People don't play it for money. I mean specifically they don't bet on outcomes of their own games. This is what gambling is. Chess wouldn't be as addictive any

People don't play it for money. I mean specifically they don't bet on outcomes of their own games. This is what gambling is. Chess wouldn't be as addictive anyway. You need a bit more luck ingrained in the game mechanics to trigger the addiction mechanisms. In games of skill like poker people get deluded all the time because they see lucky wins of their opponents and unlucky losses of their own. People are very bad at making judgements about probability so a lot of them get deluded into thinking "if only unlikely X didn't happen 3 times recently I would be ahead". This happens in both poker and sports betting. In both games you can always pick some unlucky events (ball hit the post, referee gave an unjustified penalty, the only card falling on the river) and point to them to say "if only" while missing all the small lucky events on your side.