I had a relatively successful AERA visit this week — I presented a poster at a sparsely-attended, but still great structured poster session (got to catch up with friends from UW and Arizona State), and we received some great commentary by Jim Gee on the importance of studying online communities around games. The subsequent roundtables I participated in were both productive — one, in the Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning SIG was very well attended (around thirty people crammed around one small table), and the Media Culture and Curriculum SIG roundtable was a great, sustained conversation on games and learning.

On my last day in Denver, I took a few hours off from the conference to wander around the 16th Street Mall area and caught a few people playing chess on some public tables. There were only a handful of tables — nothing like Washington Square Park in New York or North Avenue in Chicago — but it piqued my interest. Looking for something fun to read on the plane home, I wandered over to Barnes & Noble and discovered David Shenk’s The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Science, and the Human Brain. A bit ridiculous of a title, yes, but it’s a readable, light history that runs the gamut from the game’s early prominence in the Muslim Renaissance through its role in early cognition research.

Shenk weaves together three interesting threads — first, a selective history of chess and its evolution as a game as well as in public affairs. Next, he spells out a personal history of sorts, as Shenk attempts to connect with his great-great-grandfather’s legacy as a prominent chess master in mid-19th century Paris. And, finally, he carefully steps the reader through that classic of romantic chess play, “The Immortal” game played by Anderssen and Kieseritzky in 1851. It’s a fun read, and I strongly recommend it.

This has me thinking about chess again, for the first time in a while. At AERA, a colleague of mine and I got into a great discussion about the utility of board games in games and learning contexts, and while I enjoy board games, I haven’t thought much about them. I played chess a fair amount through college and a little bit afterwards, but never had the discipline or aptitude to be very good at it, nor to really investigate why it was such a compelling game for so many.

One of the most tantalizing bits that Shenk described in his book were some writings of Benjamin Franklin’s on “The Morals of Chess” (from 1779). I was immediately struck with the similarity to much of the games and learning rhetoric of recent years. Here’s a lengthy chunk from Franklin’s essay:

The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions.

1. Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action; for it is continually occuring to the player, ‘If I move this piece, what will be the advantages or disadvantages of my new situation? What use can my adversary make of it to annoy me? What other moves can I make to support it, and to defend myself from his attacks?

2. Circumspection, which surveys the whole chessboard, or scene of action; the relations of the several pieces and situations, the dangers they are respectively exposed to, the several possibilities of their aiding each other, the probabilities that the adversary may make this or that move, and attack this or the other piece, and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke, or turn its consequences against him.

3. Caution, not to make our moves too hastily. This habit is best acquired, by observing strictly the laws of the game; such as, If you touch a piece, you must move it somewhere; if you set it down, you must let it stand. And it is therefore best that these rules should be observed, as the game becomes thereby more the image of human life, and particularly of war…

And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favourable change, and that of persevering in the search of resources. The game is so full of events, there is such a variety of turns in it, the fortune of it is so subject to sudden vicissitudes, and one so frequently, after long contemplation, discovers the means of extricating one’s self from a supposed insurmountable difficulty, that one is encouraged to continue the contest to the last, in hopes of victory from our own skill, or at least of getting a stalemate from the negligence of our adversary…

That is, the game of chess fosters “qualities of the mind useful in the course of human life,” not limited to planning and accomodation (Foresight), the assessment of potential courses of action and their consequences (Circumspection), and judgment (Caution), not to mention fostering motivation and perseverence.

Perhaps this is obvious, but why doesn’t the long history of writing about chess get brought up more often in the digital games and learning world? Digital games are flashy and shiny and new, that’s for sure, but if we take the ludologists seriously and assume that digital games share a long history with other games, then perhaps there’s some utility in bridging the contemporary games and learning discourses with historical ones about games such as chess. Chess is, clearly, the one recreational game that has had centuries of traction among elites in terms of preparation for strategic thinking (Napoleon used to play), the development of peaceful alternatives to war (Shenk describes a wonderful case where Ben Franklin used the game to illustrate the Colonies’ attitudes toward King George), and as use as the “drosophila” of cognitive psychology research. Chess shouldn’t be used unproblematically and uncritically, of course, but I fear that the pendulum swing toward digital media have left us disconnected from potentially interesting — and long-standing — discussions of games and learning that span many centuries.

Regardless, I’ve clearly been persuaded that chess is worth another look and have started playing again. I hadn’t played in years, really, and I was never any good to begin with. But, as a way to reacquaint myself with board games and this “pre-history” of games and learning, I’m dipping a finger back into the game, quite literally. For $2.99, I purchased the iPhone game Chess With Friends the other day, and am enjoying it quite a bit so far — you’ll see via that link that there have been a number of complaints in the comments that the game is buggy, but I haven’t run into a single problem with it yet.

Chess With Friends is a basic two-player chess app, created by newtoy, who made the hugely popular Words With Friends and designed We Rule for the iPhone. I’m not a big fan of Words With Friends (the way it altered the Scrabble board layout to avoid copyright problems is just too hard for me to adjust to), but I’m happy to support this company — there’s an interesting irony that after creating some of the best history-based games ever (the Age of Empires series), the creators of Chess With Friends now make an accessible, portable version of the game that many historical generals actually used to hone their strategic thinking.

This could become addictive for me; with chess in my pocket, I could end up playing all the time and will have to watch myself. I’ll admit somewhat sheepishly that I even played a few moves while driving yesterday — a bad idea for sure. But, for now, I’m still excited to play and would love to play with anyone reading this blog. There’s a free version of the game on the App Store as well, I believe, if you’d just like to try it out — I’m “scd” on there, so just start a game and I’ll play with you!