In YOUR opinion, what are some of the pros and cons of chess?
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PROS:
The fun of winning!
The portability of the game.
Inital expense is small.
Just when I get bored, I learn a new tactic or play a new game.
Playing against a person with good manners who becomes your friend, regardless of the result of the game.
Rich literature of the game.
Implementing a plan well in a game.
Availablity of speed games anytime over the Internet.
Meeting interesting people internationally.
CONS:
The agony of defeat.
Chess is getting expensive (books, computer software, tournament entry fees)
Too much memorization required in the openings and not enough time to study and comprehend them.
Rude people who also may have bad hygene or little social skills at tournaments.
Rude people online.
The importance of rating.
Losing a well played game due to a blunder.
Not enough time in life to spend at a tournament 2-4 days long.
pro: promotes critical thinking
con: if a scholastic player, you will be seen as a nerd. ( i speak out of experience)
Pros: Yourself, Kramnik, Anand
Cons: Fischer, Sherzer, Sloan.. the deceased Claude Bloodgood
Actually I think it promotes logical and clear thinking, but can become an obsessive addiction. If i spent as much time on my schoolwork as chess….
Pros: A good exercise for the mind, It’s portable and inexpensive. You don’t need a lot of equipment or space. Strategically and tactically very deep (while giving years of enjoyment you are still able to get better.)
Cons: It can be addictive. It is strategically and tactically very deep.
I know that I have the same thing as a Pro and a CON. It can be both depending on the person. Some people get frustrated because they are unable get a handle on the tactics and give up. Mostly due to inadequate instruction.
To the anonymous above: “…if a scholastic player, you will be seen as a nerd. ( i speak out of experience)”
Don’t worry. about the nerd label. You know what people who were called nerds in high-school are called 10 years later? Boss or Sir.
Pros:
It is a game that changes as you age, it is timeless. It may represent one thing when you are young and something different when you are older but always has the magic that it did when you first learned how to play.
It spans multiple age groups and is a great way to bond with your children.
It can be the one stable thing in your life when everything else is chaos.
Cons:
This is a grand game – there are no cons in my opinion ;).
Pros:
1)It improves the logical skills.
2)It is funny,if you win.
3)You can meet a lot of people of different countries and cultures.And it forces you to study other languages(english in my case)
4)Initially is cheap
5)Many chess clubs are really as social clubs.
6)You can play it being really old(Korchnoi is about 80)
Cons:
1)It is a very competitive and the victory is addictive.Sometimes,if my game has been very hard I am very stressed and go running for relax.
2)Some of the chess players are nerds
3)Some of the players do not want to share ideas and are not open to analise the game with you.
4)If you are an expert then to improve more is expensive(teachers, good books, databases, fritz)
Pros:
A game of pure intellect. No luck, no manual skill, no excuses, it is a perfect thinking competition between two people.
Cons:
Real cons: none
Perceived con:
Unless two people within the same circle of friends, family, etc., pretty much on the same level, one will always win, the other will always lose (I am not talking about competition/professional chess, but simply the game of chess). In the 1980s I wrote a game for the Apple computer, called Intellectual Decathlon (see on Wikipedia), which was pretty much admittedly an intellectual competition between two people on the same computer. A publisher accepted it and it was published. Sales were not that good and when I complained, somebody from the publisher explained:”Look, this is a game what any two people will not play more than a couple of times. The loser will not be willing to come back to learn yet again, that he is dumber than the other one”. And I realized that he was right. Chess has a similar problem.
Gaborawuea
i think chess is logic similar to checkers,which i have to admit is my favorite game, but more complex. it improves calculating skills, visualization, memory, and imagination. i think with any game your imagination is the most important becuse it allows you to think whats possible. it expands your mind to create.
the bad parts could be losing all the time if your bad. some people i think arnt logical its just the way they are. so they would struggle with chess or any game that adheres to strict locical rules. this could damage there confidence. if it takes all your time then that probaly might cause you to think eveything is chess. i suppose other interests would be good to balance things out as far what you do for fun. i think not everything is right or wrong as it is with chess so you need other perspectives.
wolverine
For older people, especially retirees, chess can help retain mental skills, especially logical and spatial; this almost paraphrases several other comments, but I think it is slightly different.
PROS: It’s addictive.
CONS: It’s addictive.
Having been working on a f*** Ph.D thesis for nearly ten years, and having spent more time, during those ten years, playing chess than researching and writing, I can fully appreciate the truth of H.G. Wells’ remarks:
“The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable – but teach him, inoculate him with chess.”
George Bernard Shaw also went right to the point : “Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.”
These wise men are right, without a doubt, and their wisdom tells me to give up chess. But what can I say? I love the damn game!
