Game can put kids on level with adults
The Columbus Dispatch
For most children, our modern industrial society is restrictive.
Their social status and economic worth are postponed until adulthood.
But chess can offer a rare entry into the adult world.
Children who are reasonably good at the game can find themselves playing at least as well as, or even better than, educated adults.
These adults – who might be doctors, lawyers, professors or other successful professionals – often become friends, providing access that is unavailable to most children or even adults of lesser status.
It’s no small boon.
When future grandmaster and U.S. champion Yasser Seirawan of Seattle was 17, he told me with wonderment and appreciation about such relationships and what he had already learned from them.
That was my experience, too, as a teenager at the famous Boylston Chess Club in Boston.
Such early adult contacts make you smarter and better-prepared for life.
For a child, defeating a schoolteacher at chess turns a key relationship on its head and is likely to engender lasting confidence.
Of course, there is the danger of both children and adults spending an inordinate amount of time on their idle passion.
The best, time-honored advice for them is simply: “Hey, man, relax or get a real hobby.”
Shelby Lyman is a Basic Chess Features columnist.
As a club player who loves chess, I can tell you that chess is a real hobby.