chess
"Chess is like professional basketball in that if you can't crack the NBA - or in chess, rank among the top 10 or 20 players in the world - you probably need to consider an alternate career. Ashley had another idea: to put enough pieces on the board to create a full-time, chess-based profession."
"Chess is like no other game in the Western catalog (I guard against the equally powerful Go) in that it commands reverence for its history."
"Understandably, chess has most popularly been associated with war and mathematics. Or rather, the mathematics that you need to be a smart victor in war. Here I will focus on these indisputable metaphors as well as some of the less common ones."
A whole discussion of chess metaphors in the link...
METAMIA is a free database of analogy and metaphor. Anyone can contribute or search. The subject matter can be anything. Science is popular, but poetry is encouraged. The goal is to integrate our fluid muses with the stark literalism of a relational database. Metamia is like a girdle for your muses, a cognitive girdle.