In real life, you've always got to go with your gut. But in chess you have perfect prescience: there is a very limited set of parameters, and things can only occur within them. Its good training for real life, since you can have both foresight and risk, and for me at least I always have a multitude of different plans about both my near and far future sitting somewhere in the back of my head, switching between and adjusting them depending on the circumstances that arise.