Customer Reviews

Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard

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This review originally appeared in Chess Life magazine.

Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch famously observed that chess has the power to make men happy; Dr. Robert Desjarlais wants to know why. Desjarlais, a professor of anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, N.Y.) and an expert-level chess player, is the author of _Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard_ (U. California Press, $24.95). The book investigates the human passion for chess, through personal narrative, short player profiles, and a study of psychology, sociology, American culture, online play, and computer technology. Early in the first chapter, Desjarlais states his thesis:

"Why devote one's energies to a time-intensive pursuit that is little valued or understood in one's own society? How is it that, in a world rife with social inequities, violence, economic upheaval, and fast-paced transformation, people are drawn to chess playing? The anthropologist in me got to thinking: Why not conduct fieldwork at the chessboard and train an anthropological lens on the cultures and motives of chess players?"

Desjarlais successfully focuses this anthropological lens by combining strict first-person narrative (or short third-person profiles of other players) with analysis utilizing his background in social science. This analysis often includes citations from chess literature or scholarly work. Supplemental profiles of the author's friends and research subjects close out each chapter. Here, for example, Desjarlais provides an all-too-familiar account of his occasional addiction to online blitz:

"[Narcotics] seem like such a natural fit: the clammy need for a quick fix, the high that bites back, the shame of it all. Biologists would deem such conduct a `behavioral addiction' akin to those of compulsive gambling, shopping, or overeating...once I'm on, if the conditions are right and blitz lust takes hold, I can be on for hours chasing three-minute games...."

He then investigates this behavior using the voice of an anthropologist:

"...the easy slide into game after game can induce trancelike states that compare to those found among the participants of ritual ceremonies around the world. In Nepal, shamans provoke trances for themselves and others by sustaining a driving, incessant drumbeat and intoning sacred chants through nightlong ritual healing work. Their purposes are different...but the psychophysiological effects are similar."

Counterplay, at its most successful, existential moments, strips all rationalization from the chess enthusiast; the book lays bare why players love their art - and why the smitten ones sometimes even love to suffer. At his best, Desjarlais accurately and emotionally describes the milieu of competitive practice, at times even more poignantly than Wells Tower's award-winning Washington Post article "The Days and Knights of Tom Murphy" or Paul Hoffman's acclaimed King's Gambit. In this next passage, for example, Desjarlais provides an interesting anthropological perspective on the ritual of resigning:

"The last stages of a lost game can resemble the act of dying...few other sportive games include the ritual of resigning, of admitting defeat outright. That act can itself induce an explicit, humbling, submission to an opponent's will and mastery....Postgame analysis can reconstitute a sense of self and meaning - in ways similar to those found with acts of mourning, or with the healing rites that communities around the world draw on when trying to rebuild the lifeworld of a person afflicted by illness or malevolent form."

Unfortunately, however, Desjarlais' lens doesn't always focus as well as it does here. Profiled personalities sometimes get introduced to the reader more than once, as though each chapter was written independently of every other chapter. The cover image - depicting Loek van Wely, a professional playing at a professional tournament (Russian Team Championships, 2008) - does not accurately reflect the content of the book, which is primarily about amateur chess. Most ineffective, Desjarlais overreaches by too often employing the second-person ("you") point of view for many sections of his personal narrative. Not only does the second-person voice inject surrogate emotion that replaces the reader's genuine feeling, this voice proves inconsistent with the more easily managed and appropriate first-person ("I") voice used in the better written parts of the book. Before the reader is comfortable understanding his own relationship and passion for chess, Desjarlais too often force feeds these highly personal feelings with presumptuous second-person prose.

Nevertheless, Counterplay remains a success, because it manages to erase a niche image of the game, while respecting the allure of its complexity. Desjarlias respects Botvinnik's masterpieces equal to Picasso's; he respects the high and low emotions of chess competition equal to that of any physical sport; he respects the achievements of the computer scientists who have built machines that far exceed the playing strength of the all-time best humans; and he respects the utility with which these humans have embraced their submissive role. Within Counterplay, chess and its attractions qualify as the center of an objective study. Who better to pioneer this study than an anthropologist with a polished lens and a penchant for sliding the game that so many people love, under his microscope?

If you enjoy reading "about chess" as much as playing or studying the game itself, you will really enjoy this book. The author does a great job of describing the current state of chess today - especially in the United States. The main focus of this book is to explain to the reader why serious chessplayers spend so much of their lives devoted to studying and playing the game. On the way to accomplishing this goal, the author delves into many modern aspects of chess. Chess clubs, tournament chess, blitz versus slow games, the Internet Chess Club, the impact of computers on chess play and learning, chess addiction, and many other topics are explored. Much of the material in this book comes from the author's own interviews with chess masters and grandmasters. This book does not require any chess expertise to enjoy. Indeed, it may be a great book to give to a spouse or friend who may not understand your dedication to the game.

Over the years I've read several books "about chess". Most of these books are historical in nature as they cover "chess history" or the life of a famous player. While I've enjoyed these books, it's been very refreshing to find a "new gem" such as this work (published 2011) that is up-to-date in covering contemporary chess issues.

Highly recommended!!

For those who are interested in another side of the game of chess this book is highly recomendable.

The author describes his feelings and addiction of chess, in a way that I had not seen anywhere else.

He is an anthropologist and this makes the book more interesting, as he is not a professional player.

Therefore, for an average player, or club player, with interests beyond the game itself I recomend the book.

Very interesting!

The author likes lists. Here is one from the book: "flexible, creative, playful, resourceful, fallible, tool-using, relatively intelligent, information-processing, meaning-seeking, pattern recognizing, aesthetically inclined, experience-informed, psychologically complex, socially responsive, intuitive, emotive, biology-based, fatigue-prone, self-doubting, self-questioning, and faced with limitations."

(Much more succinct: which creature in the morning goes upon four legs, at midday upon two, and in the evening upon three?)

Here is Counterplay as a list:

-not edited by a chessplayer: "Schevenengin" ? "Slave Defense" ??

-pitiable: when the author admits to a former student that he has been "spending a lot of time playing chess," the response is bluntly "Why?" The author has no reply, and his book does not answer the question either.

-wordy: "These pages bid for a phenomenologically inclined, semi-autoethnographic approach to thinking and writing about chess, one that gives priority to the personal and social dimensions of people's involvements with the game."

-uppity: for example, the word "experiential" occurs six times (once as an adverb) and the word "epistemic" occurs four times.

-disorganized: the eight chapters have little tying them together, and the author does not compel the reader to continue.

-unsure of its target audience: non-Northeasterners will be put off by the setting of the Northeastern United States; non-chessplayers will be put off by puzzling over-simplifications of chess moves and concepts; non-anthropologists will be put off by shaky comparisons with shamans in Nepal.

-ambivalent: is the author playing chess to escape anthropology, or researching anthropology to escape chess?

-probably not worth your time: browse a few pages before committing.

This book is very well written and it is obvious that the author knows what he is talking about. He is able to describe many of the facets of chess and obsession with the game extremely well. No great revelations maybe but still interesting. It is also entertaining.