Life Imitates Chess And Chess Imitates Life

You have probably already read a sentence very similar to the title of this text, saying exactly the same thing about art. At the same time, I personally see chess not only as a game, but as a kind of art, so I asked myself: Does chess also imitate life? What aspects of the game can be compared to our daily struggle in the world? Is playing a game a kind of transport to a parallel reality of 64 squares, where we feel the same challenges we face in our routines?

Answering this is not an easy task, so I decided to do what I usually do when faced with philosophical or complex questions, write about it and try to understand what I think. Here I will share with you how my process of thinking about this topic went and what conclusions I came to.

Basically, and not to create any unnecessary mystery, I believe that yes, we can say that a game of chess is very comparable to life in many ways. After thinking about it for a while and changing this text many times, I was finally able to summarize my thoughts and present them to my readers, so I hope you enjoy what comes next.

Perhaps this will be the most abstract of all my articles so far, so I apologize in advance if you notice that I am not too experienced with this yet, but if you are an avid reader of my blog, you already know how I like to structure my texts, dividing them into topics and then opening the discussion on each one separately.

The long and boring introduction is over, so now we can start. The main points where I think a game of chess resembles life are:

1)      It depends on us! And in the end, we are the only ones in control.

During a game of chess, we are alone with ourselves and our minds. Every move, every plan, every hesitation, every bold decision is made by us, and we are the only ones who have to face the consequences. Then the question came to my mind, is it the same in life?

Well, not exactly. In our lives, we have the support of our family and friends to help us make our decisions, and in some cases, it can also affect their lives, especially if you are married or have children. So why did I bring this topic here?

Because I think a game of chess can be compared to life in "hard mode" in this respect. The feeling we sometimes have is that we are alone in the world and responsible for our fate. And the bad news is that this is true. Your life is yours and no one else's. Family is a great thing to support us, and friends are essential when we face difficulties, but they can only help us if we help ourselves first.

After all, no one has to be our friend, our wives or husbands don't have to stay with us if they don't want to, and even our parents don't owe us anything when we grow up.

Therefore, just like in chess, when there is no one to give us an opinion or support, we still have to go on and try our best, because we still have the most important thing, our own mind and determination.

2)      We need to make decisions and think about their short-, medium-, and long-term consequences.

Just like in life, we have to make decisions that will affect our future in the next move, in 5 moves, or more than 10 moves.

A tactical move is similar to our daily "what to do" questions. Pizza or salad for dinner? What football game to watch today? Stay at home or go to the gym? A bad choice here can ruin the rest of our "game," so just because they are short-term does not mean they are any less important.

Medium-term decisions, such as where to go on vacation or what car to buy, are like the mini-plans we make during our games: placing our knight in a more active square, the rooks in an open column, and the bishops in the open diagonals. They may not affect anything directly, but they are certainly very important.

But the most important decisions are the long-term ones, like our overall strategy in a game of chess. What to study, engineering or law? To attack the kingside or the queenside? How to invest my money for a good retirement? What pawn breaks to make for a favorable endgame? Should I move to another country for better opportunities or stay close to my family? Give up the bishop to eliminate that strong knight or keep the bishop pair?

In chess, these three types of decisions are simultaneous, so we must make the one that better satisfies all of them, evaluating the risk and reward for each. A great strategy or plan is useless if there is a tactical problem with the move, and vice versa.

3)      Self-discipline and emotional control.

The ability to remain calm under pressure and to manage emotions is crucial both in chess and in life. Of course, for most of us who are only amateurs, losing a game does not really make a big difference, especially if it is just an online friendly.

However, if we look at chess through the lens of a professional player, it is undeniable that the emotional aspect can sometimes be even more important than the moves on the board themselves. I think this is one of the reasons why Magnus Carlsen is so far ahead of his main opponents today. Other legendary players like Karpov and Petrosian are also great examples of this.

Another example, this time on the negative side, was the poor performance of Ian Nepomniachtchi in the two World Championship matches he played. I am sure that no one here is in a position to question his skills or his knowledge of chess, but the failure to keep his nerve when the pressure was at its peak caused him to lose both matches with inexplicable blunders that he would surely never make even in online blitz games.

Learning how to stay calm and have the discipline to deal with adverse situations is also very valuable in our daily lives, and losing our cool at crucial moments, such as a meeting with an important client, an emergency landing of a plane, or even a simple discussion with our family, can have disastrous consequences. Therefore, I think we can learn a lot of lessons and almost practice them while playing a game of chess.

4)      It is necessary to be ready for changes and adjust our plans accordingly.

