Endless Discovery

#WhyILoveChess? I can't come up with a single answer to that question.

First, there's the competitive aspect, which was the predominant reason in the #WhyILoveChess tweets. After that, there's an intellectual aspect to the game itself that has nothing to do with competition.

Chess puts my thoughts into a meditative state that few other activities are capable of doing.

Even more important than that is the intricate interconnection that chess has with the rest of human experience.

Chess is an endless maze that leads to endless discovery.

That's not bad for a game that is itself finite. A recent example: Among my favorite posts on this blog are aleatory series where I don't know what subject I'm going to tackle until I start to write. A recent post in the Flickr Friday photo series became Lasker Seen Darkly. While I was working on that I discovered Chess Books in the Internet Archive. This led to Borrowing a Chess Book, which spawned the question Fischer in the Army?

The Fischer post leads to other subjects, but at some point I have to say, 'Stop!', and move on to something else. And that 'something else' becomes a new starting point in the endless maze.