Could you see life as a game of chess

[StarStruck]

Kasparov wrote a book about the parallels between life and chess. Other people have compared life to game. There is even game theory which is a science and an art but could life be reduced to a game. A game that god plays with itself or a chess game it plays with itself?

In chess feelings don’t matter. If you want to win you need to make quality decisions. In life it is no different. Since I have been following this mindset I solved multiple problems in my life including addictions and started a business and making progress in other parts of my life. 

Principles of gaming can be applied across the board which I discovered and I won’t mention here. These are overarching principles of mastery that can be applied to any realm. I’ve used these principles to climb the upper echelons of several sports and hobbies and now I’m using this in business and it is very promising. 

[something_else]

40 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

In chess feelings don’t matter. If you want to win you need to make quality decisions

I mean, they do. Your mindset/feelings/emotions often determine the quality of the rational decisions you make in chess and life.

You can also argue that chess, and life, should be played with style and romanticism which are qualities based on feelings.

[StarStruck]

@something_else Indirectly 

[trenton]

As a chess player, I used to see life as a game of chess. The problem is that I find this worldview very limiting. Life is way more complicated than chess. For example, there is the meta game of being careful not to win too much or people don't play with you anymore.

There are world champions who take chess and make life lessons out of it. It is possible to see life that way, but again it is very limiting. I do the opposite. I find life lessons and other areas of development and look for ways to apply them to chess. For example, mental resistance in personal development and why chess players stagnate. We get stuck in habitual thinking patterns. The list goes on and on.

By the way feelings matter a lot. Skilled chess players read your emotions during the game to find signs that you may make a mistake soon.

[Consept]

2 hours ago, StarStruck said:

@something_else Indirectly 

(I play chess daily) Feelings matter a lot in chess and affect the moves that you make, a quick example is that if you blunder and lose a piece most players will have an emotional reaction and want to take back as soon as possible. I noticed this in myself and am more aware to take a second after a mistake and consider what the best move would be even if it means not taking back straight away. This in itself is a great lesson for life in that having emotional control and being able to recognise when your emotions are heightened can lead to you making better decisions or at least not making decisions when in a heightened state. 

In general i agree with @trenton in that chess is a limited game and life is almost limitless in that there are so many variables, its also so complexed where its a lot harder to predict outcomes, particularly because a lot of life is based on other people actions and emotions. For example the stock market is notoriously hard to predict because you dont know exactly how masses of people are going to react to different circumstances.  

[NoSelfSelf]

@Consept If you play chess with feelings you wont go far ?

[Ulax]

@StarStruck Yeah I think its a great analogy.

Though maybe a critique could be that it takes a competitive attitude to life instead of a collaborative one. So sometimes I prefer to see life as a puzzle instead. Maybe in masculine activities the chess analogy is preferable, and feminine activities the puzzle analogy is preferable.

[StarStruck]

@Ulax chess can be seen as play and collaborative and in other times it can be seen competitive. You need both. 
 

52 minutes ago, NoSelfSelf said:

@Consept If you play chess with feelings you wont go far ?

If you play chess from emotions you will get fucked over real quick. Yea your emotions should be serene and no negative emotions should be in your body which will make you relax, present and aware but that doesn’t mean you should play chess from emotions. Just look at grand masters. They are all stoics. Some people are just…: I dunno ?

[NoSelfSelf]

@StarStruck Yeah also if you like close to your all time high rating or playing player thats titled or in front of a crowd on stream,(when you make stupid moves and wanna break stuff also ?)you get this pointless gitters that all come from not wanting to lose then when i got rid of that bs, i got automatically better(like you said more stoic) so higher rated or whatever doesnt matter...

 Valuable lesson from that 1:30...

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by NoSelfSelf

[Ulax]

33 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

@Ulax chess can be seen as play and collaborative and in other times it can be seen competitive. You need both. 

@StarStruck How do you see chess as collaborative?

[StarStruck]

10 minutes ago, Ulax said:

@StarStruck How do you see chess as collaborative?

If you play chess against a friend he will give you pointers and leeway. Sometimes I play chess not to win but to try things out, play with positions and learn. I would say in those games I’m not competitive. 

[Consept]

4 hours ago, NoSelfSelf said:

@Consept If you play chess with feelings you wont go far ?

I wasnt saying to play with your feelings i was saying you have to have emotional control, but feelings of course will pop up. This is the same pretty much with any sport, tennis players will have a lot of emotions all the time and the best players can handle them better than others, so either way emotions and feelings are important. Also you can rely on feelings in chess in another sense, there are many players that play intuitively as in they dont calculate every move. Personally im ranked around 1600 on bullet chess and this is pretty much all intuitive as you havent got the time to calculate  

[NoSelfSelf]

@Consept then i get what you mean, im 2000 bullet and can tell you all that intuition is many many positions seen and preperations,so intuition is like mind remembering things happening in the past,or you could be a genius where it just comes to you which we are not ?...

On higher level they calculate 10 moves in few seconds in bullet, anticipate moves the same way so on higher level calculation in bullet is important..

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by NoSelfSelf

[StarStruck]

Chess is mostly pattern recognition. If you just raw dog chess with intuition you will be pummeled. 

[Sincerity]

Yesterday I had the insight that life is like a jigsaw puzzle game. Only You don't know what the "final" picture will look like and there are infinite pieces.

[LSD-Rumi]

I see it as a Mario game. You gradually learn how to play it. You fall a lot until you master it, if you don't learn the lesson you will keep falling in pits. At first, you will see this game as a curse, but when you start getting the hang of it, you start seeing it as a blessing. In Mario, there is no going back, the only way is going forward. You start with the basic levels, then you move on to harder ones. The harder levels bring joy when master them. There are hundreds of levels in Mario, there is no end. The point of The game is just to have fun.

[ZzzleepingBear]

Life is like a infinite chessboard containing all the players.

[Consept]

20 hours ago, NoSelfSelf said:

@Consept then i get what you mean, im 2000 bullet and can tell you all that intuition is many many positions seen and preperations,so intuition is like mind remembering things happening in the past,or you could be a genius where it just comes to you which we are not ?...

On higher level they calculate 10 moves in few seconds in bullet, anticipate moves the same way so on higher level calculation in bullet is important..

 

I get you but you could still draw the same parallel in the life analogy. So like to play life 'better' let's say, you would have built up some experience and then you have a feel for what works and what doesn't, this is exactly how it works in chess as you know. 

I think to make any decision in life we draw on either our own past experience or someone else's that we've read or heard about. We don't consciously think we're doing that but most likely we are. 

 

[Epikur]

I used to do something similiar when I was young. I channelled Spock from Star Treck in order to be more rational and less emotional. If there is such a need it is ok to do it but once one is more in balance one has to integrate much more perspectives.

[itsadistraction]

On 15/07/2023 at 6:45 AM, NoSelfSelf said:

@Consept If you play chess with feelings you wont go far ?

Nonsense, hasn't Leo taught you anything? All dualities collapse.

Why would you want to play or win any game? Because it makes you feel good! Without feelings there would be no incentive to even start playing.