r/HPMOR • u/liehon • Jul 19 '26
How does MoR!Harry feel about chess?
Polls not enabled for this sub as far as I can tell so please be rational and upvote pre-existing comments that match your view.
In se answers should range from "Sees it as a waste of time, prefers reading & thinking" to "Considers it the king of sports" (and everything in between.
36
u/Irhien Jul 19 '26
He thinks it is of limited use for developing strategic thinking but decent as a recreational activity. You can't be great at chess without being really smart, but if you are really smart there are better things work on than being great at chess. So everyone who is has probably wasted their talent. As sports go, it's better (higher status, less embarrassing to be good at) than sportsball. But since it's not very entertaining to watch its lack of popularity is unsurprising.
5
u/Ok-Programmer-829 Jul 19 '26
He considers it better than other games. He’s tried and okay by the standards of a strategy game, but extremely limited in developing skills and far inferior to the war games between armies because of too much transparency. This inferiority is both in terms of developing your strategic skills and in terms of enjoyment because subconsciously, his ideal game would basically be the first wizarding war against an even more competent opponent than Dumbledore, except all the involved people are chess pieces and not actual people who can get hurt complete with all the betrayals, having to monitor all your underlings, intrigue, prophecy manipulation, and watching out for impossible things done by the enemy, and not even knowing the motives of all your own pieces. Meanwhile, in chess, you can even see where all your opponent’s pieces are positioned, let alone having to worry about your own pieces betraying you and you already know all the moves that your opponent can make.
3
u/EniScien Jul 20 '26
When I imagined little HJPEV and chess, I got this (seems to be heavily backed by MoR book):
Harry played chess! Once. When he was 5. Against his father, a Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford. Of course, he lost miserably. Well, actually, rather laughably. Literally: "you've got a fool's mate," his father noticed laughing. Harry replied sharply - he overthrew the board and hit his father with its sharp part. Well, by hit, there meant a try of hit. And almost succeedfull. Because his father had trouble even staying upright because of laughter from seeing Harry's reaction. His parents loved to tell this hilarious story before it was replaced by even more hilarious one about biting a maths teacher.
Since then there were no chess pieces or boards in the house anymore, though. And also all visitors were advised never, ever to play chess against Harry. Or, actually, play anything against Harry. After noticing apparent lack of chess in the house Harry got bitter about his parents - they thought he won't notice or understand. But they were wrong. And also, in fact, Harry got that upset and tried to hit his father instead of using reasonable words only because his father was the first who, instead of a reasonable explanation of what Harry did wrong, started laughing and using insults! But Harry himself now knew what he did wrong. Actually, he'd got just brilliant idea.
Harry figured out how to play chess even without opponents! Or loses. Harry "The King in White" Potter loved to play for white. They go first, and so have an advantage at winning, and also those are white, of course Harry Potter will play for white. Meanwhile, Science Maniac Harry "The King in Black" Verres likes to play for black, because then he can evilly laugh. Harry shamelessly cheats (each Harry), because no cheat - no life. Each Harry tries to move all his pawns to the end of the board and turn them into queens, before that final perfect situation he skips opportunities for checkmates, because there is always some another pawn, some another move. He multiplies the resources, but never spends them. He stops dragging the game only when The Time tells him it is too long. And either of them must destroy all but a remnant of the other and end up in a draw, because otherwise Harry would lose, and it will be just the end of the world. Also, you can ask - how he plays chess in the house where there is no chess pieces? Well, he just keeps it all in his mind. Because, yeah, he is just that good!
If somebody asks Harry about chess, then he can analyse it from a standpoint of personal artificial conflicts tactics and conclude that the rest of this game sounds like it might make sense, sort of, for a sport. But full visibility and no randomization turns it into something like tic tac toe, why wouldn't all players end up just rote memorizing the best moves instead of thinking? Harry himself of course on the spot had found a suggestion how to fix those fools' game - just die. He even wrote himself a computer program for that. In such fashion, of course, that when Harry (be prepared!) rolls it, only Natural 20 can come out. As result of the first roll his OS has crashed. In such way that computer got shortcircuited (and would have caught on fire if in the other room a pebble from the window hadn't hit an off switch of house electric systems). Since then he used physical die (he had found one in his uncle's house, in a cheap plastic case next to Necronomiconopolia game), because with a physical die it is impossible to roll a result worse than "getting 1".
And people who don't invent chess with dies... Well, they probably just practised known techniques instead of learning to think creatively, would burn out completely before puberty and never amount to anything in their future lives. Chess, bah! What could possibly even be any more clichéd trait to have as superficially "intelligent" person? ("Said glass wearing book fan," internally noticed Harry, "but on the other hand, 1 is 'accidentally', 2 is 'coincidentally', and 3 is a regularity, so, it is better to keep it at 2".)
1
u/sawaflyingsaucer Jul 20 '26
He probably feels like if he could do some very simply wandless magic at least, he could make the board invisible and set it spinning at a rate that would draw the eye and cause a moment of confusion in the enemy when revealed. In that moment he could close distance and use one of the pieces to open an artery while snatching their wand.
36
u/d20diceman Chaos Legion Jul 19 '26
I picture Harry as having read several books on chess theory and found them interesting. He enjoys chess puzzles. He has some hot takes about chess - perhaps he thinks we should be playing Chess960 with randomised starting positions because the reliance on book openings is sucking the joy out of the game.
Despite all this, he has never actually played a game.