First Position
This gazette exists because of an uncomfortable truth: I have been playing chess for longer than I care to admit, and I am no better for it. The Board suggested I document my games as a form of institutional record. The Membership suggested it might serve as a cautionary tale. Both arguments struck me as persuasive.
But if one is to begin — and one must, eventually, begin — then there is only one honest place to start. Not with an opening trap or a brilliancy prize, but with the position from which every game of chess has ever been played. The position before anything has gone wrong.
The arrangement
Sixteen pieces per side. Sixty-four squares. Rooks anchoring the corners like old certainties. Knights tucked beside them, already scheming. Bishops poised on their diagonals. The queen on her own colour, as tradition insists. And the king — one square from the centre, not quite the most important square, content to let others do the work.
Everything is symmetrical. Everything is equal. It is, in fact, the last moment in a game of chess when this will be the case.
I find this position strangely comforting. No blunders have been committed. No pawns have been advanced into structures one will spend thirty moves regretting. The engine, that merciless adjudicator, has nothing to say — the evaluation reads 0.00, a perfect balance that I will never again achieve once my hand touches a piece.
Why write about it
There is a school of thought that says one must be good at a thing before presuming to write about it. I have considered this position carefully and have concluded that it is wrong. Or, at the very least, that it would leave me with nothing to do on Tuesday evenings.
Chess is full of people who play beautifully and explain nothing, and people who explain beautifully and play indifferently. I aspire to the latter category, though the Board has noted that I may be overstating my explanatory abilities. The minutes record that the motion was carried unanimously.
The truth is that the starting position contains a promise. From this single arrangement, more games are possible than there are atoms in the observable universe1. Every catastrophe I have suffered on the board — every knight I have hung, every back-rank mate I have walked into with the serene confidence of a man who has checked all the diagonals and forgotten the file — began here, in this quiet, balanced, entirely blameless position.
It is not the position’s fault. It never is.
The pieces, briefly
| Piece | Quantity | Value | Note from the author |
|---|---|---|---|
| King | 1 | — | Frequently imperilled |
| Queen | 1 | 9 | Occasionally traded for a bishop on move twelve |
| Rook | 2 | 5 | Often forgotten until the endgame |
| Bishop | 2 | 3 | One is always on the wrong colour |
| Knight | 2 | 3 | The only piece that surprises me more than my opponent |
| Pawn | 8 | 1 | Brave, expendable, and promoted far less often than they deserve |
The astute reader will note that the material is equal. This will not last. In my experience, it takes roughly eleven moves for one side — invariably mine — to find itself a pawn down with a cramped position and a lingering sense that something went wrong around move six but one cannot quite say what.
This gazette will attempt to investigate such matters. The Organisation has approved the endeavour, provisionally, and with the caveat that all published analysis must be reviewed by the engine before going to press. I have agreed to this condition. The engine has not yet been consulted on whether it agrees to review my games, but as it is a piece of software, its consent has been deemed unnecessary.
We begin, then, as every game begins. Equal. Hopeful. Unaware of what is coming.
Your move.
Footnotes
-
The Shannon number estimates roughly 10^120 possible games of chess. The number of my own games that have reached a satisfactory conclusion is considerably smaller. ↩
T. P. Pawn, Esq., Provisional Chairman, Department for Internal Review and Minor Catastrophes.