The Importance of Chess in Today's World

Like many of you I had come across chess as a child and didn't think much of it as it was just a game. It wasn't until almost 2 decades later did I really fall in love with the game. It became more than a game. Chess literally has endless possibilities. It has become one of the most addictive aspects of my life.

Why does this matter?

From family gatherings to teenagers in coffee shops I can't believe how unfocused most kids are today. This is not a put down by any means. They have the ability to carry on a conversation with me and text someone at the same time while watching tv and drawing a picture. They are masters of the multi task but lack the ability to concentrate at times.

I've played online video games with groups where, together, a task may take over an hour to complete only to see the younger kids bail first for . Those same kids probably accomplished 4 other things during this mission in game but couldn't complete the longer mission at hand!

Adults aren't immune as well...we are becoming more and more distracted by amount of information out there.

Chess is a game of calculation and pattern recognition...memory...problem solving, and last but not least...its basically free...forever. I've spent hours looking at chess board before to finally see the solution. The amount of concentration put into one task increased the quality of my decision.

Even today its hard for me to stay focussed as I have over 18 webpage tabs up at this moment, the radio on, while i'm playing a small video game. I am guilty of enjoying the overabundance of information. Chess grounds me and reminds me to work hard and spend time finding the right solution for the problem. Not to make hasty decisions and to concentrate.

If you feel there is too much going on in the world...take a step back and play a game of chess..it is very therapeutic and relaxing. There are free sites all over online and most are well put together. A couple decent movies on chess are Searching for Bobby Fischer and Queen to Play.

So what is the importance of chess today...to help ground us once again and remind us the importance of deep thought and concentration...all at the price of free. Only if you need that sort of thing like I do!

reply to post by cosmicexplorer


I have nothing much to add, you said it all.

S&F

reply to post by cosmicexplorer

I learned chess in high school, but never played much. Like you, many years later, I picked it up again, and play against the computer occasionally. Especially when I want to clear my mind. I am thought of as a good player, but I'm not by any means. It's just that those I have played against have no focus, or foresight. When its someone who does, it's usually a different game. Adding to your list of Chess attributes...

Chess requires strategy, and strategy requires looking at the same problem from different perspectives. A very good lesson if one can apply it to their own life daily.

I love all strategy and tactics type games for the most part.
Glad for you to promote interest in a ancient one.

Variety is good though, mix things up.
I would even suggest all kids learn games like this simply for the potential mental development it offers.
With these genres all sorts of themes can be included to increase the depth of the educational possibilities.

I've played my entire life. When I was a kid my parents never really let me play video games, well they did, but it was on 'certain' ones, which I later found out later in my life they did. But they sort of herded me into those games without me knowing, so I found myself playing racing games, and strategy games, alongside with chess.
Tho, a funny and tragic story got me off the game.
I played chess religiously at school to the point where I was challenging people for money, and I got a good chunk of people at the school playing, so I made the chess club. Long story short, my grades were declining (not because of chess) so the vice principal threatened to kick me out of MY OWN club if my grades didn't rise... well I couldn't shake it, and I got kicked out and the club was disbanded. Ever since then I haven't really played much, I played online for a bit with a tight knit community on MSN games, but they re designed the entire concept of how people interacted with one another and we all lost touch. Since then, like I said, I never really got into the game as much as I was.

I still do play from time to time, but it's rather rare now days to find people willing to actually sit down and play a checkmate game. Good times...

reply to post by cosmicexplorer


I am not much into crossword puzzles. I do play Chess as an almost daily brain exercise. I am not that good but have only recently started taking it more seriously. I have gotten better. It's odd because I am a world class/expert level player in backgammon. Yes they have programs that measure your error rates and cube errors in backgammon. The best players in the world can easily take home 20,000$ in a weekend. Snowie was one.. Gnu another. The strongest backgammon program is extreme gammon. It has 5 ply analysis if you know what that is.

www.extremegammon.com...

I use the shredder program for chess. Mainly because it has a iPhone and iPad a App. I tend to play chess almost anywhere.


