So you get out your best chess set and challenge a friend to a game. Perhaps you lose or maybe your opponent does but whatever happens you will probably enjoy a game that challenges the mind and leaves you thinking more clearly.
Could this be why some leaders have been found pulling out their own best chess set and playing when all around them is crashing down?
In June this year, Libyan state television showed footage of Colonel Gadhafi playing chess against a visiting champion. This was of course just as his country was in the grip of a revolution. Perhaps diplomatically his opponent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, allowed Gadhafi to win but was the Colonel attempting to escape the disaster looming over him or was he trying to look as normal as possible?
Playing chess in the face of adversity has been reported before. In the year 762 AD the city of Baghdad was under siege and men were being killed by the hundred. Defeat seemed imminent but Muhammed al-Amin, the caliph of the Abbasid Empire, based on Baghdad, was calmly playing chess with one of his eunuchs.
Even urgent messengers arriving with news of yet another defeat would not disturb the game. Eventually the invading hordes broke into the room and the caliph was beheaded.
Serious chess players bent over their chess set pieces would perhaps have sympathy with the Colonel and with the caliph. It is very easy to be so absorbed in the chess set pieces that time and the world around you seems to fade away.
See the video of Colonel Gadhafi playing perhaps his last game of chess in this video.
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