The Board Was Always Ours
Class, Agency, and the Myth of Intelligence
I offered to teach a young, working-class tutee chess. He blinked, surprised. Like I’d invited him to the Lord Mayor’s dinner. Not because he didn’t think he could learn—but because no one had ever suggested the game was for him. As if chess was something other people did. Clean people. Clever people. People who knew which fork to use at dinner.
But he said yes.
I taught my five-year-old to complete a full legal game. Chess isn’t hard. It’s codified. Structured. Finite. What makes it feel hard is the myth that surrounds it.
Chess isn’t complicated. It’s sanctified.
The Myth of Chess
Chess is a holy object in the church of cleverness. A rite of passage for the serious. It wears the robes of Enlightenment logic, military precision, and Victorian respectability. Kings and queens. Bishops and knights. It is the map of empire, dressed as wisdom.
It is a game of complete information. Everyone sees everything. Which is why it has been so ruthlessly coded as a game for the elite. Not because they play it best—but because it rewards those who assume they belong. If you already feel entitled to space, it’s easier to build structure, to take control, to claim territory without hesitation. The game opens more easily when you think it was made for you.
To be good at chess is to be seen as intelligent. Strategic. Contained. And that is why its gatekeeping cuts so deep.
Because when a working-class teenager learns chess, the world doesn’t just treat them like they’ve learned a game.
It treats them like they’ve breached a temple.
The Class Code
Chess is taught in private schools, posh clubs, and prep academies not because it can’t be taught elsewhere—but because its symbolism works in their favour. It communicates culture. Polish. Legitimacy.
When you tell a working-class teenager they’ve become good at chess, it’s like you handed them a pass to the country club. They have entered a domain they weren’t told they could enter. And now they’re not just playing—they’re trespassing.
Every piece is a symbol. The Knight, who must move in strange ways to matter. The Pawn, told it is expendable—until it isn’t. The Queen, born in Castile, who wasn’t always allowed to move like that.
This is myth. This is inheritance. This is a ritual dressed as a game.
And for many kids, it is never offered. Not because they can’t handle it, but because we’ve decided it doesn’t belong to them. That they shouldn’t touch the sacred.
Pattern and Permission
Symbolic System Play taught us that pattern can be learned. That agency can be rewoven through structured systems. That you can train your reflexes by entering a bounded world.
But that only works if you believe you’re allowed to enter.
Class doesn’t just dictate your income or your housing. It shapes your sense of permission. It tells you what games are for you. What knowledge belongs to you. What patterns you’re allowed to inhabit.
This is why we must talk about class.
Because before a person can reweave their pattern, they have to believe the pattern was theirs to touch.
And chess—codified, beautiful, sharp-edged chess—has always been ours.
We just forgot to tell some of the kids.