One thing I will mention is chess is very difficult to master. If you know of the 10,000 hour rule it was based on studies of chess grandmasters. In order to reach that level no matter how smart you are you can expect it will take 10,000 hours of practice or roughly ten years. There are a very very few
exceptions but they are few and far between.

www.shredderchess.com...

""""""Forty years ago, in a paper in American Scientist, Herbert Simon and William Chase drew one of the most famous conclusions in the study of expertise:

There are no instant experts in chess—certainly no instant masters or grandmasters. There appears not to be on record any case (including Bobby Fischer) where a person reached grandmaster level with less than about a decade's intense preoccupation with the game. We would estimate, very roughly, that a master has spent perhaps 10,000 to 50,000 hours staring at chess positions…""""


newyorker.com...

If you have time the article is fascinating.

This is a very nice post, it is good to see that other people do realize the value of chess! I didn't learn it until I was around 18, when I developed a group of friends that were into all sorts of activities, ranging from video games to D&D,to writing software and music, and of course, chess. These were some of the smartest people I knew at the time!

Now, years later, my husband and I usually have a game going, even if it takes months to complete (he works a lot).

We started teaching my daughter the game when she was probably around 6. She's learned the names of the pieces and the ways they are allowed to move (except she still gets confused by the knight and the queen). It's so interesting to watch her thinking about where to move. She's still at a point where she doesn't actually "get" the long term goal of Checkmate, for her she just gets tickled when she is able to take a pawn. It's neat. I hope she continues to play as she grows.

I agree with you, attention spans are growing shorter and shorter with each generation. It's a shame, and a sad reality. Hopefully people here and there will continue to pass along this great game to others!

reply to post by cosmicexplorer

Very interesting OP!

Coincidentally, I read an article today about procrastinating. A study showed that people who put tasks or decisions off until they become urgent, tend to live and work more efficiently. One of the many reasons for this is that the longer you wait to start on something or make a decision, the more time you have left yourself to think it through, resulting in better and more creative solutions. That is very much akin to playing chess.

Excellent stories from all of you....as one mentioned above...shredder chess is the best program in my opinion as it is solid play and great for analyzing games...I have sadly bought just about everything out there too.

Happy to see im not the only one playing chess!

reply to post by soulwaxer


Excellent...ya my biggest flaw in chess is I trust my gut too much instead of calculating....and I can become impulsive and it rarely ever works out right haha

One of the most important things I learned from chess is the necessity of thinking ahead.

There is no greater thrill then seeing a position on a chessboard and knowing that you forsaw that position 13 moves ago. And no deeper pit than seeing your opponet play a move that you didn't forsee two or three moves ago.

If you really want to take your game to the next level, I highly recommend "Think Like a Grandmaster" by Alexander Kotov. I rank it third behind Nimzovitch's "My System" and Kmoch's "Pawn Power in Chess." Kotov teaches how to calculate in your head 10 - 20 moves in advance, no matter how complex the situation. When you can do that, playing simultaneous blindfold games is no problem. The board in your mind is more important than the one you see with your eyes.

That is a useful life skill for any endevour. Comes in real handy for 9-ball, for instance. I can hold my own against better shot-makers by making sure that they can't run the table.

Too bad chess didn't improve my hand-eye coordination. I'd be on ESPN.

reply to post by VictorVonDoom


Thanks for the reading list Doc.
I am aware of your techno-magics so I will heed your warnings.
By the way I suck at chess (and a lot of things) so maybe this will help.
Adding to library list w/a New Avengers I wanted to check out.

reply to post by VictorVonDoom


Good books indeed...Probably own about 100 chess books...read most of them to some extent...i just basically started collecting them...now I solely use a tactics trainer app and shredder to analyze my games and GM games...

If you haven't already some fun games to look at are Paul Morphy vs Andersson....Morphy wins every game in like 20 moves they play....and when Andersson does win it takes like 70....Morphy was such a phenomenal player perhaps even the best ever but we will never know!

reply to post by cosmicexplorer


Morphy was great, of course. He had a genius level intellect and a natural talent for the game. But my all time favorite was Alekhine. The man could show up to a match drunk and crush grandmasters like they were duffers. But he was also a master of the mind game.

