What is the Black-and-White Jungle?

Chess is beautiful. Its centuries-long shadow on sport, politics, culture and media can be beautiful, too.

The struggles on the sixty-four squares evoke so much more than opening lines, time trouble, or computer analysis. At every level of play, it is a human struggle, a mirror into one’s soul. There is nothing quite like the vertigo you feel the moment you realize your move was wrong or the primal fervor that overtakes you when your opponent extends their hand in resignation.

Chess is beautiful. The way we brittle humans try to navigate the infinite complexities of the game, what Josh Waitzkin of Searching for Bobby Fischer fame once called the “black-and-white jungle,” can be beautiful, too.

Chess writing rarely gets to go beyond the game analysis or the news coverage. It is rare that a special talent comes around with strong enough playing skills to stake a claim of expertise when discussing competitive play, with enough empathy and writing skills to connect the powerful, universal emotions evoked by the game to the human experience beyond the chessboard.

Joyous affairs, big and small, from personal growth to cultural context, are often lost amid the dry explanations of Stockfish lines and simplistic pieces of news coverage. I believe that the things that make playing chess beautiful can and should be shown and celebrated with good writing and that the modern culture and economy of the chess world warrant deeply-felt exploration.

Waitzkin, speaking of poise under fire and space left behind, energy flows and tamed stallions, is one of those few who could make these connections. J.H. Donner, Dutch grandmaster and chess columnist, with musings on what makes you not make a move and how “only a small part of what happens on or around the chess board can be expressed in words, and it is better to keep silent about the rest,” is another. The duo of David Edmonds and John Eidinow, an author and a philosopher, who explored the 1972 world championship match in Bobby Fischer Goes to War without a single diagram, weaving together the times and the politics of that scintillating Cold War moment with the struggle at the board, are in this rarified group, too.

They serve as the lodestars of what I aim to achieve here: to celebrate, showcase and explore the evolving world of the royal game and to connect it all with what goes beyond the sixty-four squares in the form of semi-regular deep dives into everything chess.

Chess is beautiful. Be it the psychology of a cheating scandal, the economy of a big tournament, my own meaningless struggles at the board, or the biggest matches of the world, I aim to be your guide in the black-and-white jungle, and I hope you will tag along for the journey.

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