Chess on the lake

I took a bike ride on the lakefront path today and got as far south as the chess pavillion at North Avenue. I watched one of the regulars, playing with the white pieces, beat up on some poor patzer who had wandered in. The loser didn't make any serious blunders, but I could see early on that he had the weaker position, and he lost by about the 25th move. "Where did I go wrong?" he asked as he handed the victor five dollars. His problem was he played too tentatively, never attacking. Whenever a piece was threatened, he would retreat. At the end, he needed to give up some material to prevent white's final mating attack, but his position was unsalvageable by then anyway.

You might think that good chess playing, which requires a sharp mind, would correlate to success in other areas. But a lot of the regulars at the chess pavilion look like they're just barely making it.