Because chess is more unrelated to the job? It is easy to see that LeetCode problems are closer to a programmers job than what chess is. But yeah, people used

Because chess is more unrelated to the job? It is easy to see that LeetCode problems are closer to a programmers job than what chess is. But yeah, people used to ask that level of unrelated questions to programmers, and they were happy with the results. "Why are manhole covers round" etc. LeetCode style questions do produce better results than those, so that is why they use them.