...politically he's a conventional liberal and he's a relatively poor chessplayer.
Not surprising. He's unwilling to spend his limited time thinking about politics or how to beat opponents in a board game. Fortunately for him (and for us, too), he lives in a society that allows him to do what he does better than almost everybody else—think about physics and mathematics.
And all this time, I thought that because I was bad at chess, I didn't have a chance at theoretical physics. Maybe it's time to go back to grad school!