TatakEasters

A famous quote by Bobby Fischer: "Chess Is Life" Many aspects of the game of chess are reflected in life. For example, the war scenario of chess symbolizes the wars between nations. The hierarchy of the chess pieces, where the King is the most important piece and the pawn is the least important, reflects the pecking order that exists in society. Can you think of any other similarities between chess and life ? Chess was invented (as far as anyone knows) in India as a simulation of war. It spread through Persia to Europe, arriving here during the middle ages. It became very popular in upper class circles -- it was one of the essential skills that a knight had to know -- and the game's popularity gradually filtered down to the lower classes until card games displaced it in the 14th century. Europeans made several changes to chess; they could not or would not use the Persian names for pieces, they changed how the pieces moved, and so on. More importantly, they changed chess from a game about war into a game about mediaeval court politics. This explains the selection of pieces and their relative power. For example, the Queen is the most powerful piece because Queens had to be expert politicians just to survive in medieval court life, the King is less powerful but must be protected at all costs, pawns are weak and are sacrificed to protect higher ranks but can get promoted to ranks of power, bishops are powerful (the Church had a far greater influence on politics in Europe than it does today), knights are used to protect high ranking pieces, and so on. The queen was one of the weakest pieces on the board for centuries. It could only move 1 diagonal square and replaced the Vizier piece. I think this is somewhat fanciful. From what I know of medieval politics, kings and queen had to be adept at manipulation - and many kings fought battles from the front lines, so they were hardly needing of protection from political opponents. The Europeans could not or would not use the Persian names for pieces. I get the impression they simply translated them, just as we now call a king a king instead of a roi or rex or some such. But the name rook still refers to an exclusively eastern sort of siege tower. And the term "checkmate" is a corruption (via French?) of "shah mat" -- "the king is dead", in Persian, IIRC. I don't know if I'd accept the opinion of a chess Master about chess and life - he knows much about chess, but from what I've seen of that group, he knows little of life. That's right. Really, RpgsAreLife?. They try to mimic it, at least. I don't know if this is true of all chess masters, though it was certainly true of Bobby Fischer, who was a class-A flake. I prefer a backgammon metaphor because it has a lot of randomness, and power is derived from position. Still a bit of a stretch though. Sometimes I wonder if the SapirWhorfHypothesis can be extended to the games people play. In particular, people who play a lot of chess versus people who play a lot of Go versus people who play Doom. Do people tend to use the strategies they learn playing these games in real life ? When a game teaches that some particular stategy doesn't work, does that lead to people assuming they won't work in real life either