PLAYERS AND PAWNS by Gary Alan Fine ( 9780226264981 ) - Books & Audio Books at Pickabook.co.uk

Item Details

Title:

PLAYERS AND PAWNS
HOW CHESS BUILDS COMMUNITY AND CULTURE

By:

Gary Alan Fine

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£23.00

Our price:

£20.70

Discount:

10% off

You save:

£2.30

ISBN 10:

022626498X

ISBN 13:

9780226264981

Availability:

Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.

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Stock:

Currently 0 available

Publisher:

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Pub. date:

6 August, 2015

Pages:

288

Description:

Whether your chess career culminated in grandmaster status, or ended (repeatedly) in your or your brother's hurling the board and pieces across the living room, nearly all of us learned to play the game at one point or another. And chess tournaments, like spelling bees, are strangely captivating phenomena, bringing hundreds--sometimes thousands--of people together to watch two men sit silently at opposite sides of a table, occasionally moving a game piece. Gary Fine examines the social forces that bring these people together, not just in tournaments but in chess clubs, elementary and high school programs, college teams, and more. He finds that the chess players create a "soft community," an open and welcoming space where those with a commitment to the game find a place, despite eccentricities that might make them outsiders elsewhere. Admission to the community isn't free, though; the flip side to soft community is "sticky culture," the stipulation that identification with this world is explicitly linked with the acquisition of shared knowledge. This knowledge starts with game tactics and strategy, but Fine doesn't elaborate on them: he brings us on a tour of all the other things a player learns: the psychology of chess, the history of the game, local and national heroes, how you conduct yourself when you're on the ticking clock of a timed match, what it means to know exactly where you're ranked among the millions of chess players in the world, the seminal matches of the Cold War. Though you may come out of reading this book just as much of a patzer--a bumbling amateur--on the board, you'll have a thorough understanding of what happens over the board.

Synopsis:

A chess match seems as solitary an endeavor as there is in sports: two minds, on their own, in fierce opposition. In contrast, Gary Alan Fine argues that chess is a social duet: two players in silent dialogue who always take each other into account in their play. Surrounding that one-on-one contest is a community life that can be nearly as dramatic and intense as the across-the-board confrontation. Fine has spent years immersed in the communities of amateur and professional chess players, and with Players and Pawns he takes readers deep inside them, revealing a complex, brilliant, feisty world of commitment and conflict. Opening with a close look at a typical tournament in Atlantic City, Fine carries us from planning and setup through the climactic final day's match-ups between the weekend's top players, introducing us along the way to countless players and their relationships to the game. At tournaments like that one, as well as in locales as diverse as collegiate matches and community chess clubs, players find themselves part of what Fine terms a "soft community," an open, welcoming space built on their shared commitment to the game.Within that community, chess players find both support and challenges, all amid a shared interest in and love of the long-standing traditions of the game, traditions that help chess players build a communal identity. Full of idiosyncratic characters and dramatic gameplay, Players and Pawns is a celebration of the ever-fascinating world of serious chess.

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Chicago Press

Returns:

Returnable

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