Chess vs Mathematics - An Insight into different yet interrelated path

(Albert Einstein & Emmanuel Lasker)
Einstein photo (1935): Sophie Delar/Wikimedia, public domain. Lasker photo (1920s): Trans-Ocean News Service/National Library of Israel, CC.

Chess as we know, is an Ancient Game. But so is Mathematics!! We know of those famous Pythagoras theorem or Euclidian geometry or  our own "zero" invented by Aryabhata or a more recent Fibonacci Sequences or Calculus works of Newton, Riemann & Leibnitz  and who can forget the concepts of powers & indices made popular by Srinivasan Ramanujan? All these persons have been the pioneers of the modern mathematics that we extensively study today.
But we need to understand that what made these great persona to go into such a deep research.
First of all, they depended on their dynamic, imaginative & creative minds & used them along with the known theories to come up with something which is still very much relevant in the modern, digitalized world.  
By the way, here comes Chess. It is also based on application of imaginative & creative ideas along with traditionally accepted rules & norms. Some notable players such as Emmanuel Lasker, Max Euve and John Nunn, who were brilliant Grandmasters & Lasker is, of course a former World Champion, showed the world that one can excel in both the domains without much difficulty. 
In chess, players fundamentally study the Numeric value of the pieces which are getting traded, thereby keeping track of the mathematical tradeoff  between their own pieces & that of opponents'.
But more than numbers, the chess positions are generally based on geometry. It is the position & utility of pieces, & whether they are placed in open files & they are near to opposite kings or how are the pieces dominating the space movement of the opposition pieces is the major result determiner.

So it is highly desirable & expected that a chess player can generally be a reasonable geometry scholar.

Personally , I find Calculus as the closest concept of mathematics which is related to chess. This is because we are required to do a lot of substitutions to break the problems into standard forms, which can be solved easily using basic definition & formulae. 
Substitution involves thinking, imagination & analysis of the most suitable variable, which would make the problem simpler. 
This is indeed the case in chess too. One has to think about the future responses of opponent & then based on their play, make choices , keeping in mind that we don't worsen our structures.

With the advent of technology, both Chess as well as Mathematics have reached some unprecedented heights & we depend on the respective software to get the problems quickly solved. 

There seems to be certain relationship between the two based on above discussion. 

This debate has been going on since the last century or so,  but the relevance of this discussion is being felt in the modern times. To analyze this conjecture, a simultaneous  chess exhibition was conducted in 2010 between our beloved Chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand and 39 best Mathematical researchers from all over India. But on their match the result was :- 38 wins for Anand and 1 draw. Interestingly the draw was clinched by a 14 year old player, who became the youngest person to participate in the Maths congress. Later Vishy Sir agreed  to the fact that the boy played very accurately & he was even losing in one of the move orders. But the former missed his opportunity to strike, due to which Vishy Sir was able to force the draw.  Overall the "Madras Tiger"  also admitted that no one was an easy opposition as everyone used their Mathematical knowledge & somehow made him uncomfortable to play the positions at some points. 

On recounting from my personal experience,  where I played against one of my friends who was brilliant in maths, I was convinced that Mathematics does play a role in playing quality chess. 

On the other hand,  a person, who is good at chess may not be not that good at the branch of maths that involves abstract ideas such as Proofs or conjectures. These things require us to follow some specific sequence of steps, which mostly needs memorization. 

So all things considered we can conclude that Chess can be played a high level if a person has a good grasp of Mathematical concepts but the reverse is not always true. 

Indeed CHESS promotes CREATIVITY, ART & GEOMETRICAL INTERPRETATION. 

So both have their unique merits & it depends on the personality of a person that which augers well for them.