Chess & Business: Why Chess is a Game of Philosophy

*Warning, this article is the longest I've written non-stop but HIGHLY important. Read all you can. There may be grammar issues. I wrote this in 30 minutes.*

This is my first blog in almost 3 months now. I've been stuck on a workload and doing other things which I shouldn't be doing (but we don't talk about that).

What I'm sharing with you today is my experience for not playing chess in so long. It isn't the best experience. Chess has been in my life for so long I always feel like I'm missing something. I become interested about chess, play it, and most importantly, enjoy it.

I used to do several articles and videos at the same time, each of them requiring at least 4 hours to do. This article is special: it will be as long as possible, written in as short of a time. This isn't grammar or spelling.com, this is chess.com, and we talk about chess.

Motivational Speech

Why did you start playing chess? Did your friend introduce you to it? Did chess.com introduce you to it. Did you introduce it to yourself?

Many people don't understand have beauty of chess, the history of chess, and most importantly, and the topic of this article, the philosophy of chess.

To start your chess career, you may have used money to buy a membership on chess.com, or find a coach, or participate in a chess tournament. They all cost money, and it is money you are willing to spend.

This can pile up quickly. You start becoming better, you start winning games, you start using more money. Your chess career is becoming a business, with you as the sole investor, and your perseverance and effort as a success margin.

You don't want all your invested money to go to waste. You shouldn't want to quit chess after playing so much of it. This is my experience, the 2 months of not being able to play chess have shattered my personal life. Chess is now intertwined with my way of living and it will have intertwined with your life. Chess, as a game, and as a business, will become part of your life.

If you ever think about quitting chess, think of yourself as the person who wants to bankrupt your own business. For many people, quitting is really easy because they don't care about playing chess, anymore. But remember how you started playing chess. No one could force you to play chess, you played it because you enjoyed it, you lived with it, and so it should live with you. Quitting chess ruins, destroys, annihilates all the investment and love that you have had. So stay with chess, just like how chess stays with you. You will learn to appreciate chess no matter how much energy you've put into it, how much success you've had and how much investment you have made.

Being good at chess is not the ultimate goal. Perseverance is the ultimate goal. People who never become good but have played chess for 50 years are a lot successful than GMs who would quit chess after one awful tournament. Stay with it. Stick with it. Live with it.

^^ That is not a speech from some GM or anyone else. It is 100% original. If it helps you, please tell me; my goal is now to help people play chess and to convince people to never quit chess.

Now, I mentioned in the speech that we would be talking about 3 aspects of chess. They are beauty, history and philosophy. We'll start with History first.

History

The history of chess has been from a long time. Chess has been a long-time western tradition that has been passed down generations. Now think of this: if so many people quit chess, how does chess still exist? The truth is, almost no one in the past quit chess. They would learn chess and teach it to their children and their grandchildren.

Chess arose as a game of warfare. Pawns, Knights, Castles (Nowadays Rooks), all of these words come from the past and are terms commonly used in warfare. But now think of how chess is similar to war. We need smart strategies, combinations and tactics, and obviously you have an opponent. But one thing many people miss out is very similar to war; when one piece is captured, it can never come back on the board!

This small piece is so important that chess becomes unique in this sense. Most other board games can't make you lose pieces, and even if you do, you will get them back (possibly). But chess isn't like this. Each side only has 16 pieces, and when a piece is captured, it can never come back. Just like war, when a soldier is captured, chances are they will never return home.

The history of chess allows us to see similarities in modern chess and past warfare. Chess is the game that reminds us of our dark past. No one should quit chess; if too many people quit then we will lose the past behind us.

Beauty

The way pieces are made, all the intricate designs (particularly the Knight and Queen) are classic European style pieces. Chess is one of the only games where gameplay has barely changed in the past 250 years (up to the slight change in the 1800s which stated that pawns can't be promoted to kings, though that was a inferred rule already). The beauty of it and how so many people still play, and how the popularity of chess is rising again! (Thanks Netflix).

Another part of chess beauty is fairness. White does have the slight advantage of moving first, but this advantage still hasn't been proved to be victorious if a computer runs it. Other board games such as Go (A chinese board game) has on average 75% wins for the side who moves first. Reversal (or Othello) is another game where the side who moves first has a great advantage. Also, these games have black moving first, but in chess, white moves first, which is actually a deviation of traditional board games. It shows how beautiful chess is.

Philosophy

When I said that I was going to cover chess philosophy, the truth is, I've already covered all of that. History, beauty, and gameplay make up all of chess. If we think of chess as a business, how your time and money is the investment, then not quitting is the final profit. If you quit chess, all of that time and money is now wasted. Persistence and perseverance are so much more important than just being good at chess.

When people younger see young masters and want them to be their role model, that's absolutely fine. I'm one of those people. But some really strong youth have very bad habits; some don't even care about chess anymore; some just want to win. You should not just think "All masters are good." You should think instead, "all who don't quit chess are good." Although most great players will never quit chess, some do, and they are examples you wouldn't want to follow.

Hopefully this article gave you insights of why you shouldn't quit chess and how my two months of not playing chess have been, all on a single sheet of e-paper. I'll see you in my next blog !

Thanks for Reading!!