Books about games – The Master of Go

The book really captured me and although I’m not convinced I accessed all the experience it offers it was certainly immersive. So much so I read it in a single sitting.

The story is based on real events. An epic game of Go which lasted 6 months between a retiring master and an upcoming challenger. The author was in fact a journalist covering the particularly famous game that the tale is actually based on.

As a story it’s equal parts insight into Japanese culture and a beautiful explanation of game playing at its highest levels.

The insight into Japan is something I found compelling because I’ve long been fascinated by Japanese culture and history. The story reflects the beauty of the country, the varied climate and the rich cultural customs. But it also dwells a pivot point in Japanese history capturing the spirit of two eras in one place.

The retiring master represents the last remnants of the aristocratic era and of the famous Go houses. The challenger represents relative modernity with a professional and family life.

And that’s all both reflected and framed by the game of Go. The game of Go was changing as well. Shinfuseki strategies towards the opening of a Go game were developed around the time this story is set.

Yet the focus in the story is at the personal level. The author concentrates on the obsessive degree to which games can capture a players mind. But also how this can be rewarded with the gift of a new creative language; the ability to understand where a move comes from, why it is played – and what it means. As the challenger character says about move 130 –

‘A fine thing he has done to me. A terrible thing, that’s what it is. Earthshaking’

There are possible deeper allegorical readings of the story. It could be taken as a classic tale of a battle between the Master and the challenger – of life and decay, of death and defeat. Or even as a premonition of how ‘old’ Japan would be defeated in WW2 and forever changed.

But as compelling as these readings may be alone they all still cohere into the surface reading. The story of a well played game between two committed players.

This book is a powerful proof that games can be meaningful enough to tell the story of. And that within games different stories can be found.

I want to hear more of these stories.

Books about games – Ender’s game

A science fiction story about a game – sounds like just my sort of story.

And it was brilliant.

I was practically lunging through the chapters to find out how Ender’s story went. Because it’s a brilliant coming of age story and a wonderful bit of storytelling.

It’s a real achievement by the author – Orson Scott Card – because he showed a balance between describing the world, the overarching story arc as well as immersing you in what Ender is struggling with right now.

But not quite perfectly, the sequences with the Wiggin family feel very tacked on. And apparently they are – pieces of world-building added in later editions – designed to support the weight of the subsequent sequels.

It’s a technical achievement alone to make the descriptions of the battles engaging and interesting. To have created a game that you can imagine and visualise is one thing – but to have also thought through how Ender goes about revolutionising how it is played is brilliant. You’re willing Ender onto have his moment of genius and enjoying it as he rips through convention and the stacked odds.

So whilst I personally didn’t buy into the full world – for me Ender’s game really is Ender’s story – I loved it as military history in space. As a science fiction re-imaging of Nelson.

Books about Games – Chess by Stefan Zweig

I was inspired by the recent chess world championship to read a famous short story about Chess simply called ‘Chess’.

It’s by an early 20th century Viennese – Stefan Zweig – who as a cosmopolitan Jewish intellectual fled Austria in 1934 during the drive to a Nazi led Anschluss . He tragically ended his life in despair about the future of Europe in 1942.

Early century Vienna is a fascinating time and place haunted by its future. I wanted to see how Zweig would integrate that history with Chess.

The story is set just after the Anschluss. In it we hear how the main character was interrogated by the Nazis in order to reveal secrets. Unusually they don’t use direct force or intimidation but instead try to break him using isolation and boredom. However, a chance find of a chess book gives the main character a mental escape. He is occupied and therefore stronger in himself and better placed to resist the interrogations. Except it turns out to be a dead-end. Chess becomes all-consuming till eventually the obsession breaks his mental health. A friendly Doctor helps ease him out of interrogation and instead he is exiled. This is where the character meets the narrator. Fatal chance would have it that a world champion offers him a game and once again Chess seems to have taken an obsessive hold.

However, I’ve felt compelled to write out the plot because the themes are thin, certainly thinner than the setting promises. Ultimately I felt the stronger influence of psychoanalytic principles – specifically ego and Id separation. It didn’t feel realist enough to avoid the suspicion of being a curiously distant metaphor for Zweig’s own exile. Which is a shame because the period is so important it should stay close to the events.

In the books defence there were some fine phrases about chess and games in particular

• ‘… a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new: mechanical in structure, yet made effective only by the imagination; limited to a geometrically fixed space, yet with unlimited combinations; constantly developing, yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere; mathematics calculating nothing; art without works of art; architecture without substance – but nonetheless shown to be more durable in its entity and existence than all the books and works of art; the only game that belongs to all nations and eras, although no one knows what god brought it down to earth to vanquish boredom, sharpen the senses and stretch the mind.’

All in all – the story is good but not great.

The ingredients promised plenty but never really combined. It’s almost too simple a story – it needed something to immerse it in the game of chess itself. A little bit of symmetry between game and story would have created vast depths.

Instead it’s all a bit shallow and direct – like the ending which doesn’t just hint that the obsession has returned but unsubtly makes it clear.

Like this ending.