Peaches:
To your first question, yes, that is exactly what I am saying. When two decisions have to be made simultaneously, with one of those decisions being the victor, then you have to try and read your opponent and pick. If your decision is made first, and then mine is based on your decision, prediction, the essence of mindgames, is ELIMINATED. YOU DON'T HAVE TO PREDICT IF YOU CAN SIMPLY WAIT AND SEE WHAT I WILL DO. You then respond by what you think is the strongest. That essentially means no mindgames.
Like I said, go to rock paper scissors. There are only mindgames and guessing games involved because we play simultaneously. If RPS was turn-based, nobody would play.
What I'm saying is that Chess is turn-based RPS taken to an exponentially absurd extreme where only a perfect brain could consistently see the correct counters. Chess is a game of exploiting mistakes.
To your second question: in a theoretical sense, yes. The best Chess player in the history of the game looked at each situation as a problem to be solved. He believed there was always a “best move.” He was so far ahead of his contemporaries that I'm inclined to take his word for it. Especially since I logically can come to the same conclusion.
Consider the end-game, which is basically the dumbed down version of the opening and middle game. There are very few pieces, and it is assumed that in most situations, if the player with a material advantage plays perfectly, he will win. Computers can easily “solve” those situations because there aren't nearly as many combinations of pieces, legal moves, and positions as there are in the other parts of the game.
Even the Knight+Bishop+King versus King endgame is solvable, although it's considered delicate, complicated, and infuriating. But computers have been able to solve that one as well.
Unfortunately for computers, they do not search and compute based on patterns, so the more pieces you add, the more and more combinations they have to sort through, even though some of them are, by anybody with experience at the game, recognizably awful.
And what do you know, the best players are skilled at seeing those patterns, the “awful” moves even in complicated positions. And it's HARD. I know it's hard. I played Chess, studying books, openings, endgames, professional games, and even having a professional Chess player in college tutor me—I did it for five years before I stopped having fun with it. I'm not saying it's not difficult, complicated, rewarding, intellectually taxing, or competitive. But there isn't an element of prediction. It's a game of positional analysis.
I'm saying that the opponent's move carries meaning because of what it does to the board, not because of what the opponent “intends” with it. Maybe you set up an attack against my King, and I neatly deflect it. But in so doing, I allow you to trade a knight for my rook. There were no mindgames involved; the move you played was just THAT good that I had to choose between losing the game and suffering material disadvantage.
But go back a bit. How did you create that position for the move in the first place? Probably because I didn't see you trying to secure the spaces that gave you that attack. I didn't understand the importance of your earlier pawn trades that left the center open, making the aforementioned spaces available to you. Is that because YOU tricked me? No, it's because I failed to see the advantages of your position and neutralize them. There was a better way to play the situation and I didn't see it. It's as simple as that.
In Chess, you play for advantages of different kinds; positioning, space control, and material gain. Somebody might sacrifice a pawn to create a double pawn in the opponent's position: why? Because he believes that the positional advantage of this situation is more advantageous than the extra pawn the opponent gains. Is he right? Maybe. Kind of depends what else is happening on the board.
You could argue that you play your opponent rather than the game, in a case like this. You know your opponent has a good ability for seeing through to the end of a long exchange, but he has a shaky grasp of space control. So you play to control squares while he tries to initiate trades, and he doesn't realize you're constricting his piece development. Playing against a player's imperfections and inadequacies MIGHT count for mindgames. Maybe. I'd argue that it's simply a failure of the other player to play “smarter” moves.
Human imperfection decides the games. You can't play an advantage unless your opponent gives it to you... but guess what? Some of those advantages are so intangible and theoretical that only the best players see them. Traps and tricks are only “mindgames” inasmuch as the opponent lacks the ability to objectively assess a situation. That's why people who analyze professional matches see “better” moves in retrospect. They see that there are moves that shut off more options and lead to stronger advantages. They only see it because they are examining the moves in the vacuum, away from pressure, away from mental fatigue, and away from self-influencing assumptions.
If mindgames exist in Chess, it is only because people mindgame themselves.
And... why does Chess being older mean it has more mindgames? When did I say it was tic-tac-toe? When did I ever imply that Smash's RPS elements make it superior to Chess? You became oddly abrasive and violent halfway through your post for no reason. It's just a debate, so please calm down.
Gnosis:
Competent players still don't see the “best” move. Grandmasters don't even see the “best” move with any kind of regularity; like I said, analysts spend a lot of time looking at individual moves, turning points, and finding options that are more advantageous than the one played. And because you have all the time in the world, with enough time and skill you could theoretically find it during the game. But because people are imperfect, they make mistakes that make it possible for a game to be won or lost.
Ryuker: Because you have plenty of time analyze a given situation. If your opponent puts a piece somewhere, he can't take the piece out of the way as you're moving your bishop over to take it. In your example, it's pretty obvious; just don't take the pawn with the Queen. The “wavedash back” is sitting right there, fresh for me to analyze. Especially if it's a situation as painfully obvious as me attacking a guarded piece with my Queen.
In Smash, I have to guess whether you're about to grab or dash attack or whatever and respond. Not to the action itself, but to the guess of it. This is because my action has to coincide with yours for there to be a positive outcome for me. And to make it harder, I have to guess well in advance because of the additional factor of reflexes.