Do Chess players actually practice the life lessons of chess?

You know the old adage about how chess teaches important life skills.  Among them are 1) playing with a master plan 2) anticipating your opponent's moves and weighing all possible responses.

Do chess players actually employ these simple concepts in life, however?  

When you think "crafty Machiavellian Master Manipulator" -- the image of an overweight, socially inept, introvert nerd usually does not spring to mind.

Thoughts?

I know chess helped me with my SAT scores, and probably sports too, quick thinking?

How do you KNOW this?

How can you be certain?

Well I can't prove it. But I mean I hardly spend anytime on math, yet I did well. Because it's logic and time control. Like chess. I doubt I got good naturally.

I doubt that chess made you good naturally.

You know, just aging makes you smarter and better at tests.  By the time you are twenty-five you will be like a standardised test colossus.

In any case, taking tests isn't about life.  The issue here is whether chess players are putting their chess principles to use in planning and decision making in life.

The fact that most serious chess players are total losers makes me think that they are not.

I actually don't have any associates that play chess.  I myself haven't picked up a chess piece in over two years.

I basically hang out with strippers and losers, yeah, though.

Marie Sebag is pretty hot, yeah, brah.  But does she practice the life lessons of chess?

She didn't fare very well on that reality show she was on.  I think Gary Coleman and Vanilla Ice teamed up with "The Situation" to get her thrown out of the house.  If she could plan ahead and anticipate things better she would have made it to the next round at least.

Realpolitik, brah.

Yeah, brah, I practice IRL. When someone is walking my way, I think about how to put myself in a better position to capture them and not let them defeat me. To do this I use my critical thinking skills to calculate how many steps until they meet me, and exactly how I can adjust my trajectory to take them in an optimal position and win the game.

Chess has great potential to destroy your social life.  Unless you happen not to have one, a not uncommon condition of players on this site.

On balance, Chess is probably equally associated with "intelligence" and being a "loser."

How's that for straddling the proverbial fence ?

Resolving this conundrum might require Evolution, the Big Bang aftershock, and a solution for Chess itself, in both a mathematical and practical sense.  Work on these topics continues (daily) in our chess forums.

So Don't Hold Your Breath.  Please.

        I like this - an appropriate response to a person who persists in starting rather silly threads and talking nonsense.

Marie Sebag is hot, brah.

You appear narrow minded.  Marie Sebag is not American and speaks no English.

You just don't understand her cultural values.

That's not very nice, brah.  I do believe this site has a No naming and shaming policy.

Thank you in advance, brah.

        I didn't name or shame anybody. Furthermore, for me to "shame" somebody, that person would have to be capable of feeling shame.

There is nothing silly about asking whether chess players apply the precepts of chess to their personal decision making.

You fogot to mention the outstanding fashion taste one witnesses whenever attending most chess tournaments.

If you want to scare away your girlfriend.  Take her to a small local chess tournament, and your days may well be numbered.  Unless of course she's a chess player too.

On the other hand, watch any decent TED Talk on Chess, and the sky is the limit, when it come to positive collateral benefits from chess.

So Take Your Pick.

Personally, I believe there are more Life-Lessons to be gained from Round-Ball in the inner city, or playing dodge ball in elementary school.  If only because of the trash talking.

Just like the prose found in these forums ?

Many parallells can indeed be made with game strategy and how the real world spins around.

Usually, in strategy games, he who has the most options to choose from often is victorious. (in contrast to pins, checks and other forced moves).

As we can shape our strategy games, we get a hint of what it takes to shape our world, as a Prince.

And the other way around! Study Machiavelli, and become better at chess, Im sure!

Sentences with three dots are especially silly.  Unless written by the @Ghostess.

*** "Sentences with three dots are especially silly" ***

I am particularly fond of the ellipsis (or three dots if you don't (and apparently  so) know) and am known to employ them liberally... Myself, I find illiterates particularly amusing...  B-}

There is always a good life lesson to be had at any given moment branching out from the tree of life... Chess has its reputation and justly so...  Perhaps one day the analytics of computerized chess will erase its reputation, but until then the ebb and flow of OTB strategy, tactics and ploys will have their place on the list of a good source in lessons of the thought process...