Sometimes we think we have the perfect plan to win a game or get a huge advantage, but suddenly we are surprised by a move from our opponents that either defends everything or creates a new threat that we simply cannot ignore, so we change our strategy and adjust our plan to the new situation, at least for a while until you can solve the new problems on the board.

Of course, we can try to ignore it and continue with a crazy attack, closing our eyes and pretending there is nothing to worry about, but the consequences will probably be more often bad than good.

Just as in chess, in life, it is essential to adapt to unforeseen situations and adversity. We can trace the plan for our career, relationship goals, monthly income, or even simpler things like the itinerary of our trip. Everything will rarely go exactly as planned, and many mishaps will force us to go off the beaten path and adapt to these changes of scenery.

If you don't know how to do this effectively during a chess game, you will certainly have problems and probably lose many games because you don't understand what the new position requires.

Similarly, people who don't have a Plan B for adverse life situations will suffer until they learn that it is essential. Of all the analogies and comparisons that have been made or will be made in this text, I believe this is one of the strongest and perhaps the most important.

5)      Efficient time management.

Blitz and Bullet players know very well that time management can be a thousand times more important than moves, especially when we are in the last seconds of the game and just make random pre-moves in the hope of flagging our opponent. This strategy is a desperation that should not have happened if we had managed our time better before.

Who has never had a school or college paper that was due in two weeks, but only started working on it the night before? I can guess that the result was probably not the best. Learning how to manage the 24 hours we have in our day and balance it with our personal and professional lives is perhaps one of the greatest challenges of the modern world.

The same thing happens in chess, and although the example of games with less time to play is easier to understand, it applies to any time control, even classic games between GMs.

It is important to understand that the clock is part of the game and that we will not always have all of eternity to find the best move, so being practical and playing something you know is good enough can sometimes be the best strategy.

I recommend the same thing in our lives. It is better to have something done and with good time management to avoid stress than to put it off forever, be it because of laziness or the desire to make it so perfect, and never actually start doing it.

6)      We have a deep desire to improve and be better, to live up to our own expectations.

In our lives, we usually put a lot of pressure on ourselves to improve our skills and prove our worth to others. In general, we want to be better paid in a more prestigious job, have more expensive material goods, and do something important to put our name in evidence. Some people may even cheat others to achieve their goals faster and have a false sense of success.

In chess, the parameter is much easier to follow. The ELO rating tells us what our level is at the moment. As in life, oscillations are normal and occur quite regularly, but we want to see at least a long-term improvement compared to ourselves in the past.

I confess that I don't always understand this obsession of casual players to get better and better, sometimes forgetting the most important thing for those who have chess only as a hobby, which is to have fun. For me, this competitive drive to improve, to raise the ELO rating, to have absurd accuracy, etc., often seems unhealthy for amateurs.

Having said that, perhaps we could apply this lesson to our lives as well. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to improve, or shouldn't care about getting better in our areas, but there is a line of balance that needs to be thought about. Once it becomes an obsession, it's dangerous and unhealthy.

So, do it, but do it while you are having fun and enjoying your life with your loved ones. The most important thing is to be happy. This is just my opinion, and anyone can disagree, but it works well for me.

7)      Respect for the rules and ethics.

Two months ago, I wrote a text about cheating, and I briefly mentioned that the biggest problem is not cheating in the game itself, but that these people are usually not the ones who care about being honest in any aspect of their daily lives.

Unfortunately, while humanity seems to be developing a lot technically, for example in new technologies and ways to better explore the resources of our planet, the opposite phenomenon seems to be happening when it comes to respecting the rules of living in society and ethics towards others.

Chess, as such a traditional game played by gentlemen for centuries, allows us to understand that respect for one's opponent and for the rules of the game should be much more important than the result of winning or losing.

Just as it is much better to lose a game honestly than to win with the help of illegal means, the same is true in life, where I certainly have much more respect for an honest person struggling with his daily difficulties than for a "successful" businessman who has achieved his goals with the help of, let us say, questionable attitudes towards his competitors.

Proving that chess and life imitate each other very well, there are a lot of people out there who think differently and do not care at all. Unfortunately, there is not much I can do about it except to remain true to my principles and do the right thing.

8)      The smallest failure will be punished and remembered much more than the rest.

Ian Nepomniachtchi devastated after his blunder 34...f5 in game 12 of the World Championship match. That was the only moment in my life when I cried over a professional chess game.⠀⠀⠀

We have all experienced one of the worst feelings in chess, when we are playing an almost perfect game, controlling the squares, having a material advantage, and suddenly make a colossal blunder that hangs a piece, and lose a game that was completely won.

