How to Never Lose in 3D Chess

This isn’t really about 3D chess. It’s about decision making. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

OK, there’s no trick. You really just can’t lose.

But can’t win either.

Here’s why:

In regular 2D chess, you can do 9 things with your king —move forward or backward, left or right, up or down, diagonally, or stand still.

In 3D chess, that blows up to 27 possible moves because now, you can make 9 moves on 3 separate planes.

So if you’re trying to trap a king, it’s hard enough to do when they 9 possible means of escape. It becomes much, much harder to do when there are 27.

Even if you’re a grandmaster, it’s hard to beat anyone in 3D chess.

This little example teaches an important life lesson: it’s damn hard to win at anything when there’s a lot of different ways something can play out. Conversely, it’s easy to win (and strategize) when you constrain the possibilities.

So think carefully how you can tighten up all the possible outcomes. You’ll make better decisions and strategies.