The Beautiful Game

Back

A number of years ago I visited the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, the smallest country in the world. I remember queuing for hours in the baking Italian sunshine; passing the homeless juxtaposed against the gaudy opulence of St Peter’s Basilica. And the ubiquitous smell of pizza.

Upon reaching at the Apostolic Palace, which is home to the 15^th century Sistine Chapel, you pass through Pentagon-level security checks and then walk for miles through room after room of huge tapestries. Endless religious artworks, sculptures, ornaments – your senses are flooded. Then you arrive. 

The room is larger than you thought, the ceiling higher (20.7 metres). You at first wonder where the famous part of the Fresco is: God reaching out to Adam. The creation. Then you see it – you follow where everyone else is looking.

You would like to take a photo but the surly guard in the room disallows any such intervention. His voice booms, Niente foto! Did Michelangelo have an iPhone? You bump shoulders with neck-craning sweaty tourists who came from afar to see the fresco, at least the famous bits.

It has been a while now since I visited and all I remember is the famous bit, the shouty guard and the journey there. The rest of the fresco – the other frescoes – has become a blur as if I had never seen them at all. I would have liked a guida to explain it all more to me. 

Further Back

Part of what drew me to become an English teacher was the beauty of words. For me, they were not merely marks on paper; they were palpable. I could feel the resonance of individual words, see them shimmer. Their texture and tone recreated the sentence, the page afresh. 

This was not something I was born with. I trained my eye to the beauty of language by reading and writing a lot, by experimenting with words, by constructing and deconstructing. 

It was first ink on paper like footprints in the snow, but to a trained eye, marks in the snow speak more than feet. They bespeak specific animals, their trajectories, their emotional journeys… and that is only the start.

Backgammon

So it came to pass that I took up backgammon. At first, it was moving coloured checkers on a board. This is how it starts for everyone: a fetish. Then should one choose to continue, one is met with various challenges over the board and one seeks ways to resolve them or at least understand them.

When a move which bamboozles you is suddenly made plain through an explanation, one can see the elegance and beauty that draws one to the game. The answer had to always be that answer and it is clear now. The complex has been made simple. It is like seeing the Sistine Chapel with a guide.

Whether the reason for the best move is because of a sophisticated diversification of numbers, or that the narrative unfolds in a more winning direction, there is always a reason. The beauty of the game is through its logic which only becomes manifest to the trained eye. Backgammon is a science and good players are empiricists. You train your eye through practice and inherit a new way of looking.

This is the pay-off for the investment you make. The many hours on XG. The accumulation of the losses is your awakening. You work through your blindness to find your sight. 

What else is backgammon but pattern recognition? Some people look at the night sky and can see dozens of constellations; others look at the night sky and see only stars.

GMs look at the board like astronomers looking at the night sky. They see patterns shape and form. Checkers coalesce. They are like Michelangelo beneath the unpainted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The beauty is only there for some to see. It is meaningless to the uninitiated. They only see the board and the checkers. This is merely surface. They look but cannot see the deeper mysteries of the game. 

I for example cannot hear the beauty of Bach. It is not that it is not there. It’s just that I have not trained my ear to hear it. I am merely listening rather than hearing.

Backgammon is more than a game. It is life. It is perspective. We see to know, and then we know to see. The beauty is cyclical. We see and through repeated seeing, we see more. We go deeper into the fresco.

Final Thoughts

Do not exclaim too loudly that backgammon is a game incandescent with wonder and riven with beauty as you may be met with looks of bemusement. 

Keep your eyes open.