WHY CHESS?

 "Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency."
 ---Raymond Chandler
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My dad, after years of kicking against my 'addiction' with chess, realised I was inseparable from the game, and accepted it in 'good faith'. But he always wondered how a simple board game could take up so much of my 'study time'. One day, after having been at it, again, for several hours, he asked me a question which is pretty hard for me to forget to this day: "What are the practical applications of chess?" As I began to mumble my reply, "... it helps develop one's problem solving skills, ...enhances our intuition and pattern recognition, ...it...", I suddenly realised I had never given this any thought at all. However, not to be undone by this unexpected question, I kept on explaining the best I could, and listing as many advantages of playing the game that I could muster at the time. But we both knew I hadn't answered the question.

I probably would have stopped playing chess after that incidence, had it not taken hold already. I analyse chess openings for fun, the way others would watch a movie. I read chess books the way most others would a novel. The volume of work an individual needs to do to become a master is staggering! There is probably more literature on chess than there is on most regular disciplines. Then to do well at tournaments, one would have to be physically fit, psychologically balanced, and have as few 'everyday life' distractions as possible. You have to eat right too. Today we have computer chess engines that can process billions of variations in a second; but chess still isn't solved. There is no "truth" in chess. There are numerous general rules of thumb, principles and guidelines but they all seem to have exceptions, some in a staggering 35% of the cases.

"The old rule of always capture with a pawn towards the center is widely followed, but a good 30% of the time, it is good to capture away from the center."
-Jeremy Silman
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Why spend so much time on an endeavour which is so complicated and tasking, but has little or no practical application in actual living? The same though can be said for most other sports like soccer, ping-pong, lawn tennis, golf, basketball, etc.

Chess does aid cognitive reasoning. Research has shown that playing chess actively, pushes back Alzheimer's disease for about 10 years. The positive benefit for school kids are numerous. Children who play chess competitively are able to focus and concentrate at tasks much more than those who do not (generally speaking, of course).



"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn:

1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action ...

2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: - the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; ...

3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily...."

---Benjamin Franklin

It is a fact that 'good' chess players have better memory and imagination. Playing chess certainly has it's merits!