Why do we like chess?

What makes people love chess? What makes people addicted to it? Is it because if satisfies our brains need for knowledge?

Personally, I enjoy the challenge; matching minds with another. Also, there is a strong sense of accomplishment when you work through a particularly tough line, or when you make your opponent resign. Besides all that, it's just fun as hell.

ps...that's the short explanation.

Hm, good question. Throughout history man has had this desire to be able to dominate and or conquer another by any means possible. Chess gives one the chance to do that in an intellectual level.

I noticed in elementary and high school people who weren't good at chess (kept losing), eventually gave it up, pursuing other means of conquering people.

That's my uneducated take on it 🙂

This is a game that looks so simple, yet it is so hard to master.
The game contain so many hidden principles som you'll never know them all.
And, of course, it is a lot of fun.

i think you guys all have good points.
For me, part of it is the [attempt at] conqueringother peoples mind, the unexplored depths of opening and mind-game lines, and the $1200 prize at a free entry scholastic tournament I am favored to win this year 😉

I think we me its the art of the combination. That beautiful sequences of moves that lead to a won position or total victory. Then again perhaps I am just a Chessnut.😀😉😉

Its an addiction.... pure addiction.

Originally posted by anthias
What makes people love chess? What makes people addicted to it? Is it because if satisfies our brains need for knowledge?

It is a perfect combonation of intellectual activity--memory, strategy, pattern recognition, imagination, intuition. Also, it is a completely fair game that exposes human nature. There is no random element, so if you lose, you really lose, and if you win, you really win. The chessplayer cannot realistically whine about a string of bad luck--if he makes a bad move he has no one to blame but himself. These are the reasons I love this game. That and it's really fun.

Chess is pretty much a perfect metaphor for any kind of combat- boxing, martial arts, modern warfare, political manipulations... any type of struggle between two powers can be represented as a chess game. So when you sit down at a chessboard, its like a microcosm of a battle between you and an opponent.

Originally posted by c guy1
i think you guys all have good points.
For me, part of it is the [attempt at] conqueringother peoples mind, the unexplored depths of opening and mind-game lines, and the $1200 prize at a free entry scholastic tournament I am favored to win this year 😉

in fact i hate chess but the reason i keep playing it: chess clocks.

Originally posted by Von Bardeleben
u r not getting those money, because I am

I'm an obsessive compulsive masochist.

Originally posted by Dies Irae
Chess is pretty much a perfect metaphor for any kind of combat- boxing, martial arts, modern warfare, political manipulations... any type of struggle between two powers can be represented as a chess game. So when you sit down at a chessboard, its like a microcosm of a battle between you and an opponent.