Whilst reading the truly wonderful ‘Chess: the history of a game’, by Richard Eales, I discovered that Benjamin Franklin once wrote an essay on ‘The Morals of Chess’. His comments show that he understood our beautiful game very well. The piece certainly reveals it age, his comments regarding ‘the rules of play’ made me chuckle. I would like to add that I am in concordance with the view that singing at the board whilst your opponent is thinking is rather ungentlemanly. After all, the last thing you want whilst deep in concentration is for renditions of the latest death metal number to waft across the board… .
You can find it in the Appendix on pg. 6.
http://www.benfranklin300.org/_etc_pdf/Chess_John_McCrary.pdf
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