Chess is the great equalizer. It transcends age, gender, country, wealth, asthetics, and physical size. An American can play with a Panamanian. A physicist can play with a housewife. An awkward teenager can play with a grizzled disabled veteran. The only thing that matters is one's ability to think, to calculate, to intuit, to make decisions over the board. Its beauty can be experienced but not described. Its complexity is often analogized but rarely matched. It is a challenge not from one's opponent but from the limits of one's own mind.
