Games that are not Chess - Chess

Let me explain the slightly odd title. Apart from chess I play a number of other games, although chess is the game I keep coming back to. When I do play other games (Poker, Bridge, Diplomacy, abstract games, war games, Euro games), it is inevitable that I often think like a chess player (as opposed to a gamer) and I compare these other games to chess.
On the other hand I sometimes come across "gamers" who do the opposite. Approach chess from a gamers perspective, and make comparisons from that direction.
One of the places I go to get info about games is BoardGameGeek. While having a look around I thought I'd see where chess sat in amongst the myriad of other board games. At the moment it is ranked 189, which doesn't surprise me, given the environment it is being ranked in. However it was the comments section towards the bottom of the chess page that I found most interesting. If you want to see what non-chess playing gamers think about chess, especially in terms of its place in society, have a look. There is certainly some back-and-forth between the posters, but overall it is a fairly intelligent debate. Probably the best post is the starting post in the thread "Why you might hate chess", which is actually a post on why chess is considered "above" all other board games.