An appearance.

I am one who just seeks to appear normal and insane.
A little hard to pull both off at once, naturally, but it is doable.

To those literate in the chesses, of course. Normal with regard to the world. Your world, that is. Because it doesn't really matter how it is.

Within the virtual confines of a planar grid, imaginary pieces wage invisible war, careening between squares in an organised dance of combat.

It is the elegance with which these pieces dance that marks the insane. The better choreographed the moves, the better the general's insight. The more remarkable and surprising routines, ah, those routines...

Belong to the insane.

Not to say that doesn't win chess games. It does, with a genuinely unexpected success rate, somewhere between 2% to 50%, depending on the opposition. Ridiculous combinations of pieces and lines of defence, non-standard formations, they share a quality of beauty and practicality in their execution.

I wonder why so few people play chess creatively.