How Developing a Chess Addiction Changed My Life
About a little over a year and a half ago, I was 4 months into the swarming vortex of high school when I discovered my first addiction in the cybersecurity realm! This was a competition format known as capture the flag, or CTF for short. For those who don't know what CTFs are, they are mini cybersecurity challenges where you must employ specific techniques or methods to exploit or investigate a scenario in order to gain a sequence of characters, numbers, or letters known as a flag. CTFs are played by millions globally (sounds like a game I know) and help develop skills in specific areas of cybersecurity, such as networking or forensic analysis.
I started doing CTFs in December of 2024 in order to prep for a competition I ended up getting 1st place in, but being new to them was a somewhat frustrating process. And as we all know, learning things is tough sometimes and as a way of coping with my skill issues, I would take a break and play chess. And there were some things that I noticed that transferred over into my chess game and vice versa. Not only that, there were similarities between the two gamified brain boosters that I will share with you all today!
1) CTFs span multiple categories of expertise and growth. The main ones are forensics, cryptography, binary exploitation, web exploitation, and reverse engineering. Being an exceptional CTF competitor requires broad ranges. Chess also spans multiple areas of growth in order to be an excellent player. Three categories that I do think are somewhat overmentioned but are indeed essential are pattern recognition, adaptability, and strategic parallels from both sides. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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2) The learning process is somewhat similar in that both require extensive practice and analysis of performance. In terms of chess, Chess.com provides game review and engine analysis for every user across the site. These tools are designed to walk a user through their best and worst moves in each and every position. Here's an example of a rapid game I lost yesterday. As you can see you are able to go through each move one at a time in order to do a deep dive of them. Additionally you would be able to put them into an engine like Stockfish and have it evaluate (or essentially just trash) my game.
The move is indeed bishop to b2, pinning the knight to the queen. The full sequence would be c3, bishop takes c3, the knight has nowhere to go that doesn't lose the queen. So after a full sequence of trades, you will be winning material by either a queen or a rook. As expected my opponent chose to be down a rook instead. Luckily for me, I was still able to convert and win the game.
Now, I've covered the similarities, but how did chess change my life? Simple. After weeks of indulging in chess in early 2026, I came back to CTFs and went ahead to practicing. Almost immediately, I noticed a change in attitude and mindset towards them. Instead of just spamming the hints into Google or looking for a writeup after 30 minutes of frustration, I sat there and just tried to find a weakness within. Typically, that weakness that I found is what I'm looking for in order to get the flag. This approach has solved more challenges for me as I've continued to progress in my knowledge and helped me to assist helped two teams achieve top placements in several in-person comps, which came with cool prizes and money for my club.
I will say this same process has slowly extended into other areas of my life. For example, in addition to CTFs, I compete in CyberPatriot, which is a national youth cybersecurity competition for middle and high school students in the US. I joined CyberPatriot this past September and the learning process has been humbling and valuable. I'm currently learning how to find vulnerabilities in computers and this problem-solving method has helped me get better at finding issues and improve my network security sense. It's also been a massive reliever for many condensed subjects, such as the Cisco certifications I am currently studying to get! Hopefully I'll be able to apply this same approach to school lol!
I will clear up two major misconceptions that someone could draw from my thoughts and experiences.
1) This process worked for me because I am an avid chess player and lover and I try to apply the way I learned chess to several other domains in order to excel at those just as well. I am not saying this process I outlined will work for everyone. Everyone has a way of learning and this is the one that I have decided works for me. Don't feel constricted to only use my method. I'm simply here to say give it a shot, and see if you like it.
2) I'm not an expert in either chess or CTFs as I am still learning and have a long way to go. But this way of thinking worked for me learning and excelling in chess and it is working well for CTFs, so hopefully in a few months or even a year or two, I can come back and write a fully extensive blog on a significant achievement I gained from this.
3) Please don't just use chess as a way of procrastination because that is essentially what I did lol. I just happened to receive a great insight while I was doing it.
I hope you enjoyed my story and test my way! Thanks for reading!
