Chess skills are most helpful when you are playing chess. However, when you climb & jump on rocks, your entire brain & body are put to work.
The board & pieces are all the material, but the METAGAME dynamic is certainly a factor in competition. The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig is about losing the battle to a weaker player who uses a novel psychology.
Dreams reveal the world. We wake while often the narrative is difficult to recall. Events of the waking world, on the other hand, are forced. It falls to us to weigh & sort & order these events. We assemble them into the story which is us.