To the average person, the movement of a pawn on a chess board has nothing to do with a tackle on a football field. However, in the USC community, such subjective borders do not seem to exist. 

Redshirt junior quarterback Miller Moss and redshirt sophomore safety Kamari Ramsey recently discussed in the Los Angeles Times how they use chess in their football gameplay. To better understand the parallels between the two sports, the Daily Trojan spoke with members of both the USC football team and chess community.

“I think the biggest carryover [from chess to football] is how you think and how you approach chess and football,” Moss said at a press conference. “That thinking, in general, can translate to a lot of different areas of your life.”  

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This carryover is not a surprise to Jack Peters, an international chess master and a lecturer with the Dornsife Max Kade Institute at USC. 

“There’s been talk like that for decades from many different athletes or competitors,” Peters said. “Chess is different than other things, [yet] it’s always compared to different activities. You can find some parallel between chess and almost anything.”

Ashley Melendres, president of the USC Chess Club and a senior majoring in guitar performance and neuroscience, said this overlap is common in the chess community.

“We’ve had football players in the past, [who messaged us] on Instagram, be like, ‘I want to come to chess club,’” Melendres said. ““It teaches planning ahead. It also is like, ‘Hey, the consequences of my actions are right here.’ You can’t put the blame on anyone.” 

Arthur Markaryan, secretary historian of the USC Chess Club and a junior majoring in neuroscience, explained this overlap between the two sports may be from the mental framework chess provides. In chess, Markaryan said that players are taught not to play “hope chess,” or wait for their opponent to make a mistake. 

Quenton Blache, a member of the USC Chess Club and a USC alum, said both sports are about outsmarting the opponent. 

“Oftentimes, before a tournament, we’ll look up our opponents’ profiles, if they have public profiles online to see what they play for openings,” Blache said. “[This is] probably very similar to when football players watch film … whether it’s teams that they’re about to play or teams that they just played, just to see and analyze maybe where they went wrong.”

Andrew Vu, a member of the USC Chess Club and USC alum, agreed that such strategic thinking can be seen in both sports. In Vu’s case, similar to rewatching a football game, he would take note of his mistakes during his games, before analyzing what went wrong. 

Despite chess being an individual game, Vu said chess, like football, provides people with a sense of team spirit; after a game, all members in their crowded meeting rooms gather around and celebrate.

Peters said that media representation may play a part in getting people interested in chess. During the coronavirus pandemic, the popularity of the show “The Queen’s Gambit” resulted in more interest towards chess in the USC community. For Vu, he became invested in chess after watching popular chess media personalities such as Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen. 

However, while Blache agreed that media representation is important for chess players, he believed that such representation is often not accurate to everyday players. 

“I would also say, sometimes I think there’s a stereotype of chess players being almost crazy,” Blache said. “[But] there are everyday people that just love this game … You don’t have to be some genius with Albert Einstein-hair to play this game. It’s very accessible for anybody to start.”

This sense of accessibility is why Vu believes that chess representation in USC football is important. 

“It’s really cool that Miller and Kamari are playing chess,” Vu said. “It shows you that anyone can play chess, like a football player [or an] office worker.”