What Chess Has Taught Me About The World

Pure material advantage does not guarantee success.

Chess is started with two armies of 16 pieces of varying ability hoping to put the opposing King in a position of certain doom. Each army is divided into 8 pawns, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 2 rooks, 1 queen, and 1 king.

Each of these pieces have material value.

• Pawn: 1

• Knight: 3

• Bishop: 3

• Rook: 5

• Queen: 9

• King: ∞ (priceless; losing the king ends the game)

To illustrate it, imagine you and I are in a game where nothing has been exchanged yet. All 32 pieces remain. The material is perfectly balanced. If I capture one of your pawns, I go up +1. If you capture one of mine, we’re even again. And if I later take one of your bishops, I jump to +3 and hold a clear material advantage.

But here’s the point that really matters, the one this entire article builds toward: material advantage alone does not mean the position is better.

More important than what you have is where you have it. If material is the raw inventory of your pieces, position is the quality of their arrangement: their activity, coordination, safety, and influence.

Consider the position shown in the image above. On paper, Black is up +2 in material. But the evaluation bar on the side tells a very different story: the engine assesses the position as +3.1 in White’s favor, as if White were up more than three pawns despite actually being down two.

It’s White to move. The most obvious material-winning option is axb4, where the pawn on a3 captures Black’s knight on b4. That swing would put White ahead by a full pawn.

But watch what happens when White actually plays that move.

Despite winning material, the evaluation drops from +3.1 to +0.9. White is still better, but far less so. Why? Because the real winning idea wasn’t to grab a knight. It was to play d7, pushing the pawn on d6 forward, checking the king, and advancing to within a single step of promotion. That move seizes time, initiative, and long-term power (and the knight is still available for the taking after black moves their king to safety). The material grab, by contrast, actually throws away a more decisive positional edge.

When you see examples like this, the lesson becomes unmistakable:

Positional advantage can outweigh material by a staggering margin.

And in many cases, choosing material over position doesn’t just miss the best move, it actively worsens your standing in the game.

What I love most about this idea is that it applies to life just as much as it applies to chess.

Material is not everything. Chess proves this. You can be winning on paper and still be a few moves away from collapse. You can be two points up and still losing. And once you understand this, you start seeing the same pattern everywhere.

In chess, material is visible, countable, and reassuring. Capturing something feels like progress.

Life has its own form of material:
the salary, the apartment, the degree, the car, the job title, the follower count.
The things that are easy to measure and easy to show off.

But just like in chess, material advantage can be misleading.
It can create the appearance of progress without the substance.

Position, on the other hand, is quieter and harder to quantify.
Yet it determines everything.

In chess, position is initiative, space, coordination, and safety.
In life, position is the people who trust you, the habits that compound over time, the skills you have built, the reputation you have earned, and the environments you choose to be in.

Material says, “Look what I have.”
Position says, “Look what I can do.”

And here is the part many people overlook:
You can be up material in life and still be losing.

You can have more money than others but be overwhelmed by stress.
You can have a prestigious job but no leverage or freedom.
You can have a beautiful relationship online but a fragile one in private.
You can have a large network but no one you can truly rely on.
You can have an impressive résumé and still be entirely replaceable.

You can appear ahead and still be one bad move away from being completely lost.

Chess teaches why. If you plan ten moves ahead with no structure, the game will punish you. Your opponent can make a single move you did not calculate, and suddenly your entire plan collapses. Life works the same way. Long term plans without structure are fragile. Short term plans built on strong position are resilient. If you focus on building structure now, unexpected events do not derail you. They simply redirect you.

I have experienced the concept of strong positioning myself. During college, I took the time to genuinely connect with my cognitive neuroscience professor. We spoke often. I asked questions. I showed interest in the work he cared about. At the time, there was no material benefit to me, aside from learning more about cognitive neuroscience from a really interesting person. But when I learned he was on the board of a company I was really interested in working for, I knew at that point that my investment into the position was smart. Our relationship eventually became the reason he recommended me, and that recommendation is the reason I work where I work today. It was not my GPA (definitely not my GPA) or the number of years I had studied. It was position.

You see this pattern again and again.

Position is built quietly.
In the conversations you do not post.
In the trust you earn slowly.
In the skills you sharpen when no one is watching.
In the discipline you keep when it would be easier not to.
In the relationships you nurture because they matter, not because they are useful.

Chess teaches that the strongest players are not focused on what they can take.
They are focused on what they can build.

Life rewards the same approach.

If you take anything, let it be this:

Stop chasing material. Start building position.

Because the world does not reward the person with the most things.
It rewards the person with the strongest foundation.
And when your foundation is strong, the wins are not only possible.
They become inevitable.