Does chess make you smarter?
By Mark Boyle
January 19, 2009
Kg1 Bc5+ … Kc1 Rc2#. Ever made a series of finishing moves like that? Confused?
Come on, you know what I’m talking about. They only made a full-length movie about it back in 1993.
OK, maybe the average chess player hasn’t accomplished or even understood the circumstances surrounding the series of moves that made up “the game of the century.” Bobby Fischer, then 13, beat veteran Donald Byrne in 1956.
Without argument, chess is a worldly game, a scholarly game and a competitive game. It’s both educational and confusing. Which begs the question: Is chess a game that makes you smarter?
“I’m not sure you can say that,” says Lawrence psychologist Marciana Vequist. “There is some research that shows that chess does help you to problem-solve, and I think that is one of the main benefits from it.”
Jeffrey Farrar has been playing chess seriously for more than four years. He says the game has dramatically influenced his life.
“Chess has taught me the nature of knowledge more than anything else,” he says. “It taught me how there are some very severe weaknesses in my own thinking.”
Here in Lawrence, chess is played starting at the elementary school level through adults.
“It’s a way of looking at different possibilities, analyzing things a few steps ahead, comparing two outcomes, assessing the situation,” says James Fouche-Schack, president of the Lawrence Chess Club, which meets 7 p.m.-10 p.m. Mondays at Borders, 700 N.H.. “It does improve something, but I don’t know that it makes you smarter to play it.”
But Vequist says it does improve your ability to make decisions.
“There are many people who just become overwhelmed with a set of problems. It kind of stops them, and their functioning starts to deteriorate. That can be a real big problem,” Vequist says. “The more creative we can be and the more solutions we can generate to problems, the less overwhelming they may seem.”
Most of all, chess is a social game for those who play. Dmitri Smith, 10, says he’s already figured that out. He plays during indoor recess and has since taught his father to play.
Here is the full article.
“Does chess make you smarter?”
It is a longstanding favorite subject of mine. I firmly believe that with the higher ability of playing chess is the result of “something” genetically inherited. Otherwise how could we see small children suddenly starting to shine in chess, practically as soon as they learn the basic moves. Sometimes early enough making it impossible to even assume that “they learned enough….”. If it wasn’t genetic, how could 13 years old kids defeat enough far more senior players to become GMs, who obviously had simply more time to learn, study, whatever. And they did, otherwise they wouldn’t be in such positions.
But now comes the question: whatever it is they bring genetically, is it really the ability to play chess itself. Of course not, since chess is an artificial activity what mankind simply invented.
Than what is it? Well…this is what seems to be unknown. I am not aware of any major research, and if there was any, it avoided my attention. One thing however appears to be the case: famous chess players are rarely known about much else on an equal level. If the ability of chess would be some overall high intelligence (smartness is the wrong word here) one would expect that out of the many GMs, at least some would be also famous about…..something else. Very few is. Now, how intelligent is it (for example) to be super-intelligent (in general) and do nothing else in life, but to play chess? That by itself is puzzling. The current outstanding and interesting exception is no else, but Kasparov himself. If his ability to out-think his opponents for so many years in chess, his ability to see so many more “moves ahead”, how come he didn’t see what most very average people saw on the planet: he has no chance to become the president of Russia against the Putin regime? If anyone, he should have, if it was only about raw intelligence.
But then, if it is not raw intelligence, what is it? Part of it still has to be intelligence, but in my very humble opinion, it has to be some other, not-intelligence related ability. My suspicion (and that’s all what it is) is that it is some ability (which I don’t KNOW, since I don’t have it, those who have it don’t know because they have it, but they probably think this is just natural and probably everybody have it) is some “weird” ability of multiple visualization and the ability to retain several (many) of those. Thus the ability of most top chess players to play chess blind, without seeing the board, or play simultaneously against more other players. If it was mere intelligence, the ability to foresee and calculate better than others, it would not help one bit to play blind for example. I watched the movie “My Brilliant Brain” about Susan and that little experiment about the truck passing by with a chess setup painted on the side of the truck, and Susan remembering the setup despite that she had no more time than a couple of seconds to see the setup, enforced my “visualization” theory. That was not pure “remembering”. Her brain had to be able to “capture the whole thing”, retain it, then from an “internal recall” or shall we say “viewing” reproduce the setup.
Since I have no proof about any of these, no point to go into further potential details. One day some deep research may discover the truth, whatever it is.
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Now, none of the above really answered the original question:does chess make you smarter? To that question I would answer a “mild yes”. The PROCESS of chess itself does teach a more disciplined thinking, the attempt to think ahead, get your thoughts organized, etc. But that is valid on any level who takes chess even a little seriously, even on an ELO level of 1500 (for example). In other words, we shouldn’t confuse the ability of playing good (or better, or the best) chess, and the desire to learn and play chess. It is the latter which could “make you smarter”.
Gabor
Oh yes, and one little add-on.
Why did Bobby Fischer invented random chess? For the very reason to exclude the role of prior studying. Making chess less dependent on learning zillions of opening variations. Is there a message in that? I think there is. He himself had to believe that it was the brain’s fundamental ability to be simply better in chess than the other, regardless of studying.
Gabor
I’m afraid chess in itself doesn’t make one smarter. You do repeat the same tricks and analogue calculations over and over and yes, you will improve, no doubt, in chess, mainly by éxcluding calculations that aren’t needed.
If you play chess a lot you focus on a game aspect, just a game in the end. It’s a choice. It can’t be denied that the element of competition (‘I’m better than him/her!’ yeah, in chess you may be) looms over the ‘product’. It’s pure personal pleasure.
smarter no, but it can help you develop the ability to focus. To sit down and give your brain a workout over an extended period of time. It will help you exercise your memory through the attempt to calculate move sequences and evaluate positions you can only see in your minds eye. This is a skill that many countries deprive their students of.
Does chess make you smarter?
No. But Cheese does make you smarter! I like Cheddar.