As for me, one of effect of chess on me was that I developed more skills in logic. ^_^
Aside from that, it helped me become better in decision making and planning.
It also taught me a lot of new virtues in life like being more responsible and facing the consequences of my actions and not backing down easily, to fight while there is still time. ^_^
I only learned chess four years ago and honestly, I'm no good at logic.
But by the grace of God, I did not only learned it. He made me a varsity player in our university now. By His grace alone.
And I was able to gain new friends and meet a lot of people.
^_^
I also have to mention, I met the man of my life through this sport. ^_^
God bless us all!
I was looking through our member's profiles. I saw many young players (it's always nice to see young players) who have lots of time outs. This baffles me. I'm not a great player, but I don't know that playing a crazy number of games that more than many end up timing out is great way to improve chess playing skill. Personally, I even find it annoying. I rarely will accept a challenge from anyone who has a high timed out percentage. Ok, back to the question. This is my story: When I was a child I had an uncle that taught me how to play. We played daily, multiple times, forever (it seemed). I could not beat him... I could not beat anyone for that matter. Until one day, I was able to beat most of my childhood friends. Then I was able to beat my uncle. Then I noticed that there was a degree of intelligence from one person to another, and although I could beat my friends and uncle number one, I could not beat uncle number two, or my teacher, or my mom's jerk boyfriend, and a number of others. But soon the day came that I could beat uncle one and two. Time went on and I could eventually beat my teacher, and my father figure. To this day, I could never beat my Mom's jerk boyfriend (for many years now, exboyfriend). Life is just not fare sometimes. I don't know how I became better, but I did, and I could soon beat better and better, smarter and smarter people (Most of the time, I can cleary see difference in intelligence between players. The better ones are usually better educated, better employed, and wiser. I know there are some very big exceptions to my rule. I was in the military; better employed does not mean smarter by any scope of the imagination.) My biggest regret was that I stopped playing chess about the time I started noticing girls (I couldn't even do my homework!!). However, before I quit playing I was happy to beat my girlfriend's father (who I hated because he was the biggest "a" hole I ever met, but he was also a very smart, wise fellow). Anyway, did I get wiser, or dare I say smarter than my adult opponets? Is there a direct relationship between intelligence and one's ability to play good chess? Do we get better at chess or does chess make us wiser? What do you think?