn't catch on until the mid nineteenth century.
And what turned the tide was that this American chess player,
(14:21):
his name was Paul Morphy. He managed to beat all
of Europe's chess champions in this international tournament. It was
the first time this had ever happened. So people's patriotism
just kind of kicked in at that point and it
did its thing, and from then on chess became super
popular in the US. Of course, not everyone was happy
to see the game takeoff. And why is that? I mean,
(14:42):
I read this hilarious old article from this eighteen fifty
nine edition of Scientific American and the author basically treats
chess like the sinister, corrupting influence, almost like it's the
fortnight of its time. And so this is how the
author describes this very real danger of chess. A pernicious
excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over
(15:03):
the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have
been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this,
it may be asked. We answer, chess is a mirror
amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind
a valuable time and might be devoted to nobler requirements,
while it affords no benefits whatever to the body. A
game of chess does not add a single new factor
(15:25):
the mind. It does not excite a single beautiful thought,
nor does it serve a single purpose for polishing and
improving the nobler faculties. You know, those were really the
good old days when the greatest threat facing the youth
of America with the pressure to join a chess club.
When you talk about it all, Well, now that we've
heard from the critics, let's talk a little bit about
some of the game's biggest proponents, which of course are
(15:48):
the Russians. So but before we get to them, let's
take a quick break. You're listening to part time genius
(16:08):
and we're talking about the enduring appeal of one of
the world's oldest games, chess. So well, one thing I
noticed this week is that it's suspiciously large number of
top ranking chess players all hail from Russia or some
other Soviet republic, and that includes chess grandmasters like Anthelie
Karpov Gary Kasparov, And it really made me wonder, like,
why do the Russians have such a dominance for chess. Well,
(16:31):
that's interesting, and so of course was digging into this
in our research for this week. But chess first spread
the Russia along the Persian and Indian trade routes. And
that was way back in the seventh century or so,
and it was popular from the start, but it didn't
really become a national pastime until much later, when we're
talking like the nineteenth century or so. Now, this was
during the Russian Revolution when Lenin and the Bolsheviks took
(16:54):
power and Lennon was a big player and he really
loved the game, and Stalin would be after him. But
the real mastermind behind the country's chess movement was Lennon's
commander of the Soviet Army, this guy named Nicola Kurlenko. Now,
he opened these dedicated chess schools, he organized competitions and
really paved the way for these first state sponsored chess tournaments.
(17:16):
And this was back in So you fast forward a
decade and you've got roughly half a million amateur players
that have signed up for these state chess programs. It's
pretty remarkable how quickly it grew. Yeah, so it sounds
like there's this big push from the state and that's
what sort of kick started Russia's love affair with chess.
But why were all those Soviet leaders and think are
(17:36):
so into chess in the first place. Like, was it
just because it's a strategic game, and and they were
kind of seen as great schemers. You know, I'm guessing
the strategy involved was a big part of the appeal
for them, so that that's probably true. But I also
read this article in Slate that suggested there might have
been a little bit more to it, so I just
will read a little bit of this. The author of
(17:57):
the piece was Chris Beam, and he was described being
the appeal of chess. So he writes the Soviets saw
chess as embodying their revolutionary ideals. It was a game
of skill, and the USSR prided itself on intellectual talents.
It was also cheap, which meant anyone could play it,
and it's back and forth dynamic reflected that dialectical concept
(18:18):
of history espouse by Marxism. You know. Never mind the
irony of playing with imperialist symbols like kings and queens.
That is funny, you know, I have thought about that.
But I know chess is hugely popular in Russia, even
if it no longer has state money behind it. And
there's actually this one famous chess supporter in particularly who
I want to talk about, not only because he's done
(18:40):
a lot to keep the game relevant for Russian citizens,
but also because he's just a super weird guy. His
name is kirsn uh Illium's in off, which I know
I mispronouncing. He was president of the World Chess Federation
from all the way up until just last year, and
that's when he was finally ousted in favor of a
new pres in it, it's a pretty impressive run those
(19:01):
of what makes him such a weird guy. So there
are actually a bunch of things, but honestly they all
kind of hinge on one in particular, which is that
Kirsen claims that he was abducted by aliens, and I'm
just gonna let him explain what happened. And this is
what he said an interview about a decade after the abduction.
It happened on September sev I was taken from my
(19:23):
apartment in Moscow and taken to the spaceship and we
went to some star and after that I asked, please
bring me back because the next day I should be
back and go to the Ukraine. They said, no problem, Kirson,
you have time. Oh no, no problems. I guess he
got napped by some considerate aliens. I mean, not every
abductee is so lucky, is that? Yeah? Usually there's more provings.
