Is that a reference to one of the early microcomputer based chess games? I don't recognize it.
I remember having a 5Kbyte BASIC interpreter on paper tape. With that I was able to key in BASIC programs from a book of computer games.
The book is "101 BASIC Computer Games". It has a version of the early "SPACEWAR" game based on Star Trek. Expectations for computer games were a tad lower back then.
It's a reference to the 1984 film "Wargames", starring Matthew Broderick, who plays a computer-savvy teenager who inadvertantly causes a DOD supercomputer to begin a nuclear escalation with the Soviet Union.
When Broderick's character first contacts the DOD computer, he thinks he's logging into a game company's computer. On the list of the computer's games (actually war simulations), he sees "Global Thermonuclear War". When he tries to get the DOD computer to play it, the computer initially responds "How about a nice game of chess?"
Another famous quote from the film is the same computer saying, "The only winning move is not to play."