I am a good mathematican, but just a average chess player. And i once helped out a very good chess player with mathematics. For me the relation between mathematics and chess ist not so big. But maybe my visual imagination is simply not good enough to be better in chess. Its just my personal assessment.
Do you think chess and mathematics are related?

Many educators will tell you that for great, young players, math, music, language study and chess are complementary.
Play often... it's good for your brain!

Mathematics can be applied to every game ever played..Just roll the die,spin the wheel,deal the cards,put the lottery on....even how much it cost for my kinky batman suit.

Were you dazed?..Dazed knight...Theres more maths applied in a card game....Maths applied in chess.Reference points. (e4 etc),How many moves ahead you can remember,the clocks,should i move the pawn one square or two squares...If theres any correlation between brain cells that use maths and playing chess only a neurosurgeon can define this with a great big scanner.Is there a doctor in the house?

yep... long time alrighty.. have a half day.. sitting in the sun.. having a coffee... got a class.. at 1pm..

Zinsch wrote:
Yes, knights should always face forward.
Of course ,I feel the same way but yet you have people insisting on placing them facing the bishops when setting up the board!!!
Tut Tut, all Knights should face "leftward," as in all Chess books.
If Knights face forward, you're looking at the horse's arse. And who wants that?

Let's see. @TannedTail (nice picture) starts 10 threads in 4 days, but not a single chess game in almost 4 years?
What planet do you hail from, Dear?

+10, The nuttiest woman I ever dated had a Masters in Education from Harvard. Very scary thinker. Thankfully, she didn't play chess.
She also looked a lot like @TannedTail's avatar.

Come to think of it, I've never seen them in the same room, so they're probably actually the same, erm, person.
It's likely that the kind of person who likes math also likes chess, and vice versa, because of the logical nature of the two things. However, one thing I like about chess is that you don't have the tedious task of making predictable mathematical calculations (for example, a job in economics), but rather, you have to be able to have judgment of all the features of a position; visualize how pieces move, and how a position changes when you are looking a few moves ahead; these things can hardly be solved with numbers. If chess were like math, then you could put every feature of chess into a mathematical equation, solve it each move, and you have your best move. That's actually what chess engines do, but it only works for them because they can calculate millions of moves per second, so it's fair to say that with more primitive calculation skill, this method would be very ineffective. Theoretically it can be done, but practically, you are better off with more general, intuitive logic.