Musings on Money, Personal Finance, Frugality, Debt, and Other Matters

Life Is Like A Game Of Chess

bygolbguruonAugust 14, 2007

I spent a better part of last night thinking about the analogy between chess and life. It turned out to be a very interesting exercise. As always, images get formed in my head before I can gather the words. So, here is how it appeared to me after some elementary thinking:

Now, it’s time for some words.
Here are seven powerful parallels that you can draw between a game of chess and life.

Planning for the future: Think long term - that’s the key to survival in this game. Don’t aimlessly push your pawns without a plan. Before you decide to make a move, think a few steps ahead. Ask “what if …?” and try to anticipate the possible outcomes of your actions. Work out a backup plan and decide on an exit strategy. In life, this is the foundation of all financial planning exercises.

A great lesson in adaptation: Your opponent doesn’t follow a given sequence of moves. Hence, whatever your plans may be, you should always be ready to adapt to the changing situation caused by the monkey wrenches that your opponent will throw at you. At times, when dealing with unconventional opponents, you may require a paradigm shift in your thinking. This requires an open mind and the willingness to adapt to changes.

The value of sacrifices: Sometimes you need to give up some of your smaller assets to achieve bigger milestones later in the game. A great many chess games have been won with brilliant sacrifices at the right time. This essentially requires some forethought.

The dangers of temptation: Your opponent (the dark side) will occasionally tempt you with small pawns and trivial positions on the board. These small offers will act as baits to draw you into vulnerable positions and to expose your weaknesses. Do not fall for these - they have the potential to ruin the game for you. Always be focussed on your long term objectives and resist the distractions of these momentary temptations.

The pitfalls of a passive approach: When you play the game passively, you play to just survive and stick around - to avoid a checkmate. You accept all the tricks that your opponent sends your way, and do not question anything. Your actions will be shaped by how your opponent (uncertainties, habits, etc) chooses to play the game. If you are lucky, you may somehow manage to hold your fort till the end but you will be miles away from a “victory”.

The rewards of an active approach: In this case, you play the game with a positive frame of mind. You play to win. You play to conquer the dark side. You define the pace of the game and you will probably control the outcome. Victory will have it’s own sweet taste. By the way, don’t confuse an “active” approach with an “overconfident” approach - overconfidence is generally not guarded by caution, thought, or adaptation.

The importance of consistency: Like chess, life is a game of mental tenacity. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are; if you don’t hang in there with consistent positive efforts, your opponent will eventually start eating into your defenses. If you do exceedingly dumb things, you will be eaten alive.

- since you only play life once, avoiding loss/resignation could be more important than whether you win outright or “just” get by with a stalemate — in other words, if life is about survival (and under the covers it all comes down to that), then a stalemate is an acceptable outcome

- the last graphic (no black pawns or pieces) is not so fantastic — one could say that life is more like double-blind chess (that is, Kriegspiel) than open chess — after all, how often does it happen in life that you can openly and completely analyze the position of your opponent? I think life really does start out like that graphic: you have no information, and you only begin to build a picture of your opponent’s disposition as intelligence reports begin to trickle in from parents, teachers, et. al.

And an added idea/question of my own:

- in addition to seeing one’s own life as a single game of chess, consider a transgenerational chess tournament where the goal is to not get your family (both ancestors and descendants) eliminated from the tournament — in that case, if you do not believe that you can get a win during your lifetime, stop taking chances, play for a stalemate, and give your descendants an opportunity to enter the tournament — for if you continued to play for the win and come up short, you let down both those who have come before and those who have yet to come

Definitely good food for thoughts!
Steve, some comments on your friendly advices.

-There is luck in chess. Luck is being created because you are not playing alone. Like it is the case in life, when someone is doing an action, it automatically occurs a series of events for that person and others. It could be good or bad depending on which side your are. Remember, if you buy a stock at a cheap price, it is because somebody decided to sell it and probably lose money while your may make money out of the same stock a few months after.

-We are playing many “games” in life as well. Every time you move, you change job, spouse. There are all different new “games”.

Great analogy! Life most definitely is like a game of chess, planning ahead and watching for pitfalls are a part of every day life even though a lot of people blindly stumble through it. You mentioned that you can’t play the game of life passively or all you’ll do is play to stick around; a lot of people need to at least play passively because they do nothing more than randomly move pieces around without any care or thought to what happens.

Financial Blogger, you lost me on your explanation of the presence of luck in chess. I suppose there could be luck in selection of an opponent, but once the game begins the result of the game is due to the skill of the two human players. There is no luck/chance/randomness, i.e. there are no dice or other mechanisms of chance.

