HOW TO WATCH A CHESS-MATCH


Second in the list of games which it is necessary for every sportsman to
know how to watch comes chess. If you don't know how to watch chess, the
chances are that you will never have any connection with the game
whatsoever. You would not, by any chance, be playing it yourself.

I know some very nice people that play chess, mind you, and I wouldn't
have thought that I was in any way spoofing at the game. I would sooner
spoof at the people who engineered the Panama Canal or who are drawing
up plans for the vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River. I am no man to
make light of chess and its adherents, although they might very well
make light of me. In fact, they have.

But what I say is, that taking society by and large, man and boy, the
chances are that chess would be the Farmer-Labor Party among the
contestants for sporting honors.

Now, since it is settled that you probably will not want to play chess,
unless you should be laid up with a bad knee-pan or something, it
follows that, if you want to know anything about the sport at all, you
will have to watch it from the side-lines. That is what this series of
lessons aims to teach you to do, (of course, if you are going to be
nasty and say that you don't want even to watch it, why all this time
has been, wasted on my part as well as on yours).


HOW TO FIND A GAME TO WATCH