HOW CHESS CHANGED MY LIFE

“Life is like a game of chess, no one has ever won a game of chess by taking only FORWARD MOVES, sometimes you have to move back to take better steps forward and that’s life, ” an anonymous player in a pub in England said this in early 19th century and I read it when I was 12 years old in a Russian chess article, being at the immature age of 12, not that I am not immature now, but at 12 it felt like a rock with no value until the last years of my teen when I understood the meaning of it and how the rock with no value turned into a diamond for me. Chess for me is not just a game, it is not just a sport but a life in itself, every chess move I played till now, that particular move or the game in itself has a story in itself, a purpose of its own, the move might not be beneficial at one square of the chessboard, but it helped the other squares on the board, the chemistry of the pieces, the attack, the sacrifices the pieces do, to checkmate the king is simply fascinating. As a chess player for 13 years now and 3 years and counting of being an active chess player, it taught me how we sometimes have to sacrifice in life for a bigger aim, it taught me that sometimes we have to lose a battle to win THE war. the philosophical meaning of this ancient game is something even many philosophers and great humans are still finding to this day. Even being one of the oldest games in the world, it is still being solved by us humans or by some of the best supercomputers like Alpha zero, Stockfish etc. which is just mere proof of the archaeological and philosophical importance of the game. I am still at a fairly young age of 19 years, trying to figure life out like my colleagues but there is no doubt that the life lessons that chess taught me still help me to solve some of the weirdest and most difficult situations in life. To conclude, there is a saying from arguably one of the best chess players to step on this planet, GM Bobby Fischer “Chess is a war on the board, the object is to crush the opponent’s mind”.