In every age there are reformers who believe that human nature, being imperfect, can be perfected through rules. It is a habit of mind as old as utopia itself — the belief that if only the board were redrawn, the pieces repainted, and the players re-educated, the game would cease to produce losers.
We have now reached that stage in chess. The High International Chess Commission for Unlawful Practices, presided over in Moscow by Rosa Klebb, has announced what it calls “the most progressive innovation since the invention of modern chess in 1475.” These, we are told, are reforms “anchored in tradition and precedent,” though they appear to have been moored rather loosely. Their stated aim is to promote inclusivity, equality, and diversity within the chess community. Like all such missions, it begins in moral fervour and ends in regulation.
The new order is radical in conception. Both armies on the board will henceforth be black — one designated B1, the other B2. The white pieces, being now a symbol of historical injustice, are abolished. The board itself, once a harmonious pattern of light and dark, is to be repainted entirely black, with white lines alone surviving as reminders of “centuries of slavery imposed by Western imperialists.” The ancient variety of colour, which once gave the game its visual poetry, has been sacrificed to moral geometry.
Every piece, too, is to be renamed according to the temper of the times. The pawns have been reassigned identities: some are illegal immigrants, some environmental protestors, others gender transitioners in their youth. The rules concerning their movement are as intricate as any medieval charter; certain pawns may advance two squares, others must lie prostrate, and all may be altered by payment to a special fund “in support of the French economy.” Thus economics and ethics unite, as they often do, in absurdity.
The royal pieces have not escaped reinterpretation. The King of B1 is now Al Gore, a prophet of climate catastrophe; his counterpart for B2 is George Floyd, representing justice and protest. The Queens are Greta Thunberg and Lia Thomas, champions of their respective causes. The Rooks, redefined as Ulez cameras, preside like watchful sentinels over the field, while the Bishops — renamed Archbishops — are distinguished as Justins and Welbys. The Knights have become Khans, in honour of London’s mayor, whose zeal for reform seems to inspire the entire constitution of this new game.
All ceremonies are in keeping with the spirit of penitence. Before play, both sides kneel; all games are to be conducted as Shuffle Chess, each player allotted fifteen minutes in homage to the “fifteen-minute city.” The arbiters have been transformed into “Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity Officers,” and the prize fund has been redirected to their salaries. The refreshments, in obedience to ecological virtue, consist of insect-based protein. Certain reading materials — The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, the works of Swift, Pope, Orwell, and Huxley — are forbidden. Certain persons, too, are proscribed: athletes, writers, and grandmasters whose opinions deviate from the creed.
Travel to tournaments is to be conducted on foot or bicycle, unless one arrives by private jet, which remains the privilege of the virtuous rich. The Commission has considered renaming the game Wokespiel but, in a rare concession to history, retained the title Chess. A final regulation assures emotional equality: any player distressed by defeat may appeal to have the result annulled and recorded as a draw. Thus the new chess abolishes not only victory but tragedy.
Whether these innovations will produce joy or chaos remains to be seen. Perhaps the spirit of resistance — the board’s equivalent of the Blade Runners who disarmed the Ulezcameras — will rise again. The rest of us can only observe, recalling that no empire of virtue has yet escaped the fate of satire.
