Chess will increase their IQ, power of imagination and concentration. It will also rescue them from sadistic games that can turn innocent, impressionable minds into trigger-maniac, insensitive brutes. A study shows how four months of chess instructions has, significantly, raised the IQ scores of both boys and girls of 4000 Venezuelan students. Indeed, studies have revealed that the game of chess helps both young and old to have a sound cerebral health. According to a study, people of over 75 years of age who engage in brain-games like chess are less likely to develop dementia than their non-board-game-playing contemporaries. A German study says that when chess players are asked to identify chess positions and geometric shapes, both the left and right hemispheres of the brain become highly active.
Chess gives us the taste of infinity. The 64 square game unfolds never ending possibilities. When we play chess, we find ourselves composed. It is a game that magnets all our being to a particular point of finding which of the moves will be a better one. Indeed, chess players say, “This is a good move” or “This is a better move”. But they never say, “This is the best move” because that cannot be said in this game of infinite possibilities which is still unfolding. This was the reason why Siegbert Tarrasch said, “Many have become Chess Masters, no one has become the Master of Chess”. We can play this game rain or shine, day or night with a friend near or far, or with a chess programme; staying put at home or outdoor or even while travelling. The players can, also, be as heterogeneous as it gets. A game of chess can be played between two persons or two machines or one person versus a machine or one person versus many persons or machines in as many different games at one go. There is also infinite possibilities of the space and time of the game. Now, you can try to unravel the beauty of a Fischer’s game that was played at Reykjavik in 1972 and you even can try to play the game in a different way after a few say 10 moves. David Bronstein said, “Chess is imagination”. Indeed, chess is not just a game. It is meditation.
