Lessons From Games

Over the last few decades, I've had both opportunity and reason to compare rugby, chess, soccer and water polo. These are more traditional games, compared to the rash of strategic boardgames and role-playing games I've also had the pleasure to examine and try out.

A few things stand out. All four of these games have a strategy best described as 'hold up the centre and infiltrate round the flanks'. They also have 'open up your opponent by shifting the thrust to the other flank'. They have 'dominate the key player by cutting off his supply and support', 'defend your links' and 'protect your home rank'. Of course, they don't all use this terminology, and the circumstances are different in each case—but the concepts are the same, and strong analogies and consequent lessons can be drawn from this.

You see, all four games are about spatial control and getting your stuff from one end to the other after mixing it up in the centre (or avoiding the mix-up in the centre). Dominance can be unit-on-unit, group-on-group, by local outnumbering at some minor sacrifice elsewhere, and so on.

I realise that I've benefited a lot from all the sports and games I've managed to get a taste of. By watching the professionals in action live and in videos, I've learnt much about strategy that has transferred from one game to another. What I'm not about to try, though, is chessboxing, that peculiar alternating chess+boxing contest which ends up either by checkmate or knockout.