It is a feeling of injustice, and we almost want the opponent to resign because "I played better". But it probably will not happen, and in my opinion, it should not. Chess does not accept this kind of mistake, and we are punished for it much more than we are compensated for good moves.

Isn't it the same in professional life? Do our bosses praise us every day for good work and performance? Probably not. But what happens when we make a mistake and cause a financial loss or something worse? I work in the aviation sector, so you can be sure I know a thing or two about this.

If you have your own business, a negative review from one or two customers can ruin your reputation in the marketplace, even if more than 95% of them are satisfied with your product or service.

It also happens in love relationships. Don't our partners tend to remember the times we did something wrong much better than all the great times together? Of course, we should try to avoid this, but I think it is natural.

What I mean is that chess, like our lives, is a game where our mistakes and failures will be much more evident than our successes. Maybe it is not always fair, but that is the way it is, and we have to learn from it in order to reduce the margin of error as much as possible.

9)      Appreciate the process and find meaning in the journey.

I see on this website that some chess players tend to believe that the real fun and enjoyment is in winning, and not in the game itself, in the learning process, or in the fun we have while playing our games.

Similarly, in my daily activities, I talk to many people who seem to be very focused on their goals and achievements in life, but not necessarily on how they are growing and developing themselves to get there, sometimes forgetting that they could be enjoying this time to appreciate the process.

I think both on the board and in real life we need to understand that the excitement is much more about the journey and not necessarily just the results. The how is more important than the what. If we don't see it that way, what will we do when we get there? Set a new goal only to be stressed about it again?

Life and chess are continuous processes of improvement, and with dedication and perseverance, we can be sure that the results will appear. You don't have to achieve it tomorrow, and you have to accept that failures will inevitably happen sometimes. Even Carlsen, Fischer, or Kasparov had to deal with painful losses during their careers, so we have no reason to think that we are more special than the best in history, right?

Maybe a lesson that many hobbies like chess can teach us is that the way you do it and the steps you take to reach your goal are as important or sometimes even more important than the result itself in the end.

10)   There is always a chance to learn, start again, and do better.

As a last point, I would like to bring something more positive and end with a nice reflection. In chess, after a heavy defeat or a bad game, we always have two options on how to proceed.

We can think that it was a great injustice, that we are failures and will never learn anything or become any good at this game, and that it is not worth dedicating ourselves to it. It is not so hard to understand that this is not the right approach and is unlikely to get you anywhere.

Or, instead, we have the chance to learn from it, see what we did wrong, analyze our mistakes, and avoid making them again in the future, becoming better players every day. 

The good news is that our lives are the same way. Every step we take, regardless of the consequences, is a chance to learn something new and improve as a person. Problems and upsets are normal and happen to everyone, but we always have a second chance to get up and start over with more experience and understanding.

Just as we click "New game" after being beaten, hoping to play much better in the next one, we should try to do the same in the real world. A setback is not the end of the line, it is just part of the process of being alive, and how we deal with it is what really matters in the end. Stay positive, calm, learn from past mistakes, and try again. Chess gives us that opportunity, and so does life. Enjoy it and have fun!

CONCLUSION:

I have not yet read the book by Garry Kasparov, but it is on my list, and I will certainly do so in 2024.

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I think everything I wanted to say is already written in the text, so I would just like to end by emphasizing how similar this beautiful game can be to our daily lives. After writing about it and going through this deep journey in my mind, I am even more convinced that we are not just talking about a normal sport.

Perhaps this could even be another topic for my very first text when I explained more about my reasons for liking chess. And who knows, it is possible that unconsciously we all have this feeling, and it contributes to our passion. It is no coincidence that this game is almost the only one whose rules have not changed in more than 500 years and still has so many followers and passionate people all over the world.

For chess is not just a game. Even if Oscar Wilde was not thinking of this when he said his famous quote, we can extend it and affirm that it is a kind of art, capable of emulating our joys and frustrations when traveling to that parallel universe that a chessboard is.

I would like to thank my friend @Edwilson1986 for helping me write this text. And of course, also my thanks to you if you are still here. Now let me ask for your help. Do you agree or do you think I am just crazy? If yes, what other aspects do you think are comparable and which I forgot to mention? Do you think that our love for chess has something to do with it, even if we do not always realize it? Please let me know your opinion in the comments section below. I hope you have enjoyed the text and that reading it has given you a new perspective, just as the process of writing it did for me.