So, a game. A board game. No, not Chess. Not even Preference. Is there even a subject for a more or less serious conversation here? Let's try to figure it out and start, perhaps, from afar.
The desire to be first, the enjoyment of the competitive process and its result (if it is positive, of course; if not, then the thirst for revenge) is an integral part of human nature, which in one form or another always manifests itself, no matter what we do.
The sublimation of the above passions is gaming behavior, to which all ages are subject, as well as sport as an ordered form of such behavior. It is foolish to dispute the colossal significance of this phenomenon, both personal and social - it is enough to estimate the volume of investments in professional and mass sports (and the monetary turnover of the gaming industry, of course).
As for sports, their development is moving towards increasing diversity. Baron de Coubertin could not even dream of such a number of disciplines as at the last Olympics. And there are even more types that do not have Olympic status.
Why is this important? Because a professional athlete is just the top of the pyramid. Below them are amateurs of varying degrees of involvement, and at the base are a lot of people who have gone through the training system but have not demonstrated the necessary talent or desire. But human abilities are fantastically multifaceted! And the fact that you are stuck at the base of one pyramid does not mean that another would not be easy for you. Not gifted at running fast? But you can do it for a long time. Not flexible enough? But you can punch like a horse with a hoof. Too built for rugby? But you can dribble past half the team with the ball in your feet. The probability that a particular person has some specific talent is, of course, not absolute, but nevertheless quite high. That is why there should be many pyramids. So that beginner athletes have a wide choice, and mentors have the opportunity to pass on to each other those who are not suited to one discipline, but may well succeed in another. In order not to kill the motivation of new recruits at the root with obviously unbearable competition and screening to nowhere. So that as many of them as possible, gradually sorting through options, remain in the field of attraction of big sports for as long as possible. There will be no losers. Someone will find their path to the championship, and someone, even having eventually dropped out of the race, will acquire a healthy spirit in a healthy body and strong skills to preserve this wealth throughout their lives.
You can build glamorous fitness clubs on every corner, but the average person will remember about the annual membership a couple of weeks before it expires, because he has neither the relevant knowledge, nor the internal need for good physical shape, nor self-discipline. On the contrary, a person with sports experience, even if he is limited to some children's and youth school, is quite satisfied with a path in the park and a horizontal bar in the yard.
Yes, and for a child to go to this very school of his own free will, sacrificing carefree time in favor of hard work, the entourage of big-time sports with all its titles, awards, splashes of champagne and the delight of fans is precisely what is needed. Healthy ambitions are the main motivator.
Finally, from this perspective, it no longer seems strange or excessive to have, say, dozens of types of running or swimming, several versions of football with different ball shapes and goalpost heights, numerous racing series in which only the cockpit design and engine size change, or a ton of martial arts that define in different ways which parts of the body can be grabbed and which cannot. That which does not strive for complication sooner or later simplifies to absolute zero.
So, excuse me, but what does all this have to do with board games? Directly.
I hope no one will argue that we owe the splendor of our modern civilization primarily to our intellect. The brain is our main evolutionary advantage, our tool for survival and development, our pride. Does it need constant training? Yes. Are methods based on the above-mentioned game behavior suitable here? Absolutely. The history of various kinds of intellectual competitions goes back many millennia.
But here's what's interesting. With all the wealth of manifestations of game behavior, the lion's share of them at the moment are such forms of activity in which the leading role is played by purely physiological, mechanistic, I would say, parameters. Speed, strength, endurance, flexibility, reaction, coordination and the like. A simple example, so as not to be unfounded. In the all-Russian register of sports developed at the federal level, almost one and a half hundred positions are presented. Many of them are divided into disciplines, the total number of which is in the thousands. At the same time, I counted only four types that can be attributed to intellectual sports: Chess, Checkers, Go and Bridge. Not many.
The picture that emerges is strange, in my opinion. We climbed down from the trees millions of years ago, we have not lived by hunting and gathering for many centuries, and a significant part of the population rarely even does basic physical labor. The personal, social, and professional success of a modern person depends last of all on strength and dexterity. First of all, it depends on memory, erudition, resourcefulness, attentiveness, and cunning (also physiology, of course, but much more complex and inextricably linked with that very unique product of evolution). However, when it comes to satisfying the objectively existing passion for competition, we seem to return to a primitive state, where we need to outrun our opponent, suppress him with mass or speed of reflexes, or even hit him on the precious head with something.
I am exaggerating, of course, and I can't help it. It is clear that the importance of physical culture is enormous, and sport is its driving force. It is clear that winning without using your brain is practically impossible anywhere. It is clear that in those same abstract intellectual games, combinatorics plays a significant role, which has no direct relation to what is commonly called intelligence. Finally, it is also clear that movement (drive, action, to use the currently fashionable Anglicisms), which underlies any "physical" sport, is spectacular, and therefore more in demand by the public and commercially profitable. All true. However, halftones are halftones, but no one in their right mind and memory would say that hammer throwing and Chess do not have fundamental differences. They do. And the results of a long-term passion for these sports, if you approach the issue statistically, will be different. Whatever one may say, those organs that are used more actively work better, so a brain that is in good shape and regularly solves complex, even relatively narrowly focused, problems will cope more successfully with all the other challenges that befall it.
It is no coincidence that Chess was loved by many outstanding people from Tamerlane to Leo Tolstoy and very often accompanies a good education and high social status. It is no coincidence that the golden age of this game coincided with the era of the greatest discoveries, when humanity stepped into space and tamed the atomic nucleus. The cause-and-effect relationships here are, of course, not direct, but quite obvious.
Now we can once again run our eyes over those paragraphs where the diversity of sports disciplines was discussed, and then ask ourselves a simple question: are these arguments fair for intellectual sports and is there, so to speak, a cerebral analogue of physical culture? In my opinion, yes. And mass participation in this case is no less important, especially if we consider that in the virtual world, where we have been increasingly immersed in recent years, primitive reflexes unconditionally dominate.
What am I getting at? No, of course, not at the point of banning all sports related to physical activity (and computer “shooters” as well), and forcing everyone who wants to compete to sit at the table. But the imbalance still needs to be leveled. How? There are many recipes that can be thought up, but one of the obligatory ones is obvious: just as the leaders of the Olympic movement turned a get-together of a few enthusiasts into a global phenomenon. Diversity, the widest possible audience reach, a wide scope for ambition.
This process is actually happening, albeit very slowly. Until the end of the twentieth century, the personification and undisputed hegemon of intellectual sports was the already mentioned Chess. There were practically no other options for making a sports career not with muscles, but with the head. However, at the turn of the century, a real alternative appeared - Go. Having left the borders of its East Asian ancestral homeland, this game did not so much push aside the favorite as it created another center of attraction, attracting neophytes with its originality and philosophical flair.
The continuation of the logic of increasing diversity and a side effect of the spread of Go across Europe were precisely the Dots - the game to which our site is dedicated. There were both subjective and objective prerequisites for this, but in general such reproduction by budding is a common phenomenon for sports. Common and - I hope that after reading this article you will agree with this - useful.
Alexander Parfenov January 5, 2021