Benefits of Chess

How did chess helped you to improve in your personal life. I have seen a movie called WAZIR(Vizir of Chess), in which a shattered police man gets inspired by his chess tutor & wins the battle against the odds.

I want to know about the real life incidents of people who were benefited by this game.

I know few of the benefits like mindfulness & improved mathematics - Beat your negative self with chess- train your brain!

I am interested in real life incidents more.

Chess is the best game to beat boredom. Each game after 8 moves is a new experience. Better and cheaper than travelling.

Better than traveling?  What horrible places have you visited to make you say such a thing??

No benefits - Only pain and heartache...

Studies have shown chess or similar mentally challenging things can help prevent senility and diseases like Alzheimers:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117588

I come from two very-lrge extended families that are well-read, and the elderly members do challenging games, New York Times crosswords, crocheting, etc. and none of the approx. 40 grandparents, aunts, uncles, and first-cousins who reached 80 to 97 have had any senility. The one who is 97 has some bad days, but most of the time you can carry-on an intelligent conversation with her.

Chess, for those of us who enjoy the mental concentration, is likely one of the best ways to stay mentally sharp - young or old - but I do know bright people who say, "I can't see sitting there for 10 minutes trying to figure out the next move."  They wouldn't believe daily chess!

Chess's biggest help to me has been in the form of helping me understand depression and anxiety. Loses in chess to me can be crushing at times, especially online chess when people can mock you and run away. At first it used to eat me up and turn me into the very troll I hated. However, the game is far too addictive for me to just give up. It made me decide to buckle down and try my best to conquer the inner demon's. I still have a ways to go but it has made me think far more critically of myself as a human than I had been before I started playing. It taught me to accept mistakes and to not let my emotions control my actions

@humanintraining I visited Singapore, Hongkong, Thailand and Vietnam. The experience is very similar and almost boring. Must be the companion. I rejected all travel invitation from my friends eversince. I will travel only with a female companion soon I hope.

I was going to type something but after reading MechHand above? Yeah, what he/she said. 

I'll add that at age 53, you start thinking of the "A" word and ways to avoid it. You start thinking of it more when family members start to get concerned about your memory loss (just little stuff, nothing to see a doctor over). Like MH above, I would play and get pissed--actually gave up the game because I saw no benefit. Now? I play the slower games, I play much more mellow with no attachment to results and the game is more enjoyable, win or lose. The slow games, the 24+ hour games, are like chess puzzles daily. And it's had a quick and wonderful result for me: no more family comments about memory and you better believe I noticed. 

lol bong. If you thought Thailand and Singapore are similar, you didn't do them right! Ditch those bad travel buddies

Give the rest of the world a chance -- those four countries are all found on a very small portion of the globe, in the same climate zone/latitude.  Surely you wouldn't think the experience is "very similar and almost boring" if you visited, say, North America, or southern Africa, or practically any other part of the globe, even with the same companions.

(sorry to have strayed off topic, folks)

I've been to many countries in Asia, for example from Singapure over Malaysia, up to Thailand, Cambodia and through Vietnam before visiting China. Treating your experience in those four named countries as similar and almost boring, I hardly believe you've been there at all. Maybe you've been just on the road without possibility to see anything but even then it's quite different, especially comparing Singapure and Vietnam, a country with bad infrastructure and milestones away from the perfect development as found in Singapure and Hongkong but also Thailand.

I will leave without excess baggage next time. No freedom with boring companions. .I admire people travelling alone.

JamesColeman wrote:

lol bong. If you thought Thailand and Singapore are similar, you didn't do them right! Ditch those bad travel buddies

Benefits of chess?

Apart from what people above me wrote, and apart from the obvious joy that the game and its study bring - there's this:

1) Wherever you go in the world you will find friends and people with the same interest as yours. Chess bridges over barriers of language, culture and connections; 

2) If you want to learn a new language, there's nothing like a good chess book in that language. If you're at least a B-player and you've already read a number of books, you can pretty much guess what the book says (if you have elementary knowledge in the target language) - and use the book to learn more words, verbs, prepositions, grammar, usage and more and more and more. 

Of course you can even try to read the book together with another chess player from the target country - you got it made. 

I used that strategy in learning to speak French in six months when I was 35, and in learning to speak Spanish in four months when I was 43. 

This is a true story. I'm not given to empty or shallow boasting (except as a joke - but this is no joke here).

The public schools of Franklin County, Mississippi are using chess to teach everything from math to geography.  See the 60 Minutes episode of March 26, 2017. 

Need to visit Vietnam.  Been to HK & Thai & born/raised/living in Sg.  I guess there are similarities & differences depending on what you're sensitive to & looking for.  To me they are so different but that's just a bunny's perspective.

Last Night 60 Minutes reported that the Cook County Jail is giving chess lessons to inmates.  The theory is that many people end up behind bars because they can't think past their first move.  

That's awesome.  For the original OP, I'd also suggest watching the 2016 Disney movie, The Queen of Katwe, as another real-life example of chess being a benefit to society.

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