- Big Brain Benefits of Playing REAL Chess
- Not
for nothing is chess known as "the game of kings." No doubt the rulers
of empires and kingdoms saw in the game fitting practice for the
strategizing and forecasting they themselves were required to do when
dealing with other monarchs and challengers. As we learn more about the
brain, some are beginning to push for chess to be reintroduced as a tool
in the public's education. With benefits like these, they have a strong
case.
1.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Chess has always had an image problem, being seen as a game for
brainiacs and people with already high IQs. So there has been a bit of a
chicken-and-egg situation: do smart people gravitate towards chess, or
does playing chess make them smart? At least one study has shown that
moving those knights and rooks around can in fact raise a person's
intelligence quotient. A study of 4,000 Venezuelan students produced
significant rises in the IQ scores of both boys and girls after 4 months
of chess instruction.
2.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Because the brain works like a muscle, it needs exercise like any
bicep or quad to be healthy and ward off injury. A recent study featured
in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people over 75 who
engage in brain-stretching activities like chess are less likely to
develop dementia than their non-board-game-playing peers. Just like an
un-exercised muscle loses strength, Dr. Robert Freidland, the study's
author, found that unused brain tissue leads to a loss of brain power.
So that's all the more reason to play chess before you turn 75.
3.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] In a German study, researchers showed chess experts and novices
simple geometric shapes and chess positions and measured the subjects'
reactions in identifying them. They expected to find the experts' left
brains being much more active, but they did not expect the right
hemisphere of the brain to do so as well. Their reaction times to the
simple shapes were the same, but the experts were using both sides of
their brains to more quickly respond to the chess position questions.
4.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Since the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for
creativity, it should come as no surprise that activating the right side
of your brain helps develop your creative side. Specifically, chess
greatly increases originality. One four-year study had students from
grades 7 to 9 play chess, use computers, or do other activities once a
week for 32 weeks to see which activity fostered the most growth in
creative thinking. The chess group scored higher in all measures of
creativity, with originality being their biggest area of gain.
5.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Chess players know — as an anecdote — that playing chess improves
your memory. Being a good player means remembering how your opponent has
operated in the past and recalling moves that have helped you win
before. But there's hard evidence also. In a two-year study in 1985,
young students who were given regular opportunities to play chess
improved their grades in all subjects, and their teachers noticed better
memory and better organizational skills in the kids. A similar study of
Pennsylvania sixth-graders found similar results. Students who had
never before played chess improved their memories and verbal skills
after playing.
6.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] A chess match is like one big puzzle that needs solving, and solving
on the fly, because your opponent is constantly changing the
parameters. Nearly 450 fifth-grade students were split into three groups
in a 1992 study in New Brunswick. Group A was the control group and
went through the traditional math curriculum. Group B supplemented the
math with chess instruction after first grade, and Group C began the
chess in first grade. On a standardized test, Group C's grades went up
to 81.2% from 62% and outpaced Group A by 21.46%.
7.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] In an oft-cited 1991 study, Dr. Stuart Margulies studied the reading
performance of 53 elementary school students who participated in a
chess program and evaluated them compared to non-chess-playing students
in the district and around the country. He found definitive results that
playing chess caused increased performance in reading. In a district
where the average students tested below the national average, kids from
the district who played the game tested above it.
8.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Chess masters might come off like scattered nutty professors, but
the truth is their antics during games are usually the result of intense
concentration that the game demands and improves in its players.
Looking away or thinking about something else for even a moment can
result in the loss of a match, as an opponent is not required to tell
you how he moved if you didn't pay attention. Numerous studies of
students in the U.S., Russia, China, and elsewhere have proven time and
again that young people's ability to focus is sharpened with chess.
9.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Dendrites are the tree-like branches that conduct signals from other
neural cells into the neurons they are attached to. Think of them like
antennas picking up signals from other brain cells. The more antennas
you have and the bigger they are, the more signals you'll pick up.
Learning a new skill like chess-playing causes dendrites to grow. But
that growth doesn't stop once you've learned the game; interaction with
people in challenging activities also fuels dendrite growth, and chess
is a perfect example.
10.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Having teenagers play chess might just save their lives. It goes
like this: one of the last parts of the brain to develop is the
prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for planning,
judgment, and self-control. So adolescents are scientifically immature
until this part develops. Strategy games like chess can promote
prefrontal cortex development and help them make better decisions in all
areas of life, perhaps keeping them from making a stupid, risky choice
of the kind associated with being a teenager.
11
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]it was discovered that in 90% of males that play computer chess , that
there IQ diminished , but that there EGOS became
enormously overdeveloped ,
that theyre genitalia withered and that these factors contributed to there
aggresiveness, abusiveness, selfish personality changes