(19:46):
These weren't just any aliens. They were the sophisticates that
invented chess. Apparently that's true. You know, I didn't realize
that this was even a theory. So do people really
think chess was created by aliens? Well, at least one
guy does, because in that same interview, Kerson went on
to say, I am not a crazy man. My theory
is that chess comes from space. Why because the same
(20:07):
rules sixty four squares black and white, and the same
rules in Japan and China and Qatar and Mongolia and Africa.
The rules are the same. Why I think maybe it
is from space. I mean, I don't want to challenge
somebody that was in power for that long, but I
have to say his evidence feels a little bit thin
to me. I mean, we just tracked the spread of
(20:27):
chess across different continents, so I feel like jumping straight
to the aliens theory it feels a little off to
me for some reason. So Kirson did leave the door
open for at least one other possibility, and in this
interview with the observer. He admitted that there were actually
two options, and this is how he put it. Each
year archaeologists find evidence of chess in America, India, Japan,
or China played under the same rules from a time
(20:49):
without planes or the internet. Look, the chess board has
sixty four squares and ourselves are made of sixty four pieces.
All this shows that chess comes either from God or
from UFO. So curs. Yeah, it's basically a toss off. Like,
the only thing we know for certain is that chess
wasn't invented by humans. Is such a strange story. I mean,
why even tell people about this? I mean, the aliens
(21:11):
just kind of took him on this joy ride through
the Solar System and then dropped him off in time
for a meeting him. It seems pretty uneventful for what
it could have been. Yeah, but you've got to remember
he remained president of the Chess Federation for another twenty
years after the incident, So I guess the story really
didn't bother people. And as for the trip being uneventful,
there was at least one part that had some real
(21:31):
and lasting consequences. Oh yeah, what what's that? At some
point during the journey the alien suggested to Kirrison that
it would be a really good idea for him to
build this extravagant city dedicated to all things chess, and
so he went home and did that. But he built
an actual chess city. Yeah. So at the time Kirsen
had this second job, he was president of the Republic
(21:53):
of Calmakia, which I guess it is a subject of
the Russian Federation, and using his cloud as leader, Kierson
was able to build his chess city on the east
side of this Buddhist town called Alista, and he went
all out right, like, the city has a chess museum,
this huge open air chess board, it's got a swimming pool,
enough chess sets to host year round tournaments. It's actually
(22:16):
hosted several championships in the year was built, I guess
in But Kirson's real goal was to use Chess City
to boost the popularity of the game so that the
total number of chess players in the world would rise
from six hundred million, which I guess is where it
is approximately now, to a full billion. Wow, I mean,
that seems like a big goal. So what was so
important about hitting a billion players? Apparently that's the number
(22:39):
of players needed to stop aliens from destroying the planet.
I mean, it just gets weirder and weirder. So how
did this guy stay in office for multiple decades? I know,
I I guess he was just really serious about it,
and like, I don't know. I found this interview that
he did with The Independent. This is back in two
thousand and ten, and he kind of just flat out
(23:01):
says that playing chess is the key to preventing this
alien attack. And he writes, above us, they're all looking
at us, and maybe they will get tired of us.
And suddenly he tails off, making dramatic gesture of destruction.
How can we save ourselves from them only through intellect,
concentration and spiritual energy. If a billion people are in
these chess centers playing chess, the world will still have
(23:23):
positive energy. All right, Well, I admit it. I mean,
I'm invested in this now if the fate of the
world is at stake on all this. But I have
to know, did Kirrison get to a billion players? Like,
did the Chess city work? It did not, so and
the whole thing is mostly vacant today and it barely
gets any use. And what's particularly sad about it is
that Kirrison actually cut the town's food subsidies to help
(23:45):
pay for this fifty million dollar complex. So now Chess
City is is really just a monument to the local
government's disregard for its citizens. Yeah, that's kind of a bummer,
But you know, I don't want to dwell on all
these neglectful politicians or even the alien invasions. As weird
as that story was, and I feel like we should
talk about a few chess stories that are a little
more upbeat. What do you think I'm for it? First?
