How to write a chess master?

How would you write a chess master without making him look like an incompetent fool that just keeps getting lucky? My main villain is meant to be a chess master who was manipulating the hero from the start with a mentor-like and wise image, how can I avert making him just a lucky jerk?

I can't really tell you how because villain development is something that I have not spent much time on recently (or at least not from a "chess master" standpoint). But it sounds like a cool thing you're embarking on.

If I had to cite good examples, I'd say maybe...Batman? (the Nolan movies)

edited 12th Mar '15 11:22:47 AM by Coujagkin

Generally, people who rely on long-term plans that need many things to have certain outcomes to be viable, do only succeed because they get lucky and not because of their magnificent planning skills.

If you want a "chessmaster" who manipulates someone for a long time, you aren't writing someone who would have a great overarching plan and long-term quasi-political mind games with a bajilion factors and a gajilion possible outcomes of which a shumshilion would make them win and all that rot. Instead, you are writing someone who:
• Can gain the trust of the characters who are being deceived, "right here and right now".
• Can control his own feelings and actions well enough to actually keep on being trusted.
• Is perceptive enough to know what things are important when they see them.
• Is good enough at improvising and quick enough at reacting to Indy Ploy when there's need for it.

Those are all any "chessmaster" character truly needs. Anything else depends on the situation, but the funny thing is that despite those three being pretty much the requirements, most "chessmaster" characters have neither of those traits or just one. Mostly because it's hard to write a character who knows how to plan well and have it work without making it look like a series of flukes; the third point is the one absent most often, and instead most so-called "chestmasters" have some sort of quasi-magical ability to feel things they need to know rather than having to see what they need to see before they can use it.

You know, in a story of mine (still being written, so I can't exactly present it yet), I have a character who has a "chessmaster-like" plan with maybe two or three things it relied on. And it still all blew in his face because something else, outside of those, had happened, and it simply was so unlikely that he hadn't considered the possibility and was too busy making sure that the things he relied on went fine. He had all but the third one, and it cost him greatly in the end (though he wasn't a villain; the antagonist yes, but not a villain).

... and yes, the ridiculous-sounding numbers aren't real. They are supposed to be a jab at the ridiculously-complicated plans that have like a million possible outcomes of which all are different enough from the rest to actually be outcomes of their own rather than merely variants and of which 99% somehow still ends up being some form of victory for the one who planned that.

edited 12th Mar '15 8:22:21 PM by Kazeto

It should be noted that the best analogue for an immensely cunning and competent type isn't a chess master.

It's a poker player. He has to deal with imperfect information, hiding his own cards from his opponents while trying to read theirs, occasionally bluffing, and always making gambles with the knowledge that Lady Luck may screw him over, but minimizing that risk the best he can.

So a chessmaster-type character would be one whose stock in trade is information and control. I can recommend no better one in literature than George Smiley, or portrayed on the big screen by Gary Oldman. Essays can and have been written on this quintessentially British spy, the anti-James Bond, who entraps his opponents through meticulous planning and yet who never loses his sense of empathy.

In a way, yes, that is right.

However, it does have to be noted that chess, as it is, is not about overarching strategy that takes one through it from the beginning to the end, but rather about being able to piece single moves adjusted to fit the current situation into a whole that somehow works.

So while a poker player is about information control, a chessmaster is—rather than about grand plans that miraculously work—about being able to pull through on improvising and past experiences. Of course on a certain level both of those start being something more than just that, as poker players benefit from being able to read subtle clues from their opponents' behaviour, and chess players can use their experiences and their knowledge about their opponents' styles to extrapolate possible moves and try to predict responses.

But in the end, it all boils down to the basics. And the basics are never grandiose.

And here I have a comparison of sorts that I just thought of. A true "chessmaster" isn't someone who has a great plan that works despite being complicated as all heck; rather, it is someone who will be able to salvage something once the plan breaks into pieces. Because salvaging that is what takes the ability to adjust and act on it that a "chessmaster" would have.

edited 12th Mar '15 8:32:44 PM by Kazeto

In addition to what the others said, i'd reccomend throwing in a Xanatos Gambit or 2 for good measure. Because what other way could you prove you could salvage anything from no matter how bad the outcome, when either victory or loss would help your situation.

edited 29th Oct '16 6:14:58 AM by riothegod

Quite right. In real life, successful manipulators don't focus their efforts on rigid plans and exacting execution, but on constant modifications and multiple redundancies. To that effect, it's one thing to have a villain that manipulates the hero, but you can also have multiple heroes that the villain switches between - so that even if one of them doesn't play by the book, there is another to take their place in the grander scheme.

I think I can explain how to make a good chess master character by explaining how to portray an actual game of chess well if you were so inclined.

The game of chess itself is often directly connected to strategic intelligence in the media, so much so that the smart characters are almost expected to be seen playing the game at some point (and most likely pulverizing the weaklings). However, a trap that I've seen many stories/writers fall into when it comes to showing a game of chess between characters is that the chess game isn't really looked at in too much detail (and also complete botchery of chess rules and terminology, but that isn't very relevant here).

