Benjamin Franklin had some pertinent things to say about the game of chess. Indeed, one can wonder about the broader meaning of the game. To speculate on chess is useful.

Chess is nothing more than a game. It is an interesting game because it can satisfy anyone from the lowliest blunder-monkey to the most exhalted Grand Master of the Chessing Universe. Perhaps this is the rub, where gamesmanship is replaced by passionate emotions of winning and losing.

When a player lacks gamesmanship, the graceful art of courtesy in victory and defeat, winning and losing is bruising to the ego, sometimes dangerously so. It is a problem with playing any game, since a game is supposed to be for the enjoyment of the players yet foments violence among the players and their partisans. In chess, this evil is magnified by the rating system that gauges playing strength by an arbritrary score calculated from the statistics of a set of won and lost games.

Chess players often fall into the trap of chasing their rating. After all, a rating is the only reasonable way that one can measure progress in the game. However, is progress really necessary? What happens when it becomes obvious that no matter how hard one tries, attaining to further improvement proves impossible?

Chess has other speculative benefits, some of which are confirmed by scientific analysis. Main benefit is that it exercises the brain such that recognition of patterns can assume a satisfying beauty; such exercise can help prevent atrophy of the intellect. Chess is something of a allegory for the human condition; this was the burden of Franklin's essay. Franklin's points are still sound today.

In chess a player makes a decision on which piece to move and should live with the consequences, just as in life a person must play on with choices made. As a rule for good gamesmanship there should be no take-backs, no repining; one should press on regardless.

Quitting, or resigning is popular in chess when conditions become unfavourable and the player is staring at defeat. In life we must soldier on and fight unto death. By getting into the habit of quitting, eventually a person may look back on a lifetime littered with failures.

Chess can teach good judgement necessary to making the best choices. It does this by requiring that the players consider the choices available before making each move. A well-chosen path can bypass the situations in which quitting is the only viable option. Good choices set a fair course to success, whereas bad choices lead to failure.

Resigning at chess shows disrespect to the opponent who has shown greater skill or taken advantage of one’s blunders. A losing player should honour a superior opponent by allowing the game to proceed to checkmate; of course it is always possible that the winning player will blunder to allow a loser to snatch victory from what looked like inevitable defeat.

In all this, the rating system is important to enjoyment of chess. To be beaten like a drum by an opponent of overwhelming superiority is no fun for the weaker player and does no honour to the winner. What the rating system does is to indicate the relative strength of each member of the chess playing community. Proper use of ratings is to match players of similar strength so that each may engage in a contest between similar intellectual forces, so that both players can have fun and profit by their play.