The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-08-09
CHECKERS AND CHESS.
An Answer to the Comparison Made
by Mr.. Grimshaw.

To the Editor of the Globe.
For month have been waiting for some
abier pen than mine to take up w. H.
GrlmshaW's ridiculous comparison between
chess and checkers and tear to pieces its IL
logical conclusions. But so far no one seems
to have deemed 1t worthy of an answer. Nor
Is It on its merits; but lest some, ignorant
OF Caisa's charms, should think her cham
pionless, 1 am constrained to take up the
gauntlet and, with your kind permission,
answer him seriatim.
His claims. for superiority for checkers
over chess are based on five premises.
First The obligation to move the pieces
Tin checkers forward, without power of re-
treat, makes an exact science of the game"
He fails to tell how men crowned may move
either backward or forward and complicate
the exactitude of his science Nor does. he
tell that in chess eight men (the foot soldiers
or privates) on each side are restricted to a
simple forward movement till translated to
higher sphere by perseverance and meritori-
Gus advance through many dangerous vicis-
STUDIES In this, in every other point, he
is special pleader, showing only the ap-
parent merits of his own side of the question.
second Every opening move is sound Tin
checkers9. In great matches each player is
bound to open the game every possible way"
But ne does not explain why by adding, "be-
cause all the possibilities are known and in
print, and the only hope of winning a game
from an expert is that his memory will fail
him in some formula of his exact science. "
In chess, too, every opening move is sound
and has sound sequence; but no man of
large enough intellectual capacity has yet
been born to follow the innumerable permu-
tations to conclusion. ''In the game of
chess" says Grimshaw, "only one move is
considered sound" This Is a misstatement:
but let it pass: Pawn to kings fourth-just
that one considered sound" move alone has
hundredfold more possibilities in it than
the whole number of checker combinations
1t is used so much because, through ages,
its variations have been carried further by
analysis, and by 1t the region of the known
can be longer trod than by any other opening
The experience and Thought of centuries
have brought the resultant variations for
eight or ten moves at least. somewhere down
to the dull, prosaic exactitude of every
checker opening. There is mechanical and
habit controlled vein in all men. more or less
developed, which not only accounts for the
frequency of PK4 but for the existence of
the checker game.
is double that Of chess So is the literature
of figures or mechanics double that of psy-
chology. Checkers is of figures. fgurey;
chess is of the mind, intellectual, and as of
the soul and its possibilities beyond the ken
of finite man.
Fourth-"The problems of the checker board
moves" AS to subtlety Mr.. Grmshaw
evidently is not we:gher of words or their
meaning. Agony long drawn out may mean
subtle in checker euphuism, but the stand
ard dctionary's meaning is ''sly artful keen.
cunning, acute" What slyness Is there in
working out a cube root? What artfulness
in table of logarithms, or cunning in the
differential caculu1? These are foregone con-
clusions and require as much keenness as a
steam hammer. Yet there are problems in
chess which, to a checker player, might be
sweetness long drawn out" there is the
mating with knight and bishop alone, which
tour which requires sixty-four; but what
chess player plays (0 them? They are exact
and unworthy of further consideration by
an inquiring mind. They are only subtle
from a checker view point, but to the chess
player they are the slow, sure grinding of a
mill.
Fifth-'Few, men possess great memory,
good judgment fine perception and keen ana
lytfcal powers; those who do become great
checker players" A veritable Daniel come
to Judgment But they would also excel in
chess. Yet in checkers they would excel
without any other endowment but the great
memory" with that loaded and primed with
the foregone conclusions of checker litera-
ture, and kept well in order, it becomes
merely question of the first lapse, the ma
chine does the rest inevitably. Hence checker
matches between experts run out to 100 or 200
draws and end there unless one man s. MEM
DRY fails him somewhere; then he is lost. and
no good judgment, fine perception and keen
analytical powers" will save him against the
Wis inertia of the machine.
= checker match is a mere test of endur-
ance-is race between two railroad engines
"a forty-day fasting contest. What analyti-
cal power is required to unroll the scrolls of
memory? What cunning to solve the BIZ
nomial theorem? Once solve its intricacies of
detail and keep in practice, and it is ever
your slave.
AS branch of science chess is as astron-
omy to the geometry of checkers. 1t is us
exact far as human intelligence has been
able to carry it. But, as beyond the most
glowing imaginings of man stretch endless
realms of stardom whose veriest planets are
as great and glorious our earth, so COM
binations of chess reaching out into the inf
mite, by far transcend and excel in possibili-
ties the mere calculability of checkers. The
checker player starts, out to find a flaw in his
opponents memory-a flaw in his triangula-
ton. as it were. The chess player sits down
to measure brain against brain. With his
opening move he enters his observatory by
the sixth or eighth move his instrument is
adjusted, and he may continue to examine
the marvels of known consultations or may
start out on ramble into the realms of space
in search of the unknown.
Were checker player to gamble in any
form he would agonize himself by a quarter
cent huctuation in oats on the Chicago board
of trade. To play checkers is to toy with a
somewhat complex but finite machine To