If it is somewhat like chess in mechanics, that's one thing.
What I mean is the "MMA grappling is like chess" or "Overwatch is like chess" or even "crypto day trading is like chess." What they mean is it's a big boy very serious very smart interest for big boy very serious very smart people. 
I hate that, especially because I've recently noticed just how silly and chuddy the largest and loudest parts of the chess community, especially its fandom, really are. The pretenses of detached gravitas really ring hollow when some jerkoff like Kasparov runs his mouth about how he read The Gulag Archipelago and became enlightened. 
I had a friend that would talk about MMA being like chess. There was one fighter he was a particular fan of that also talked this way a lot. Total genius. The fighter and my friend both got into flat-earth shit :/
the earth is just like a chessboard see