(24:08):
A quick break? Okay, Well, so chess may not be
your best hope for a stemming off this alien division,
(24:28):
but the game still has a whole lot going for it,
Like plenty of studies have shown that playing chess can
improve your focus, it can help you hone your decision
making skills, and of course it's a great way to
strengthen your memory, especially if you play it blindfolded. But
before we get to the mental benefits, let's talk about
some of the more surprising things we found out about
the game, and and maybe we've never noticed before. You know,
(24:50):
one thing that stood out to me is how resilient
the game is. Like it stands up to scrutiny more
than just about any other game out there. You know,
people over the years have tried to I guess like
saw of chess for for decades and decades, but the
game always seems to elude them. I mean, there's always
another move you never considered a new way to win
or even lose at chess. And remember that's true even
(25:12):
after we built computers specifically designed to decode the game
and really select the best possible move for millions and
millions of different scenarios. Isn't that exactly what it means
to solve chess? Like, if we're able to compute every
possible sequence of moves and counter moves and all these
different forms of match can take, then isn't the game
(25:32):
effectively solved? Well, I mean that's actually the thing, because
even if you had the most powerful computer in the world,
it still wouldn't be able to calculate all the unique
games that could be played. And this just seems unimaginable,
but the possibilities just scale up way too quickly. So
for example, after both players have moved one time in
a game of chess, there are four hundred possible boards
(25:55):
set ups, but after the second of the turns, the
number of possible games shoots up to just under two
hundred thousand. Now after three moves there are one hundred
and twenty one million possible outcomes, and so on and
so on until you get to the current best estimate
for the total possible number of chess games, which is
(26:15):
a staggering ten to the one hundred and twentieth power.
So to put that number in perspective just a little bit,
there was a great breakdown that I found from Popular Science,
and here's what it says. There are only ten to
the fifteen total hairs on all the human heads in
the world, ten to the twenty third grains of sand
on Earth, and about ten to the eighty one atoms
(26:36):
in the universe. The number of typical chess games is
many times as great as all those numbers multiplied together.
An impressive feet for thirty two wooden pieces lined up
on a board. That is unbelievable. You know, uh, when
you look back at the kind of like endless complexity
of the game, you know it's really no wonder that
(26:57):
it gives our brains such a workout. And actually read
the study from a while back that found that experts
who played chess actually used both sides of the brain
while solving chess problems, and not just the analytical right side.
Oh wow, but this only happens and I'm guessing like
really experienced players, that's right. So the researchers gathered eight
international chess players and then eight novice players, and then
(27:19):
they took fm r I brain scans while the subjects
worked their way through two different tests. And first they
had to identify geometrical shapes and then they had to
determine whether or not the pieces on the chessboard were
in a check situation. And the results from these tests
were really unexpected because they showed that while the novice
players had only used the left side of the brain
to process this task, the expert players had used both
(27:41):
sides of the brain. So this is what the lead
researcher explained. Quote. Once the usual brain structures were engaged,
the experts utilized additional complementary structures in the other half
to execute processes in parallel. Wow. So did this dual
processing improve the expert's performance at all? Yeah, it actually
made them much quicker at solving the chess problems. The
novices were, but it is worth noting that the parallel
(28:03):
processing only occurred during the chess problems and not during
that geometry test. So it really seems like all the
extra practice that the experts had given their brains was
this nice boost, but only when it came to chess.
You know, it's interesting to hear that, because I was
actually reading about how playing a lot of chess can
actually be a detriment to players sometimes, like rather than
being beneficial to them. And how's that. Well, it's because
(28:27):
of something called the einste Long effect, which Scientific American
describes as the brains tendency to stick with solutions it
already knows, rather than look for potentially superior ones. So
scientists researching this effect really love using chess players as subjects,
and that's because they provide a really clear way to
see the effect in action. So as an example of this,
(28:49):
some studies present master chess players with a chessboard that
has two possible solutions. You've got this well known maneuver
that can win the game in five moves and a
less common but actually much faster, three step solution. So
the players were told to win the match in as
few moves as possible, but once they had spotted this
(29:09):
familiar five steps strategy, they actually seemed unable to recognize
the much quicker solution. And it wasn't that the three
step move was really obscure or anything like that, but
because those same players were actually presented with a similar
setup where the three step move was the only way
to win, and then in that scenario, the players recognized
the strategy right away. So in that first experiment, it
(29:30):
really was the einstell Lung effect at work. And you know,
the players weren't able to see any of the other
options because they had this cognitive bias for the move
they knew best. That's really fascinating. But I also like
that even chess masters can learn something to do better
the next time around, because like, there are that many possibilities.
Like I actually think that's why so many schools invest
in their own chess programs. It's one of those rare
(29:51):
hobbies that can boost your cognitive ability well also teaching
you these coping skills like how to win or lose gracefully.
Although I do have to say the one time my
son got hit at school, it was in his first
grade chess club. He came home with dirt on his face,
and I was like, Henry, how that happened? And he
kind of gleefully said, oh, I took the second grader
as queen, so he kicked me in the face. For Henry,
(30:16):
it seems like he was okay with that. He'd rather
win t face. Oh. You know, and there are so
many places where they're teaching it really young to kids,
like in Armenia, for instance, Chess is actually a required
subject for every kid who's six years and older. And
that's kind of awesome, even though it probably means the
poor Matt teachers wind up pulling double duty and teaching
chess as well. Right, Yeah, But I have a feeling
(30:37):
it's worth it to them anyway, because, you know, as
one Armenian teacher explained, Chess trains logical thinking. It teaches
how to make decisions, trains memories, strengthens willpower, motivates children
to win, and teaches them how to deal with defeat.
