My mother almost always brags that I beat her at Chess when I was 9. My father never spoke about when I beat him at chess that same month. In fact, he and I never played after that. But what I remember most about chess at that age is learning it and its effects.

My friends and I used to play checkers all the time. When my parents decided I should learn chess (poor them), I became very focused on chess and no longer wanted to play checkers - checkers was not a challenge. Chess was. I spent many hours alone, playing against myself, switching between perspectives of black and white and sincerely trying to beat myself. Whenever a chess set was available, I played - there was no Atari 2600 yet, no Nintendo... and while chess required 2 people to play, I pretended to be 2 different people. And this, to me, was all 'play'. It came naturally. No books to study.

Over the years, people asked me which piece was the most powerful. I used to say that it was the Queen, which of course has broad and sweeping powers. Later, I said the Knight, since it was capable of wreaking havoc at a distance when strategically placed. Ultimately, I ended up saying that the King was the most powerful piece on the board - something most people don't agree with. Still, the entire game hinges on the King. Protecting the King is how you keep from losing, trapping the King is how you win. Sure, its a slow moving piece with little offensive ability, but without the King there can be no game.

Then came the timed games. These were more challenging, since you couldn't just sit there and stare for long periods of time. You had to move within the time - and that time, at first, never seems to be enough. And in a timed game, the timer becomes as much a piece on the board as a King.

And still, all of this was play. When I started college, it was still play - and I participated in some tournaments. I quit playing chess for a very long time after a skewed contest at DeVry in Dallas - it was a timed game, and the person was allowed way too much time to perform a move (allowing him to find the hole in my offense/defense). I lost that game, and I was upset because of the why of it - the person won because of the bias in the judges. Maybe I looked to Mexican. I don't know. What I do know is that the rules had been broken and that the 'win' by the other player wasn't a true win. Had I been given the same amount of time per move, he would have lost. And at that point, I no longer was interested in chess - not because I had lost (I had lost before!), but because the game was no longer a game. It had been tainted by external influences.

But what is this all about? Its a thought that reading Homo Ludens provoked. For me, chess was about play. When it became less than a game, I wasn't interested - but then, I learned chess solely by playing. Others learn by reading and studying moves of recorded chess games - and that seemed like work to me. And this got me to thinking about how many people 'work' to be better at a 'game'. Even modern athletics is approached as 'work' nowadays. When does play become work? And does it transition? Can something at first be work, then play, then work, then play?

Something to consider.

And I happened to come across some free chess resources for those interested...