Chess and Statistical Mechanics
If you want to understand the working of any complex system then you would first try to break everything down to its fundamentals. Then you would understand the fundamentals very clearly and then use that understanding of the fundamentals to completely understand the system. This is the very basis of Physics, which is one of the most successful endeavours of humankind. We have been able to take this approach whereby we break down systems to fundamentals and then use its knowledge to have the most detailed and clear understanding of lot of things.