Why I Switched to Chess from Video Games

I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. I started on the Atari console, playing games like Pitfall! And on an i386 PC running DOS, playing games like Wolfenstein, and also Battle Chess, though I had no idea what I was doing. I soon became obsessed with role-playing games (RPGs) like Final Fantasy, massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs) like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, and first-person shooters (FPSs) like Team Fortress and Overwatch.

Five years ago, I started playing chess, and began to play and study it seriously, beyond just knowing the rules. It didn’t take me long to leave video games behind almost entirely. I found a number of benefits to chess that just didn’t exist in video games.

An Individual Challenge

I believe the feature of chess which made me fall in love with it was that I finally felt like I was in control. I was mostly playing Overwatch at the time. I felt, rightly or wrongly, that many of my losses were due to my teammates. Yes, I made mistakes as well, and sometimes those mistakes led to a loss, but being on a team of 6, the odds were much higher that a loss was not my fault. It just felt bad to lose a game even though I was playing better than ever.

Chess generally doesn’t have teams. Team play does exist in the form of variants like bughouse, or between schools, or between countries, but a chess player will spend the vast majority of their time in one-on-one play. This means there’s nobody to carry you. There’s nobody to blame when you lose. It’s all on you.

Outcomes are Determined by Skill, not Luck

Overwatch at least had deterministic game play. I’d previously been playing Team Fortress 2, an FPS that incorporated a heavy amount of randomness. Accuracy was random. Damage was random. And there was the concept of “critical hits”, which meant the computer could roll the dice and decide that you just died when you would have otherwise survived.

Chess arguably contains no randomness or luck. There is randomness in pairings. I might get paired with a player with a style or opening repertoire that will greatly lower or raise my chances of winning. The skill level of my opponent will also vary somewhat randomly. But these aren’t features of the game itself. The game itself is deterministic. Your move of bishop takes f7 won’t be deemed a losing move just because the dice say so.

I’ve heard strong players argue luck does exist in chess game play. They say, when I played pawn to h3 in an attempt to stop the bishop’s infiltration, and I accidentally prevented some other idea that I wasn’t even aware of, that I “got lucky”. This may be “luck”, but it’s not randomness. I’m also reminded of the Pasteur quote “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” A lot of the times I’ve gotten “lucky” were when I was playing principled moves. I castled to protect my king. I didn’t see the specific threat, maybe, but I know leaving my king in the center can lead to strong attacks. So it doesn’t seem fair to say I got lucky in this case. In other words, more experienced and skilled players are more likely to get lucky in this way, which means it’s not luck.

How to Focus Your Training is Obvious

A consequence of these two properties (no teams and no randomness), is that you can clearly identify why you lost. Because if you lose a game of chess, you definitely made a mistake. Analysis with a chess engine (software that analyzes moves) can show you exactly where you went wrong, and why. This lets you learn from your mistakes. This wasn’t the case in the video games I was playing. Sometimes a mistake was obvious, but just as often you were left wondering where you went wrong. Was it your team? Was it something you did? You don’t know. That doesn’t happen in chess. You can (and should) always learn from your mistakes.

You Learn to Lose

Chess is a brutal contest, perhaps rivaled only by hand-to-hand combat. In a game of chess, you can be completely winning, and then just suddenly lose. A football team ahead by 28 points can blow the lead, but they can’t lose instantly. You can play 50 perfect moves in a game of chess, and then immediately lose on move 51 if you make a mistake.

Video games were often like this in the early days. You could be about to beat the game, make a mistake, and then…GAME OVER! You have to start from the beginning again. But over the years things got easier. Unlimited lives; save points; check points; respawn. Games today have endless ways to protect you from your mistakes.

Chess doesn’t have this, and it’s wonderful. It’s healthy to learn how to lose. You’ll experience losses in other areas of your life, and if you bring your chess mindset to those situations, you’ll be better for it. Recognize your mistakes, learn from them, but don’t dwell on them. And then move on to the next thing.

Flexibility of Game Duration

The flexibility of how long you want to play is a major benefit of chess. Some video games aren’t worth playing if you can’t devote a minimum amount of time to it. I needed at least 20 dedicated minutes to play a game of Overwatch. I found Final Fantasy not very enjoyable if I couldn’t devote at least an hour. A game of chess can be as long or short as you want it to be. You can play a classical game taking several hours, or a bullet game taking 2 minutes, or anywhere in-between. You can even start a “correspondence” game, and play just one move every week.

Longevity

Video games come and go. Sometimes they fizzle out in a year. Rare games will stick around for a couple decades. Technology changes. I don’t think my Atari would look very good on my current 4k display.

Chess has been around for about 1,500 years, and has mostly been unchanged for a few hundred years. This means the time I’ve spent learning the game will not be wasted. I can say with near certainty that chess will be around, with maybe only minor differences, for the rest of my life. This gives me the confidence to put my time into it, without worrying that Chess2 will come out next year and I’ll have to start all over again. Even if there are major changes in the game, the original will still be around and popular.

It’s Accessible and (optionally) Social

Chess is played by people of all ages, genders, and nationalities. It’s played by people with all sorts of disabilities. It’s played in all sorts of cultures. It’s played by the rich and the poor. I think it’s beautiful that a farmer in Ohio can play a game with a Chinese student. Video games have some of this, but very often games are played regionally due to network latency issues. I’ve gotten to test out a little of my Portuguese after a hard fought game with a Brazilian, and I love that.

Most anywhere you go, you can find people to play chess with in person. There are clubs in every city. Any university will have a club as well. There are chess tournaments all over the world where even beginners can go and play. So if you want it to be, chess can be a very social game.

It’s Free!

The idea that chess is free is amusing, since I’ve spent a lot of money on coaching, courses, books, and various services. But it’s true. It’s tough for a beginner to know how to do it all for free, but once you get the hang of things, you learn you can go far without spending any money.

Most importantly, there is lichess.org, which will let you play for free, in addition to doing puzzles, creating studies, taking courses, and much more. Their software is open source, and they survive through donations. Lichess is an absolute gem in the chess world.

In addition there are countless blogs, youtube videos, and chessable courses that are free. I’ve probably spent the most money initially on paid chessable courses to learn openings, but I soon learned how to do my own opening prep. I’ll probably make a video or article on how to do that (using lichess), because it’s something I wish I’d have had when I first started.

A Nearly Unlimited Skill Ceiling

Nobody has ever mastered the game of chess. With the time I spend on it, I’m unlikely to even reach expert level (a rating of 2000). I enjoy a game where there’s always more to learn. I tend to enjoy learning more than I actually enjoy playing, and so chess is a perfect game for me in that regard.