The a team is a very comforting show to watch partly bc every single recurring character is deeply and profoundly Weird. If they weren’t all absolute freaks they wouldn’t have survived the way they do. Their weirdness is what keeps them together and what makes them successful as a unit and in a world where people unironically say that non-normative people ‘should have been bullied more’ to beat the weirdness out of them, it’s nice to see Hannibal, a certifiable Freak, calling similar people slimeballs and getting his collection of adopted children to join him in blowing their cars up without actually hurting anyone, while BA pretends to be normal to cover the fact that he’s easily as bizarre as Murdock, and Face speaks mostly in keysmashes and is fully convinced that he’s perfectly normal, Murdock saunters around in tight trousers talking absolute nonsense at top speed.
When Damian came to live in Gotham, Bruce took to playing chess with him, to bond and spend time together out of batbusiness. Back then, while Damian was very good at chess, he was not good enough to beat Bruce, and thus to keep Damian playing Bruce would sometimes let his kid win. It was a game in itself, to play in a way that Damian would not notice any "foul play" as the fallout of Damian learning that his wins were fake would be immense.
With time, Damian got better and started winning for real, not EVERY time, but often enough, and suddenly Bruce didn't have to pretend to lose. And with 1 Damian's win for 10 matches slowly morphing into 5 wins for every 10 matches, Bruce was left extremely, EXTREMELY proud, but also... a bit disgruntled? He's BATMAN and he's losing to a child? I mean, his child, which is good, but still. It's just embarassing. It doesn't help that whole batfam finds it hilarious. But its ok, Bruce does NOT have a crisis. At all. Bruce is being normal about it and never thought about cheating at chess so that he can win more, thank you very much.
Superman, during League meeting: And Batman we will as always rely on your tactical and strategic guidance. I must say, you are our own chessmaster (chuckle).
Batman suddenly thinking how he was trounced in a chess match by a literal 12 year old a few days ago: