system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Being great at Chess doesn't make you a genius or an amazing strategist in other pursuits.

There has long been this sense of awe over the board game Chess. This idea where succeeding at the game is proof that a person has a really high IQ and that people like coaches and military generals could benefit by learning the game.

But I fail to see why that is the case. Chess is a very formulaic and deterministic game where all of the pieces are laid out plainly, both sides move at a turn-based fashion and you win/lose/stalemate purely based on king position. Chess is mapped out well enough and is so algorithmic that computers have been beating top Chess grandmasters for decades. I do not see why being able to regularly beat opponents by moving pieces in the right place requires a very intelligent brain. And I also don't see how strategists in real life like military commanders or sports coaches can learn from a board game that doesn't really mirror any real life scenario or even other real-time strategy games like **Starcraft** or even turn-based games like **Civilization**.  Heck, Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the greatest military generals in European history and he sucked at Chess. The only thing being good at Chess really applies to is being good at similar board games like Checkers. To quote **Witcher 3**: "They say it's the game of kings. That **Chess** teaches one to think strategically. What a load of rubbish!  Both sides have identical pieces, the rules stay invariably the same. How does this mirror real life? "

So to change my view, explain to me why being good at Chess makes you good at other strategic or intellectual pursuits not related to board games.
gpt
It’s pretty simple really, in order to actually be good at chess you need to be able to plan ahead extensively and use what’s commonly referred to as “game theory”. 

Although they might not know it as that, any chess grandmaster is effectively using that theory to great effect. 

It’s essentially knowing the rules of the game and the limits it imposes on players, then calculating your opponent’s most logical reactions to any move you can make. From that information you can then theorise which of your moves is best at that moment, as it will be the one with the least beneficial counter-move from your opponent. 

Then you take this to the next level and think several moves ahead, so one move right now could lead to checkmate in 10 turns whereas the exact same move in a different direction could lead to you losing the match. 

This ability to think moves ahead has always been greatly beneficial in warfare, where something as simple as initial troop positioning could be what decides the victor in the end. 

We actually use game theory in all aspects of life currently. Anything like economics, board games, combat sports, team sports and computer science. 

That’s why computers tend to beat human beings at chess, because they can calculate the exact percentage-chances of you making every possible reaction to every possible move, thinking of the end-goal from the very start. We simply don’t have the computational power that computers do, that doesn’t mean chess or it’s usage of game theory isn’t important to virtually all aspects of life.