When you begin a game of chess there is a perfection to the board, a symmetry and balance. Then you inject humanity onto the board. Small victories and losses accrue as you move toward a set outcome. As the game proceeds the board, with humanity now on display, appears more hectic and the players attempt to make sense of this disarray. How well each does this will determine how the game concludes. Where is the beauty of the game? Is it in the perfection at the start? Is it in the ballet of victory and loss that leads to its conclusion? Is it in the finality of the set outcome? Is it in the disarray we create out of our own thought process that is on display as the game proceeds?

Pick a point in time. When did the game begin? Did it begin when each player chose to play? Did it begin when the board was set? Did it begin with the first move? Was it when each player had made their first move? When the first piece was lost? At the point where a winning strategy became clear to one player?

Columbus sailed his ships across the ocean to find new land and all that may provide him. He first discovered an island and on that island were the Arawak indians. Here is what Columbus wrote in his log about his first meeting with the Arawak:

"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Pick a point in time. When did the game begin? Where is the beauty of the game?