What Does "Self Help" Mean?

Take our Self-Esteem Test

Find a therapist near me

Chess skill is linked to several cognitive abilities, but this does not prove chess makes us smarter.

Chess instruction may improve some academic skills, but studies have important methodological limits.

Playing chess can expose habits like rushed decisions, overconfidence, and stubbornness.

When I was a kid in Iran, much of my time was spent studying. Whatever free time I had, I spent it reading or playing games. Tag, hide-and-seek, Lego, soccer, card games—you name it, we played it.

Perhaps the least popular game we played was chess. Why? Because it involved no physical activity, could only be played by two people, and the general consensus was that it bored everybody else to death.

I think the boredom came from how difficult chess was to understand. Unlike soccer or tag, the point of what happens on a chessboard is not always obvious until several moves later.

After all, although learning the rules of chess is relatively easy, understanding the game enough to play well can be quite hard. You need to anticipate your opponent’s moves, consider possible responses, examine different lines of play and their consequences, evaluate the resulting positions, and then choose the best move.

But does being good at chess mean you're smart? And does playing chess make you smarter?

Does chess make you smarter?

There is good evidence that chess skill is associated with a number of cognitive abilities. A large meta-analysis found that chess skill was modestly related to abilities like fluid reasoning, short-term memory,........

© Psychology Today