Another excellent comparison made by top chess players is chess to tennis.  The idea of this comparison was that, in an opening system such as the Sicilian, White should develop his men to the fourth rank and Black to the third.  Whomever controlled the rank in between them the best would be the winner.  Because most systems of development like this for Black were known as "hedgehog formations", Hartston (in "Teach Yourself Better Chess") calls this the principle of hedgehogs playing tennis.  The interesting thing is, however, that in tennis, the first person to score the required points wins the game and then jumps over the net, but in chess, the first person to jump over the "net" (the rank of space between White's pieces and Black's pieces) wins and scores the required points.

But is that all?  Is it only in a hedgehog formation that such positions arise?  No, and as a matter of fact, every single chess game bears that same principle.  In the starting position, the two sides have four ranks in between them.  The more each army moves forward, the smaller the net becomes.  Each player uses their assembly of aggressive shots, defensive shots, lob shots, drop shots, etc etc to try to get their pieces over the net and penetrate into the opponent's position.  But when the opponent makes a forcing move and the ball is in your court, you've got to hit it back with utmost accuracy in order to prevail.

Just like in chess, tennis players have personalized styles and techniques.  There could be one player who has a very strong serve and who rushes forward to the net, and another who plays from the baseline.  In chess, there are often much more aggressive players (Anand, Kasparov, Fischer, Tal, Spassky, etc) and then extremely intricate, defensive players (Kramnik, Karpov, Petrosian, Botvinnik, Capablanca, etc).  A player has to know how to play against both in order to become great.

So what's the moral of the story?

Chess is a tennis match-the first one to jump over the net (rank between the armies) prevails.

Thanks for reading!

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