My Time With Chess
I have always supported the idea of making chess part of school curricula everywhere. Although I don’t play anymore and was never all that great at the game to begin with, it’s not hard for me to imagine all the good that can come out of it. Go to any chess website promoting this idea and you’ll get all the arguments you’ll ever need. Chess is a great way to develop a mind. It’s not the only way, but, according to retired chess champion Garry Kasparov, it’s hard to beat.
Here is Kasparov (a hero of mine for almost two decades) on a Brazilian talk show talking about a whole host of chess-related topics. He gets to the chess-as-education issue at around the 9 minute mark and begins extolling the benefits of chess at 9:54.
Among his list of chess benefits is that the game promotes discipline, self-esteem, confidence. It also increases one’s ability to deal with problems and succeed, and not just on the chess board. Kasparov ties chess into computer education as well. He is most convincing, however, when he cites a study in which two similar math classes were given additional lessons, one in chess, the other in mathematics. At the end of the year the chess class outperformed the math class in mathematics.
I believe the study to which Kasparov refers is this one from 2008 by Markus Scholz and others. Read here and here for more information on scientific studies that demonstrate the benefits of chess in education.
While I agree with Kasparov and would never dare contradict him on chess matters, I do believe he omitted one very important benefit of playing chess. And since I have never seen it mentioned anywhere else, I will mention it here.
Bobby Fischer: Endgame
A couple months ago, I pretty much swallowed Endgame, the latest Bobby Fischer biography by Frank Brady. Brady’s first biography of Fischer, called Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy, was written in 1965 and later revised in 1973 at the height of Bobby’s power as a chess player. It was a fairly positive portrayal of the chess champion and a pretty good read besides. When it was first published Fischer was the only possible American answer to Soviet chess dominance. Before him, the Soviets easily outdistanced the Americans, embarrassing them in match after match. But Bobby emphatically changed that. By the mid-1960s, there was much excitement surrounding the mercurial American genius who threatened to singlehandedly topple the mighty Soviet chess machine. This was better than any story, and back then the ending hadn’t even happened yet. So of course much of Fischer’s ugliness and cruelty was either omitted or minimized by Brady. Who would want to malign the hero of such a great story?
The subtitle to Brady’s second biography, “Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness” (published in 2011 – almost 3 years after Fischer’s death) promises to deliver the tragic ending to the story as it actually happened. Since the publication of Profile of a Prodigy, Bobby Fischer quit chess, went into seclusion, grew into a virulent anti-Semite, and more or less went mad.
Despite delivering on Fischer’s madness and the ugliness, however, Brady still seems to pull his punches. He still seems to withhold a certain amount of charity for the man who praised the 9-11 attacks and called for the destruction of America and Israel. And you know what? I do too.