Chess analogies

I have been reading many posts on this and other chess forums, and there are only a few analogies which people make when speaking of chess. The most common is the 'chess is war' cliche. People get excited about this analogy and go into, sometimes, horrific descriptions of the 'battle' that is being waged, on the board, and within. I think of a game of chess as an argument, or a debate. I am quite curious if some people out there would like to post some chess analogies that they have either heard or thought of themselves. I would just enjoy reading some, if anyone has the time, that is, for my own curiosity should not infringe on a nice game of chess you could be having.

That must be like this:

Brainiac639, thats pretty neat! I lose my greatest asset too often when I play. And I like playing "The Dark Side"

Analogies (and metaphors) for aspects of chess crop up regularly in the forums... e.g.

analogues-amp-metaphors

metaphors-in-chess-the-pieces

looking-for-a-good-real-world-analogy-for-the-importance-of-the-center

Thanks artfizz

Some characterisations of the phases of the game.

"I liken the opening to setting out your stall, and the endgame to packing it away. All the serious business takes place in between."

                                                                      artfizz

Thanks for the link!

I'm new to Chess.com, a friend turned me onto it on facebook, and am amazed..being a writer and researcher on subjects such as i'm about to rant on..here is a place of forums wherein i can take a break from chess playing to do some imginative chess story rambling in chess history...

Each player has a male and female side facing each other, chess is a game of love in medieval allegories, stained glass windows, illustrations in books which indicated in the mind of the people of the day that the subject of love was the subject matter of the book...tales where male is playing female in some garden bower, or knight is playing Lady Wisdom as Venus..Grail legends which entwine the theme of amor or love with a chess board which flies and initiates a quest, as the actual Holy Grail itself!...where troubadours, who play chess as well as compose songs and poems, equate winning chess with winning a womens heart and beating the rival claims on it in good chess competition and good sportsmanship..and there are many other nuances of love when we apply chess as a mirror) and let it not be forgotton that chess number 8, 16, 32 and 64 feature in Indian and Chinese esoteric sacred architectural traditions where sacred temples are built on a plan of 8x8 or 9x9, peopled with deities in 64, 32, 16 or 8 various rings of a mandala architectural plan...Chinese Taoist I Ching has 8, 16, 32 and 64 categories...in India sacred rasa aesthtics of spiritual an material literary schools hold the numbers of 64, 32, 16 and 8 as a kind of basket within which to catch a whole variety of spiritual and material aesthetics, flavours or moods, shades of divine love....which brings up back to the amorian Troubadorian Grail medieval storylands... and later on Rosicrucian chess which later became codified into garbled understandings arising into the Order of the Golden Dawns Enochian ritual magic chess playing...and with historical modern chess with its over excessive use of 'war terminolgies' to cloke the movement and dance of the 8, 16, 32 and 64 in the temple of 64 and all this war and elemental magic of Enochian chess eclipsing the love chess theme both east and west that was earlier...

I don't personally see the Persian dualist take on black vrs white in chess as the light and darkness, i see more the harmonious Taoist dualism in the pitting of light and darkness of either side of being more akin to the duality of good chess playing vrs bad chess playing, on either side, which doesnt just compete to destroy but rather seeks to envelope and align with the dance of the tao as it engages in a dance where sometimes there is victory, defeat and drawing equality at diferent times between both sides...in a way in this understanding of interplay of dominance, submission and equality the blunders and mistakes equate with the darkness of the chess game tale realm and traps are like the binding of the demons that hinder at the start...there can be different ways of looking at his.

i also think if each square contained a letter, the traces of the pieces would spell out words an games could be realigned with other symbols to produce stories inside of which would dwell gems and nuggets of wisdom...computer technology could immensely aid this...computer technology is also curious resonant with the numbers 8, 16, 32 and 64 also...

just some of the things i have been writing about and researching which i thought might fit well in this chess allegory thread...

thanks for reading

64tattva (64 squares of truths and of qualities)

Thank you, 64attva!

Thank you for your thank you, Tryst! Thanks for starting this thread.

My pleasure, 64attva

Not wishing to be pedantic but my name is 64 then tattva, tattva means truths in various categories in Indian tradtions, usually numbered as 64 in Indian traditions..

I just realised your name tryst indictes 'loving tryst' which ties in with what i was writing about, i didnt notice that much when i poured out my chess amor rantings until after i had writen them!