One time he was playing a game, made a move, his opponet moved and Alekhine saw that the game would be drawn by three fold repetition. Alekhine thought about it, made his move and declared the game a draw. His opponet correctly pointed out that the position had only occured twice. Alekhine threw a fit, insisting the game was a draw. They got the director, checked the scoresheets, and determined the position had only occured twice. Alekhine then made his move in a huff, punched his clock, and glared at his opponet. Now, his opponet had just spent all that time arguing that the game was not a draw. He knew that if he made the same move, Alekhine would declare a draw, and he would be right this time. So, the guy made a different move and lost the game.

Also, Alekhine's pre-game preparation was unmatched for that era. That's why he never gave Capablanca another rematch for the title. He knew that Capablanca was really the better player. He was able to rattle him the first time to take the title, but he didn't think he could do it twice.

Man, this takes me back a couple of decades. Good times and misery.

reply to post by VictorVonDoom


haha great story...I sadly havent dove into much of alekhine's games. When I first started I fell in love with tactical play...which if I remember right Alekhine was a great tactician....I fell in love with Morphy and Tal....today I enjoy Nakamura's games....Maybe Shirov or Morovich...I also spend alot of time watching the better junior players.....

I really enjoy the old school games so much better than now...everything is so positional now..back then before computers people played some wild openings..now you just dont see it as much because its dubbed as not a good opening.

I use the modern defense for black...which a average gm by the name of David Norwood plays so Ive gotten pretty familiar with him just to help me with the Modern...for white im e4 all the way and am just now considering learning the King's Gambit as I think itll really force me to play hard.

That is the beauty too of chess...if you get bored with it..change your opening haha

Oh CHESS, no I thought you said cheese. Fancy Stilton on a biscuit, bit o jam?

reply to post by cosmicexplorer


Right you are! In my younger day I used to enjoy a good Danish Gambit, King's Gambit, or Italian Game. Sac some material, open things up, and slug it out. Problem is, good players know the correct way to deal with gambits: take the material, then give it back later with a better position. It got to the point that the only gambit I would play would be the Benko Gambit, which is a true stategic gambit.

Anymore I just play it safe, lock the center and maneuver on the wings. So I like the French, and QGD for black, and the Stonewall / Colle for white. I only play on the computer these days, and my mind isn't up for sharp, tactical openings when I'm also watching TV and having a couple of shots of tequilla.

It makes me nostalgic for the days when you could play a Fidelity Chess Computer and count on it to drop a piece or a pawn on a three move combination. I still have a couple of Novag SuperExpert C computers (rated about 1900 - 2000). Real nice boards. They have a serial interface so you can hook it up to a PC, but the original software was very limited and came on a 5.25 floppy. I've been working on a Visual Basic program to support the interface to put one of them on eBay, but that project has been on the back burner for years.

Life kind of gets in the way.

reply to post by cosmicexplorer


Nice thread. The greatest thing that can be learned from chess is "sacrafice".

One reason why I believe no computer A.I. will ever rival our creative thinking abilities.

reply to post by nerbot


Very true...nothing greater than seeing a queen sac in exchange for mate...especially when I couldnt see it myself...I watch games almost weekly on chessbomb and when you finally see something like that and you think the player is jsut absolutely crazy...and then they win....its better than a touch down or goal or homerun.....im glad to see so many on here interested in chess...I thought the thread would receive cricket noises!

reply to post by cosmicexplorer

From family gatherings to teenagers in coffee shops I can't believe how unfocused most kids are today.

Just thought I'd mention that as a teenager, I used to play chess in coffee shops

I don't play as much as I used to (if at all). I remember one friend that I used to play often back in the day that I couldn't beat. I was a decent enough Chess player but this guy read 500 page books on chess strategy and would just annihilate me every time I played him. It was infuriating. One night I had him on the ropes and I was within 2 moves of beating him and I blew it. I was so pissed I quit playing for years after that game lol