Chess and increasing mental performance

A typical chess set and tournament clock.

Chess presents interesting intellectual challenges. It is said that: "Chess has an advantage over most school subjects: it combines both theory and practice. Ideas are honed and tested in the crucible of competitive play. Poor formulation or poor execution of ideas loses games. Careless, faulty thinking is ruthlessly refuted on the chessboard."

According to Healthline.com: "Playing chess can improve cognitive skills like memory, planning, and problem-solving. It may also help reduce symptoms of certain brain conditions." "Cognitive stimulating activities seem to be protective factors against dementia", observed one study.

Some countries, particularly nations like Uzbekistan from the former Soviet Union, promote chess as a fundamental aspect of learning and mental development.

Chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer and increasing mental performance

See also: Bobby Fischer

Robert James Fischer (1943-2008), popularly known as Bobby Fischer, was the only American to become the official world chess champion when he defeated Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in a 1972 match in Iceland. Fischer's championship was the culmination of a record-setting 20 consecutive victories in qualifying tournaments, which included two 6-0 records in the "Candidates Tournaments" in 1971. He was by far the highest rated player in the first official FIDE ratings, as published in July 1971, and Fischer is the only person to win the U.S. championship with a perfect score (11 wins in 11 games, at age 20 in 1963-64).

Bobby Fischer and Bible reading

Earlier in life he mentioned that "I can remember times coming home from a chess club at four in the morning when I was half asleep and half dead and forcing myself to pray an hour and study (the Bible) an hour. You know, I was half out of my head-stoned almost."

Bobby Fischer playing chess against Boris Spassky in 1974.

Bobby Fischer and exercise to increase mental performance

See also: Exercise and Academic performance and nutrition

Bobby Fischer in Amsterdam, Jan. 1, 1972

Valley News reported concerning Bobby Fischer and exercise to increase mental performance:

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Bobby Fischer is revered for his mastery of chess. According to Garry Kasparov, he was a decade or so ahead of his time. But Fischer was body as well as mind. A teacher, at a summer camp the prodigy-to-be had attended as a child, told me that he had been the best underwater swimmer at a summer camp he attended. It is hard to think of a sport that Fischer did not try at one time or another. Tennis, baseball, weight-lifting, pingpong and walking (at a world-class level, as a trainer described it) come to mind, in addition to swimming. His physical efforts complemented his apparently natural high level of energy and stamina. At his best, a glow of health and physical strength seemed to encompass him — the aura probably intimidating many who would oppose him on the chessboard. Part of his legacy was a conscious and public embrace of the mind-body connection. Until Fischer, that awareness was honored more in the breach than in the actual world of chess at large. Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, sounded very much like Fischer of half a century ago when he told Men’s Health magazine: “Training your brain is just as important as training your body. … It’s just like a muscle — if you’re not using it, you can lose it.”

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According to the Columbus Dispatch:

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When he wandered the streets of New York in his teens and 20s, he walked much faster than most other people. A Yugoslavian sportsman of exceptional endurance and ability confessed to me that he found it difficult to keep up with Fischer. "Bobby's legs seemed to be stretching out to the horizon with each step," he said. Fischer might have possessed more than a little athletic ability. A New York teacher remembered him as "the best underwater swimmer" at a summer camp. At the chessboard, "the kid from Brooklyn" was mercilessly competitive, exhausting his opponents by relentless and prolonged efforts to win. But his competitiveness could also have a boyish quality, as when he taunted Boris Spassky while they swam in a hotel pool during a 1966 tournament that took place in Santa Monica, Calif. "I swim faster than you," Fischer told his Soviet foe. Or when, during the same event, a construction worker overheard him declaring: "I'm going to crush Nadjorf and Larsen! Petrosian doesn't stand a chance. Just wait until I get to play Spassky."

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Chess and the role of memory

See also: Chess mastery and memory improvement

In his article Memory and Chess, Bill Wall wrote:

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Studies of chess players have confirmed that the ability to memorize board positions was one of the best overall indicators of how good a chess player is. To the average person, playing a game of chess without sight of the board represents an extremely difficult, if not impossible challenge for the memory. No other human memory feat can surpass the achievements of the best simultaneous blindfold players. Blindfold chess players need knowledge and experience, imagination, and memory. Masters who were tested in blindfold games were generally able to remember all the moves played in a sequence of blindfold games. Masters differed on whether they used visual or abstract imagery to represent the chess board. The majority of masters said that they used only an abstract representation, combined with sub vocalizations of previous moves, to mentally examine the board. In 1881, an article called "Memory in Chess Playing," appeared in Scientific American. It stated that wonderful as are the feats of chess-players who can work out a game or a series of games without seeing the board, there is nothing really remarkable in them. When once mastered, the trick is not only fairly easy of performance, but the fact that the process is purely mental rather facilitates than impedes the action of the mind. To the "blindfold" chess player, there is present a mental picture of the board with the pieces in position. He can change the position of the men as easily as he can think, and after he has mastered the difficulty of fixing the mental picture, it is distinctly before him. As a rule, chess-players are mental-picture-readers, and can at pleasure call up any one of several pictures of boards as they last conceived them. The most difficult feat is to play two or three games simultaneously blindfold, the moves made by their opponents being told them in close sequence and their own moves being directed after all the reports of the proceedings of their opponents have been received. (source: Scientific American, Dec 10, 1881, Vol. 45, # 24, p. 378) In 1893 and 1894, Alfred Binet (1857-1911) conducted perhaps the first psychological studies into chess. He investigated the cognitive facilities of chess masters who could play blindfold chess. He hypothesized that chess depends upon the phenomenological qualities of visual memory. He found that only chess masters were able to play chess successfully without seeing the board and intermediate players found it impossible to play a game of blindfold chess. Binet found that experience, imagination, and memories of abstract and concrete varieties were required in master chess.

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Journal articles on chess and increasing mental performance

• The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill: A comprehensive meta-analysis, Intelligence, Volume 59, November–December 2016, Pages 72-83
• "So are chess players smarter? Several research teams have tried to find out by administering various cognitive tests. Reviewing these studies in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science in 2011, the psychologists Guillermo Campitelli and Fernand Gobet concluded that tournament chess players score higher on tests of intelligence than do comparable nonplayers." - Wall Street Journal, 2016
• A Study on the Correlation between Intelligence and Body Schema in Children Who Practice Chess at School, Children (Basel). 2022 Apr; 9(4): 477. Published online 2022 Mar 30. doi: 10.3390/children9040477
• Sex differences in chess performance: Analyzing participation rates, age, and practice in chess tournaments by Angel Blanch, Anton Aluja and Maria-Pau Cornadó, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 86, November 2015, Pages 117-121
• Mathematical Problem-Solving Abilities and Chess: An Experimental Study on Young Pupils by Giovanni Sala, Alessandra Gorini, and Gabriella Pravettoni, SAGE Open 5(3), DOI:10.1177/2158244015596050
• Auditory memory function in expert chess players, Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2015; 29: 275.

Books

• Chess and Individual Differences by Angel Blanch,‎ Cambridge University Press (December 17, 2020)

External links

• Does Chess Make You Smarter?, Wall Street Journal, 2016
• Does Chess Make You Smarter?
• Does chess make you smarter?, Studies that show that playing chess can improve your intelligence and memory.
• How Chess Can Actually Make You Smarter, Chess.com
• Can chess improve your intelligence?
• CHESS Make your IQ higher!, Chess forum
• 6 reasons to learn to play chess: How playing chess can boost your brain power
• Chess Is the Gymnasium of the Mind
• Benefits of Chess