Highly Competitive Game

However, pitting one mind against another, with the element of chance eliminated entirely, tends to stir up a competitive spirit in chess players. In fact, chess is frequently characterized as an ‘intellectualized fight.’ For example, dethroned world chess champion Boris Spassky noted: “By nature I do not have a combative urge. . . . But in chess you have to be a fighter, and of necessity I became one.”

This helps to explain why there are no topflight women chess players​—the more than eighty chess grand masters in the world are all men. Actress Sylvia Miles observed regarding this: “To be a professional chess player, you have to be a killer. If the spirit of competition in American women ever does become that strong, then I think we’ll get some major female players.”

The spirit of competition in chess may be stirred to fever pitch, which is reflected in chess players’ attitudes and language. “There’s no comparison in any other sport in the attempt to destroy your opponent’s psyche,” explains chess player Stuart Marguiles. “I never have heard anybody say that he beat his opponent. It’s always that he smashed, squished, murdered or killed him.”

True, players with which one may be acquainted may not use such language. But, nevertheless, the spirit of competition between players can lead to unpleasant consequences, as the New York Times last summer reported: “Most families manage to keep the inevitable conflicts that arise in games to the chessboard. But in some homes, tensions linger long past checkmate.”

Of course, chess is not, in this respect, much different from other competitive games. Participants who desire to please God, regardless of the game they are playing, need to be careful that they do not violate the Bible principle: “Let us not become egotistical, stirring up competition with one another, envying one another.”​—Gal. 5:26.

The extreme fascination of chess can result in its consuming large amounts of one’s time and attention to the exclusion of more important matters, apparently a reason Huss regretted having played the game. Also, in playing it there is the danger of “stirring up competition with one another,” even developing hostility toward another, something the Bible warns Christians to avoid doing.