Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - Chess playing makes you good at life playing?

Jthorn · 03-02-2009, 10:32 PM

Chess between two humans is far from a game of complete information.
It's not always about calculating accurately ahead, that's just one aspect of the game. You can never calculate all variations and neither can computers at the moment, nor will they for a very long time, although of course they will always have an advantage in that part. Chess most definetely *is* a game of uncertainty and making decisions with incomplete information. If you 're only willing to attack when you can see the mate, then you will never do it. A good player will heed his intuition and often take risks based on it, without having seen more than a couple of moves ahead.

The ultimate goal may be to capture the enemy king but there are many ways to try and achieve it. And you might opt for simply preventing your opponent from doing so. You might try to attack in the middlegame, or head for an endgame, you might attack on the kingside or the queenside, you might try to consolidate or to create counterplay, you might try to control the dark squares or to bust open the center. All of these are different, competing goals and there is no right or wrong.
More often than not, there are more than one good moves in a position and if both players play them then the game will be a draw. Winning is all about the opponent making more mistakes than you.

03-02-2009, 10:32 PM	#13 (permalink)
Jthorn Banned Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 125	Chess between two humans is far from a game of complete information. It's not always about calculating accurately ahead, that's just one aspect of the game. You can never calculate all variations and neither can computers at the moment, nor will they for a very long time, although of course they will always have an advantage in that part. Chess most definetely is a game of uncertainty and making decisions with incomplete information. If you 're only willing to attack when you can see the mate, then you will never do it. A good player will heed his intuition and often take risks based on it, without having seen more than a couple of moves ahead. The ultimate goal may be to capture the enemy king but there are many ways to try and achieve it. And you might opt for simply preventing your opponent from doing so. You might try to attack in the middlegame, or head for an endgame, you might attack on the kingside or the queenside, you might try to consolidate or to create counterplay, you might try to control the dark squares or to bust open the center. All of these are different, competing goals and there is no right or wrong. More often than not, there are more than one good moves in a position and if both players play them then the game will be a draw. Winning is all about the opponent making more mistakes than you.