Why chess is not like war

That made me lol.

And to answer the "why play as a general"...

Well, because when you play chess, you are the general, the king. If he dies, you can't do anything, therefore we are playing from his perspective. Is he willing to sacrifice all his pawns to keep himself alive? Yeah. They don't matter in the end, all that matters is either his security, or the defeat of his rival.

So the king is Mubarak?

I remember a history where two well known people were playing chess, one being a public defensor of the monarchy that currently ruled the country and the other a public defensor of republic. AT a given moment, the monarchist check-mated the republican, and he answered something like:

"You can take the king, he is almost useless. I will continue to play with all the other pieces, as a republic."

Does anyone knows the correct sentence, the players names, the country and the year?

In chess, if I lose, I may win the next.  In war, should I play, if I lose, it might be the end.  

In chess the two sides always start out with equal firepower, not so in war.

Chess is a game,it  is neither a simulation of war or of battle.The only thing chess and  warfare have in common is that they both are zero-sum activities that deal with conflict.The only thing that chess simulates...is chess.

Chess is a war GAME. It simulates war on a very abstract level. The simple fact tht it is a game means it is not like war.

There are plenty of war games which simulate war on a more direct level. They have themes of real and fictional conflict. "Axis and Allies" is a prominent example. Those games have different levels of complexity, offering different ways of balancing playability vs complicated simulation of warfare.

I find it easier to calculate in chess than in those wargames as you have full information in chess and don't have to worry about all those complicated rules.

Comparing chess to real war is as silly as comparing axis and allies to the real WW2.

I'm actually french. but I just changed my self to American because being french would give me bad luck. Oh and the french can't play chess.

JK