The benefits of the game of chess

Many years ago I had written the following article, now I decided to publish it in an almost unchanged form. Mr. Carol Kedi advocated the game of chess, I guess based on his own experience, however many serious psychological studies on the subject exist. My response is based on my own experience without prior application of knowledge of psychological studies.

As far as I am chess player for very long period of my life, I started to search for chess related pages here in Fanbox. I found a little, but among them I found one that made a pleasure to my chess player soul. It comes from Carol Kedi and it holds title How chess benefits children. I really recommend you to read it.

http://posts.fanbox.com/nx433Link is here.
http://blogs.fanbox.com/SinglePost.aspx?pbid=1296896&post=1465824&bts=50

(unfortunately the project fanbox exist no more)

I really believe that chess game brings all those benefits mentioned in the Kedi's article. The list of benefits comprises of : fun, concentration and motivation, imagination and creativity, logic and reasoning, strategic thinking, decision making, determination, patience, discipline, taking responsibility for your own actions, respect, memory, mathematical concepts, visualization, spatial awareness, notation.

All items are beautifully explained there.

Because I have never read so in detail advocated benefits of playing chess, I should made this post as a point where a link to the article is preserved forever.
However as a chess player I have some additions to the text of Kedi's article:
To enjoy all mentioned benefits of chess, you have to play chess on regular basis. You (your child) should train to promote your/its skills (analyse own games, read books, solve diagrams, consult games with trainer or a more experienced chess player ).

The game of chess is beautiful, but same thing will do the game of checkers, backgammon or GO. Even playing card games like bridge could provide you with benefits. Of course, if you train. The games I have mentioned are really sophisticated and rich with literature and combination motives. The more primitive games can brought fun, but are accompanied with less benefits.

Please don't expect significant improvement in mathematics if you play chess. The world of mathematics is completely different from that of chess. Although the interlinks exist. The world of chess is restricted to 64 squares and 7 types of figures. The world of mathematics is unlimited. 

The problems in chess are solved within several hours. Mathematical problems can be solved within several minutes, several hours, several days, several months and some problems are solved by teams for decades and some are unsolved till now. All depends on a case.

So mathematics generally doesn't support real time decision making. Instead of limited world of chess you have world of countless objects with bundle of relations between them. In chess you do decisions in more realistic time screen like to that in real life.

Please be aware. Chess game is a dealing with mental tension. If you want to win, you should be almost all time focused. At least at the beginning when your child starts playing tournaments it will be in permanent stress. There is no simple way how to release tension during a game like in physical sports. If you are relaxed, you risk losing focus and lose game and being frustrated. It took me several years of praxis until I was able to maintain internal stress effectively. 

Please devote appropriate attention to relaxation techniques. If you have possibility share your free time  between mental activity like playing chess and physical activity releasing internal tension like jogging, volleyball, football etc. Permanent tension without possibility of release leads to unbalanced personality.