Chess is a mental sport that takes a lifetime to perfect. The benefits of playing chess involve practising it for your mind and body. This is not a game of chance, but a rational and strategic game whose roots go back hundreds of years.
Bobby Fischer, chess grandmaster and champion, allegedly stated: “Chess is life.” How can a two-player game benefit a person both mentally and physically?. Several studies have been carried out about the physical, cognitive and emotional benefits of chess.
- Develops both cerebral hemispheres.
Recent studies suggest that chess players use the left side of their brain, that manages object awareness. At the same time, they use the right hemisphere, which deals with the recognition of objects and patterns, thus becoming an ideal tool to train both hemispheres
2. Increases synaptic connections.
Chess stimulates the growth of dendrites, increasing the speed and improving the quality of neural communication throughout the brain. Dendrites conduct signals from the neuron cells to the neuron to which they are attached. Learning and playing a game such as chess stimulates its growth. If this were a machine, let’s say that more processing power improves the performance of the “computer.”
3. Prevents Alzheimer’s and other brain ailments.
A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine about the benefits of playing chess states that seniors who have played chess during their lives are much more prepared to fight mentally deteriorating diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Contrary to what happens with people who have not exercised their mind in any way, they are more likely to arrive at their seniority less prepared.
4. Improves cognitive skills
School programs that understand the benefits of playing chess include it as part of their curricular activities to increase the competence of the students in reading comprehension or math.
As chess is a science game, players face several hypotheses during the game, which they have to prove or discard, therefore enhancing the strategic planning skills and decision-making of an individual.
5. Improves your concentration
A chess player must be focused on the chess board. It could be considered one of the key benefits of playing chess since it is a discipline that requires great concentration, ignoring everything that is happening around them at that time.
6. Improves memory
It should not come as a surprise that chess players have a great memory capacity. The game involves memorizing numerous combinations of moves and possible outcomes.
Also, regular and experienced chess players show higher performance related to a particular type of memory: auditory memory.
Additionally, chess players have an above-average ability to quickly recall and recognize visual patterns, which researchers understand comes from memorizing complex chess positions.
7. Serves as therapy and rehabilitation
Chess is good support for patients recovering from a physically debilitating accident and as a form of therapy for people with developmental problems. Moving chess pieces helps with fine motor skills reconstruction. The activity itself improves the cognitive and communication skills of a patient. Also stimulating deep concentration and calm, fighting stress and varying degrees of anxiety.
8. Develops IQ.
Arguably one of the key benefits of playing chess. However, several studies have proven that a person’s IQ can rise after some time playing chess. Besides, it improves reading, math and language skills.
People who take advantage of the benefits of playing chess also have highly developed thinking skills in two other areas besides memory:
Fluid intelligence: Ability to consider new types of problems and use reasoning to solve them.
Processing speed: It is the ability to understand tasks quickly and respond efficiently to challenges.
9. Improves Creativity.
A study suggests that critical development and creative thinking could be developed through chess. In time, players improve all areas of creativity, demonstrating significant growth in what regards originality.
10 – Teaches planning and forecasting
Planning and “foreseeing” what will come, can be improved while playing chess. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that manages planning and anticipating events, can be developed in regular players together with self-control and judgment.
Total awareness that every move on the board is a decision that, for better or for worse, has no reverse gear, as in life itself.