It's the only school subject that can do all of this. Oh,
I really love that idea. Well, how about we knock
(30:58):
out this fact off and and then get Tristan to
show some of his opening moves. He's been perfecting. So
for a while now, we've known that elite athletes tend
to live longer than the rest of us, and that's
really not the big of a surprise, But research now
shows that elite chess players also have a survival advantage
(31:20):
over the general population. A team of Australian researchers looked
at players from twenty eight countries and specifically over a
thousand players who reached international chess grandmaster status over a
period of nearly seven years, and then they compared the
survival data of those people to fifteen thousand Olympic medalists,
and not only did they find that both groups had
significant survival advantages over the general population, but that the
(31:44):
difference between the two was not even statistically significant. Oh wow,
that's pretty interesting. Alright, Well, years ago I remember reading
about how, you know, before the age of the Internet,
people used to play chess by mail or what's called
correspondence chess. So you'd make a move, put that move
in the mail, and then your opponent would do the same,
and you go back and forth and games could take
years to play. And actually this kind of sounds fun
(32:07):
to be able to do this with a friend who lives,
you know, across the country or whatever. But what surprising
is that even today, the US Chess Federation estimates they
have about three thousand members still playing correspondence chess. Don't now,
of course, some play by email, and there are even
tournaments for correspondence chess with rules like each player is
given thirty days of reflection time over ten moves, you know,
(32:29):
to really speed things up. I guess. So I was
reading recently about how chess became popular among captured or
wounded soldiers during World War Two, and you know, the
rules of war is so interesting to me sometimes, you
remember learning about the Geneva Conventions, which are often thought
of today is sort of the way war crimes are defined.
But the Third Convention set out how prisoners of war
(32:51):
would be treated, so in addition to how prisoners would
be treated physically, it also had sections on recreation and
stated that the captors should encourage the intellect show diversions
and sports organized by prisoners of war, which makes it
not that surprising that a quiet game that could take
hours of days to play and was understood around the
world could take off at a time like this. So
organizations like the Red Cross would even send chess sets
(33:14):
around the world to prisoners where there were even organized
chess tournaments and were so weird. But I do think
that one aspect is pretty cool. Yeah, all right, we
mentioned earlier the similarities between elite athletes and chess players. Well,
did you know that the World Chess Federation actually conducts
drug tests and they do this pretty routinely, and this
is because there's a push for it to be part
(33:36):
of the Olympics and so this is actually required by
the IOC. But there's some interesting studies around the effects
of you know, so called smart drugs on the ability
to play chess. Now, specifically drugs like modafinil and riddle
and so Madefanil is a drug we've talked about actually
in an episode. I guess it's been quite a while,
(33:56):
but it's commonly used to help with sleep disorders, and
riddlin is commonly used to treat things like a d
h D. And the findings from some of the studies
on these players was really interesting because weirdly, players on
these smart drugs were often losing more games than those
who were not taking these but this was actually because
the players on them, We're taking more time per move
(34:19):
and just running out of time. So once they took
the time out as a factor, they found that these
players were actually playing better. So it's one of the
researchers put it, these substances may be able to convert
fast and shallow thinkers into deeper, but somewhat slower thinkers. Huh,
that's really interesting. Well, we talked about how long chess
has been around, and I was reading about some of
(34:40):
the oldest strategy books on chess, and this one from
way back in one had some pretty awesome advice. The
book suggests strategies such as playing with your back to
the sun. Why because that could blind your opponent. It
also suggests that if you're playing by a fire at night,
you should use your hand to create a shadow over
the board so that your opponent won't be able to
see his pieces clearly. Wow. You know, I had a
(35:03):
couple of facts about weird chess tournaments and a couple
of other things. But looking over there at Tristan and
seeing the size of the smirk on his face, I've
never seen him smirk that big because I know he
loves this fact, because he loves to play dirty. Whenever
he competes, he plays so dirty, such a dirty guy.
But anyway, I'm gonna have to stop us there and
give you today's trophy, Mango, thank you so much. Well,
(35:26):
all right, well, if you've got any great stories about
chess or any facts about chess that we may have
left out today, we always love to hear those from you.
If you can email us part Time Genius and How
Stuff Works dot com, or you can always hit us
up on Facebook or Twitter. But from Gabe, Tristan, Mango
and me, thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening.
(35:55):
Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works
and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
does the exact producer thing. Gabe Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(36:17):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, and if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Do we do we forget Jason?
Jason who
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