Faking chess
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
People play chess everywhere. Even in Hollywood.
There, a special variation I will for the sake of indoctrination call Fake Chess, dominates. This very odd game probably evolved on film sets, as opposed to traditional chess which was first spotted in ancient India.
Anyone who can operate a VCR or cinema ticket will have observed actors to apply a very peculiar set of playing rules:
Fake chess playing rules:
- The only legal move is mate
- Opening, middle and end game are simply skipped
- At this stage, one actor will furiously contemplate the board, completely failing to look very intelligent
- He will make a random move and be ostensibly happy with it*
- His opponent will make a casual remark possibly relevant to the movie plot concerned, and then play mate
- The first player will look extremely surprised*
Examples of this theme abound, recently including Madonna's clip 'power of goodbye' and Independance Day (Jeff Goldblum is a Fake Chess Grandmaster).
Notable exceptions in the movie world are 'Searching for Bobby Fisher' and 'Fresh' which are excellent stuff.
The total lack of logic or skill involved in mastering Fake Chess make it an ideal starting point for anyone not really interested in chess.