More often than not, the smart chess player character will be seen responding to a nervous opponent's move calmly with his own, declaring "checkmate", and thus flawlessly winning the game (or some extremely similar scenario). This does technically tell us that the character who won the game can easily think around the plans of his/her rivals, but it doesn't truly give a viewer a reference to measure the character's intelligence. It was probably impossible to see the exact position on the chess board which the supposedly smart character easily played his way through, and thus it was impossible to see exactly how he/she was able to out-think their opponent. It was impossible to see if the game itself was actually childishly simple, or if the smart character won by some ass-pull crafted to appear brilliant to an outside observer, but in fact was a collection of conveniences that should have been impossible if not for the fact that the "chess master" was required to win by destiny (aka the plot).

Now, the question is, how do you portray a game of chess in a way which displays the true intricacies of the game and the exact caliber of the players? Well, most importantly, you need to give the audience a good shot of the board that allows them to clearly see the pieces' positions. Maybe multiple shots throughout the course of the game. This allows the viewer to see exactly what the smart chess player sees; a variety of possible moves and lines which the chess master and the opponent could reasonably follow. Don't go overboard by explaining every possible line blatantly, just make sure the materials/information the characters are working off of is always there for one to deduce.

Secondly, you can't slack off when it comes to the creation of the position(s) which the chess master and the audience sees. Research material from the masters and craft a position which is complex, filled to the brim with calculated pressures, and most of all looks like a position which would naturally occur. Make sure that you, the creator of the position, can identify the quickest working line which the chess master can use to gain a decisive advantage and/or win the game. Remember, when you show your audience the position, keen eyes will be able to point out an easier/more efficient line which the chess master or the opponent could have used if one exists, and so the audience will critique the skills/intelligence of the players for not noticing/ignoring the simpler solution they missed. In other words, the chess master shouldn't use an extremely complicated plan when one isn't needed.

Lastly, if one is to establish the chess master as truly brilliant, their opponent(s) can't be complete amateurs/idiots. Any half-decent chess player isn't going to be missing a mate in one, you know what I'm saying? For the chess master to win, they're going to have to exploit weaknesses in the position that their opponent wouldn't consider. Maybe the chess master will see a line where they sacrifice a major piece which the opponent has been gunning for, but doing so in turn would compromise the defensive structure around the king for a relentless assault. Or, perhaps the master sees a move/line that completely forces their opponent to respond in only one way (that is, if they want to keep their queen and/or avoid certain defeat), thus giving the master control of the course of the game. OR, the chess master could play the game in a way that slowly locks down the opponent's options to the point where they're in "zugzwang"; a position where any move would be losing for the chess master's opponent despite the fact that the opponent has rightly seen their position as structurally sound right up to the critical moment. There's a whole lot of possibilities beyond these examples which can be used to establish your chess master as a genius without making their opponents inept, and really the more competent the opponent the chess master overcomes, the more brilliant they'll be proven to be.

Applying these ideas for how to create an interesting chess game to the creation of a chess master character should produce a genius whose intelligence can't easily be questioned. All that should be left to do then would be to craft the character's personality which would further incline an audience to follow their "games". :)

Most of the time in fiction, while physical games are mindlessly mutilated, mental games like chess aren't even properly shown. It's like watching the promo for a wrestling match, and then cutting straight to the victory celebrations. We all know it's scripted, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be made convincing, by hiring some proper choreographers.

Sometimes this is even milked by having the otherwise thick-as-a-brick comic relief beat a seasoned expert - if you see the same thing in physical terms, like an 80-pound waif beating up a six-foot behemoth, you'd cry foul if it's played with a straight face and no supernatural elements are involved. In Star Trek for instance, it's fairly common to have an "intuitive" character beat the resident Spock impersonator at chess, so as to "prove" that logic isn't everything - and the chess itself is of a kind with rules blissfully opaque to the audience, so you can't actually know which player had the advantage.

Essentially, characters in fiction can be as strong or rich or unrealistically creative as the writers want. However, they can only be as intelligent - with regard to information known to the audience, such as chess rules - as the writers themselves... or, at least for chess, as the nearest high-level computer. In fact, one easy way to have chessmasters that actually play chess, believably, game fully visible, is to run your simulator of choice for both players, and occasionally add moves you consider to be aggressive or foolhardy, but letting the computer do the smart plays. That's what computers are for, after all. Do the same with a strategy game with a non-cheating AI, and you can avert Mary Tzus as well.

edited 4th Nov '16 6:17:14 AM by indiana404

There is a lot I could cover here, both from writing it and experience as the chessmaster (that's for a bit more credibility, though I do more beyond that) and I can say that this can give you some good tips.

Also, for some good reading, Sun Tzu, the 36 stratagems, and The Prince are good things to learn from.

Finally, I add this as an important thing to being a planner: what some call genius is just intelligence and awareness applied with discipline. And always keep it simple. The extraordinary arises from the reliable and ordinary.

Oh yeah, one more thing! Don't approach as a chess player. The name of the game is poker, not chess.

And laughing now that I see someone else made poker point.

edited 6th Nov '16 1:30:40 AM by Prime_of_Perfection