I will need to piggy back on what “embarrassed and addicted said” claimed in the last post. As a teacher I’m often quite interested in the thinking process that goes into combinations, the strategy, and the thrill of accomplishment.
The con is that my dissertation has done very little since I began this chess tyraid a few months ago.
Embarrassed and Addicted sums up chess very well.
Chess is like falling in love. It is unrequited love but it feels so good. It is an addiction.
I don’t think Chess is any less a waste of time than Music is a waste of time. Where would the field of Artificial Intelligence be without Chess?
Thanks for the H. G. Wells quote.
Although I disagree with Bernard Shaw, he does sum up Alekhine in his last days brooding over his many talents that went unheralded and the reality that he would only be remembered for Chess. You can see the same impulse that push Kasparov to quit Chess for the greater stage of life. Once you master the intricacies of Chess without being consummed by it, Life challenges are no longer unsurmountable.
Like anything in life — to be good at anything, one must spend time to study it and have the heat to appreciate it.
Pros – can be tremendous fun, evidently can stimulate cognitive development. Good way to meet people (but few women at present)
Cons – addictive, not really constructive, very demanding of time and energy for those who wish to excel or just to compete, does not provide rewards fully commensurate with effort except perhaps for world champions. Fosters some bitter rivalries. Has a built-in class structure, nice for those who are near the top, probably galling for those far from it.
Pros: Alyways something new.
Cons: You are proved patzer even if your name is kasparov… Recent dominance of computers over men demonstrates that even those games that we deem to be perfect are possibly flawed… In a sense, a world champion’s win over his rival is not much more significant than me winning a game against my sister. The one who is less of a patzer wins…
+ve: mental exercise, teaches vision, planning, ‘getting it together’, calculating tactics, learning guidelines (and that they have exceptions)
-ve: time required, distracting.
Double-edged historical metaphor: defend the King, the Queen being the most powerful, Bishops sitting next to the KQ, the power of the Castles and Knights. Where is the ‘agnostic peacegiver’ piece?!
I started playing chess when I was 9 and kept playing until I was 19. It’s been 10 years since I changed chess for my college studies.
I know chess very well as it has accompanied me during the most important part of my life. During this time, most of my friends were chessplayers older than me (and some younger).
My greatest feat was a regular game against swedish IM Sjodhal, a Volga Gambit (I was black) which I held until the time control. It was a clear draw but in the end, he managed to confuse me and I lost.
This reminds me of the best thing of chess: the ticklings in your stomach, the mistakes, the tension when a game is on the edge. That is the main reason to play chess. If you don’t feel it, just quit.
In favour of chess can be said, also, that it strenghtens, it builds, some interesting abilities: the ability to keep concentrated for long time periods, abstract thinking, spatial abilities…
In the list of bad things I would add only one: It is such a little world that sometimes it is insane. People in it (I was in it, I am still a part of it) are so weird…
that you need sometimes to get air of outside. It is too stuffy inside.
And, I don’t agree with all you saying that winning is addictive. I could say that many of my best experiences in chess came from bitter losses. Also from wins, but I don’t consider winning any better than losing.
The real fun comes from playing.
PRO – when you are playing chess you are not making a new kind of weapon or bomb.
pros:
a mental discipline improving focus, concentration, and emotional regulation.
–social aspects (even online!)
Cons:
–not intuitively accessible to a wide group of people (not like muscic!).
–to achieve mastery, it requires a tremendous amount of time (or brilliance if you are fortunate enough…)
–aside from the pros listed, the skills of chess don’t translate well to other aspects of life…
–very, very addictive to centain types of brains!
” If, sometimes, I write my memoirs – which is very possible – people will realize that chess has been a minor factor in my life. It gave me the opportunity to further an ambition and at the same time convince me of the futility of the ambition. Today, I continue to play chess because it occupies my mind and keeps me from brooding and remembering.” – Alekhine
PRO
Low cost
Con
Once I got addicted it was too expensive. LOL.
back to PRO
it is just a lot of fun. I certainly have learned how to lose better. Well if not better at least more often since I play more often. Loses are really kind of meaningless. I think I win more than I lose.
Here is the secret to winning.
Play against patzers.
The eternal Sacred all worshiped PATZER.
Where would all of us be if we did not have patzers to beat up. Even the patzer needs patzers. The constant inflow of newbies for the patzers to feed on.
LOL.
Don’t take chess too serious. Chess is such a great way to do nothing.
Actually if you keep your mind working it will hold off altziemers. The mind stays young even when the body grows old. Chess reminds us that we are not our body. Remember to keep laughing with me not at me. LOL.
The only thing I can say against chess is that personally I have come to like Go more overall. That said, it is still a great game!