The Big Picture

The Birth of Chess – The Silk Road – The Luminaries of Gupta Mathematics – Vedic Architecture and the Chess Board

Before WWI, the great powers of Europe lived in a delicate balance, maintained by a web of alliances and treaties. The horrors of the Napoleonic Wars still loomed in collective memory, and many believed that the advancements in military technology, particularly in artillery and machine guns, would make any future war too devastating to contemplate. The prevailing thought was that the economic interdependence among nations, coupled with the diplomatic efforts of the time, would deter any large-scale conflict. Alas, these assumptions underestimated the undercurrents of nationalism, imperial rivalry and human short-sightedness.

In the aftermath of WWI, the world was irrevocably altered. The war’s unprecedented scale and devastation shattered long-held beliefs in progress, honor, and the invincibility of European civilization. The trenches and gas warfare exposed the dark underbelly of the machine age, turning technological advancements into instruments of mass destruction. Societal pillars were deeply shaken, if notdestroyed. The war’s end saw the rise of radical ideologies, as disillusioned masses sought alternatives to the old order. The very fabric of society was questioned, as people grappled with the mechanized horrors they had witnessed and the ideals they had lost.

A consummate sportsman Capablanca also excelled in Bridge, Tennis, Billiards, and Baseball. He moved to New York with plans of entering Columbia and playing for their baseball team, however, the Manhattan Chess Club would prove a more appealing venue for his talents. Just as a twenty one year old Morphy had stunned the Cafe de La Regence, so the young Cuban did the Manhattan Chess Club. He was immediately beating the best American players in ‘lighting chess’ (a precursor to blitz), and in 1909 handily beat US Champion, Frank Marshall. In 1911 he received a special invitation to play in his first International Master’s Tournament in Spain, he silenced all doubters by winning it. Attractive with a well mannered self confidence that evinced his deep intelligence Capablanca was an instant celebrity. He immediately leap frogged Akiba Rubinstein (who would be considered by many as the best player to never win the World Championship) as top contender to Lasker’s title, the two, however, could not at that point agree to terms on a match.

In 1920 Lasker technically resigned his title to Capablanca, but a record $20,000 purse lured him to Havanna in 1921 to settle the matter officially, with a 24 game match. Whether it was the unfamiliar climate, his age, or simply Capablanca’s unflinching brilliance, Lasker did not look himself in the match. After four losses and ten draws. Lasker conceded his title. That same year Capablanca published Chess Fundamentals a highly accessible and influential text hailed by three time World Champion Mikhail Bottvinick as the best book ever written on chess.

Capablanca became wary that increasingly technical master play, carried to its logical conclusion, would result in the ‘draw death’ of the game. He proposed several solutions to this problem including switching the place of the knights and bishops and expanding the board size to 10×10 thus introducing two new pieces; the chancellor– a combination of rook and knight, and the archbishop– a combination of the bishop and the knight. These ideas have yet to catch on. They were soon proven unnecessary by the paradigm shift that would shake chess dogma to its core.

Since Ruy Lopez expounded on the advantages of leading off with one’s King’s pawn, chess theory grew around exploring the benefits gained by controlling the squares in the center of the board through the occupation and influence of pawns. That white moved one of his central pawns with the first move and that black reply in kind, ‘balancing the position’ was considered axiomatic by the Classical school, of whose principles Capablanca’s easy artistry was the natural born embodiment. Capablanca’s first loss in a decade would come in 1924 at the New York masters tournament against Richard Reti, a practitioner of the style coined ‘hypermodern’ by the Grandmaster and poetic wit Saveilly Tartakower.

“Marcel Duchamp, a pivotal figure in 20th-century art, revolutionized traditional artistic norms with his avant-garde sensibilities. His audacious ‘readymade’ concept, best exemplified by ‘Bicycle Wheel’ (1913), transformed ordinary objects into art, compelling audiences to reconsider the essence of artistic value. Beyond his groundbreaking art, Duchamp was deeply passionate about chess, once asserting, ‘While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.’ Representing France in international chess tournaments, he viewed the game as an intellectual art form, echoing the challenges he encountered in his artistic journey. Salvador Dalí, a leading figure in Surrealism, was both a friend and admirer of Duchamp. Their mutual respect led to artistic exchanges and inspirations. Dalí, too, had a fascination with chess, which manifested in works like ‘Chessboard with Gala’s Face’ and his design of a chess set. Duchamp’s challenge to artistic conventions resonated with Dalí, blurring the lines between reality, imagination, and the very definition of art.”

“The Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem” -Marcel Duchamp

In 1922 the worlds’ top masters agreed to terms Capablanca had drawn up for contending for the world title; the so called, ‘London Rules.’ The London Rules stipulated that the first player to win 6 games would win the match, playing sessions would be 5 hours each, and that each player had 2.5 hours to make 40 moves. The champion was obliged to defend his title within a year of a challenge from a recognized master, he however, was not obliged to play for a purse of less than $10,000.  The London Rules represented a huge step forward in the effort to establish an organized international framework for world title competitions.

These efforts would continue in various forms. The campaign to get Chess included in the 1924 Olympic Games, held in Paris, was derailed because of the inability to distinguish amateur from professional players. Alexander Alekhine, who had fled Russia for France, helped organize a tournament of 54 eminent chess amateurs, including the famous artist/Chess Master Marcel Duchamp, representing 18 countries played in Paris coincident with the Olympic Games, the 1st Unofficial Chess Olympiad. On the final day of the competition, July 20, 1924, delegates from 15 international chess federations formed the Federatione Internationale de Echecs (FIDE), a milestone that would have far reaching implications on the organization of major international competition.

In 1935 Alekhine was defeated for the World Championship by the Dutch mathematician Max Euwe. A noteworthy match for the fact that it was the first World Championship that allowed the players to have ‘seconds’ to assist them with analysis during breaks in play. Euwe’s victory was surprising as he was considered a far inferior player to Alekhine, and there has been speculation that the Champion’s extreme overconfidence (if not his penchant toward drink) cost him the match. The two played 30 games with Euwe winning the match 15 ½ to 14 ½.  The ‘London Rules’ having been modified, maintained the necessity to win six games, but made the match a best of thirty. Two years later Euwe gave Alekhine a rematch and was decisively dominated, he however was to continue to play a major role in world chess.

Zermelo’s chess is a theoretical construct rooted in the principles of set theory and named after the German mathematician Ernst Zermelo. In 1913, Zermelo utilized chess as a framework to demonstrate the existence of a deterministic optimal strategy in finite two-person games of perfect information. His theorem posits that in such games, either one of the players has a winning strategy, or both players have strategies ensuring a draw.

Zermelo’s exploration into game theory was deeply intertwined with his foundational work in set theory. Set theory, a branch of mathematical logic, deals with the nature of sets, or collections of objects. Zermelo’s application of set-theoretic principles to chess was a pioneering move, bridging the gap between abstract mathematical concepts and tangible real-world scenarios. While Zermelo’s chess doesn’t provide an explicit strategy for winning the game, it underscores the deterministic nature of games when viewed through the lens of set theory.