Chess Helps Your Brain

Chess is a sport of the mind. To win any game, a player must not only analyze, calculate, and compare situations but also do this better than their opponent. To do this, a player must develop a long attention span. The sport improves a player's judgment. And finally, it helps in other activities such as playing instruments and doing math.

Chess encourages people to think for long periods of time with small breaks.

For an intermediate player, a single round could last about two or sometimes even three hours. And the longer you take to play the game, the shorter your break between rounds will be. It sounds scary at first, but the skill is built fast and will be handy to have in your back pocket for the rest of your life.

Chess also helps people learn how to correctly understand any position that gets thrown at them. Asking questions such as “who is up material?” and “who’s position is better?” will help improve both your game and your brain. Because there are a number of different criteria that determines the winning side in a position, a player needs to correctly consider and weigh all the different components to even know who is winning.

And finally, chess helps in other activities such as playing instruments and doing math. Isn’t that great! You can play chess and at the same time improve everything else you love doing, or will try doing later on. This happens because the skills that are built in chess like concentration, working under time pressure, and thinking fast are used subconsciously all the time in our daily lives. Chess is a win win!

Chess is a great sport for the mind because it improves how long players can concentrate, teaches how to make a good critical analysis, and helps build skills that are necessary for a multitude of other activities and hobbies. If you do not consider yourself a chess player yet, then I encourage you to spend 2 minutes to become one. See you at the next tournament!