What is it about chess?

Honestly? Why is this game so fun and addictive? I started playing when I was a kid, and I just know the patterns of the pieces attracted me and I remember how much I wanted to play chess. Other games were fun too, like Monopoly and Life, but there was something compulsive about chess. I have done logic puzzles, but not for hours on end, like I can with chess.

I wonder if it could be a form of OCD to be attracted to the game. My publisher insists I have Asbergers, which I hear is the tendancy to over-focus on one subject. Not sure about that, but it could explain it. Anyone who has read Nabokov's The Luzhin Defense and also plays chess must remember the amazing description of the moment Aleksandr discovers chess as a child at his Aunt's house, about the patterns and how it changed his life forever. It was nice to read it and see that this peculiar phenomenon had happened to others.