Steve,
I consider luck when your opponent does something that put you in a better position. You have absolutely no control over his moves, like in life. But sometimes, good stuff happen to people simply because somebody else made the right move for you (and not necessarily for them!).
Hope this clarifies my point

Steve: I tend to agree with some of the points you raise. However, the problem of randomness in chess creeps in subtly. Ideally, every move is made on it’s merit and consequences - but unless you are IBM Deep Blue, there is little scope of being able to analyze all the possible positions. According to Wiki - “Typically an average position has thirty to forty possible moves, but there may be as few as zero (in the case of checkmate or stalemate) or as many as 218″.

After all, what is “luck”? - it’s just a probability of a possible outcome from a given pool of all possible combinations.

Apart from this minor technicality, I do see your point and appreciate it. The crap in life is not governed by rules (although we, on our part, are restricted by the same set of rules) - which makes planning all the more essential.

The transgenerational thought is outstanding!

Matt: “a lot of people need to at least play passively because they do nothing more than randomly move pieces around without any care or thought to what happens.” - unfortunately, that is the truth. Also, there are many who just resign even before making any moves.

FMF: Here is my answer - e5

The Financial Blogger: I tend to agree with your perception of luck more than Steve’s.

golbguru, based upon your stated definition, it seems we at least agree what luck/ randomness *is*.

you say a human cannot analyze all possible positions; I characterize that as uncertainty. due to lack of computational power, one entertains an illusion of lack of information. all the information is deterministically present in the game, but you (at least most of us) cannot process it all, or perhaps not without unlimited time to think over each move. so what you imagine to be randomness is instead your own shortcoming as a human player.

if actual randomness/luck were in the game of chess, there would be a dice- or coin-enhanced mechanism, such as: “to capture en passant, you must flip a coin and have it land heads — if you land a tails, return your pawn to its previous square and make another move instead”

I hear you on the dice argument. By the way, you used the term “en passant” - I know many amateur chess players who (unfortunately) claimed to have never heard of it. In the past (when I had friends who played chess), I have been chastised a few times for using “en passant” in friendly games.

Anyways, we are diverging from the main issue - plan ahead and be proactive.

Before starting a friendly game, I always make sure my opponent knows the three special rules of chess (castling, on both sides; capturing en passant; and the ways to stalemate). If the opponent wants to drop some or all of those special rules, I won’t make a fuss, but no one has ever balked at them after she/he understands them.

As an avid chess player, I loved this post. And there absolutely is luck in chess, by which I mean that the outcome of any game is due, in part, to measures outside of your control. The same is true for investments, although over enough time, returns are based more on the actions you take (or don’t take), than chance.

How can you compare a game of chess to the many different lives all around the world, your game of chess may have its place in this part of the world but what about sudden destruction such as tsunamis in the East, and long hungry weeks and months in Africa. Poverty and death in many places that wouldnt even know what chess is!

Life is like a game, but not like any game you have played outside of the game of life you are currently playing out.

Life is like life……not chess… how ignorant people can be …..and how boring some peoples lifes must be…..because i can honestly say, unless you are an avid chess player, like any other game chess is just a game……Life is important for experience to move on…….people dont learn life from chess but you can learn from life to win at any game you choose!!

Get a grip…….stop trying to understand what life can be compared to…..it cant be compared!!!!!

Hey nice site. Anyways chess tips. To become good one must learn from ones one mistakes And successes. Chess analysis pro 7000 I found very useful in helping my chess development. I’d recommend it. Next keep the pressure on. And learn to hold the tension on the board instead of running out of tension with no advantage gained.

I was writing something on strategy and chess and run into your post on chess and life. You really came up with a great analogy there!! Of course it’s just an analogy, meant to better understand the complexity of decision-making and its consequences.
Luckily in chess, as opposed to what happens in life, those decisions we make are confined to the chessboard.

Good observation. I usually try to relate to chess when I face difficulty in the form of people. You might have several KNOWNS about the person and you keep this in mind and deal with them. There may be UNKNOWNS which you cannot use in your judgement. Keeping this in mind, each person’s nature is analogous to a move of a chess piece. An angry person takes a rash move whereas a level headed one can be approached and talked to. There are the foxy kind who you know will go to any extent to turn things against you and there are the principled ones. When you are in a situation where the peaceful solution is to not fight against these people but deal with them, thats when you think how each one would react to your move. At several points I have come to the conclusion that it is best to avoid them. Coz you have better things to do and cant spend your energy on this. Make peace with yourself and try other interests which do not involve them. Life is short..politics and scheming is a waste of time.

yes I agree with you about life is like a chess game. if we only try to understand how life work,how are the rules of life, then you get nothing. as long as you make feeling about life,feel the rules, get understanding of what causes happenings in life, and aware of all you do every minute of your day, then you will find that…

yeah..life is really really like a chess game..with a little bit addition..hehe..

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