Is Chess A Waste of Time? A Call To Action

[PREFACE: You might assume from the way I frame the question that I believe the answer to be "yes."  This is far from the case.  If I believed the answer to be yes, then the question would be boring to me, and I would simply treat chess as any other temptation that is to be avoided, such as eating fattening foods.  I submit this post because I don't know the answer.]

Just now I was taking a walk, watching the sun set, when it hit me.  Countless chess-related questions of low and high importance are discussed on chess.com, but I don't believe I have ever seen a discussion of what could be the most important chess-related question of all: Is Chess A Waste of Time?

A microscope set to zoom in very closely on a particular cell allows us to clarify our vision and deepen our understanding of that cell in great detail.  But it also leaves us blind to what may be happening outside of that cell, or how that cell fits into a larger group of cells.  Whenever I go on chess.com, for better or for worse, I find myself setting my microscope to zoom in on the particular cell of Chess, and I suspect that many others are the same way.

If we have zoomed in on the cell of Chess, then of course, the questions that we spend time discussing should relate to the End Goals that we value most in Chess.  For most people, the paramount End Goal of Chess is probably Winning At Chess or possibly Improving At Chess.  And so it makes perfect sense to turn our focus to questions that will help us with respect to those End Goals.  Nobody thinks that it is strange to discuss questions about how to master the openings, how to control the center, how to use gambits to strengthen position, etc.

But just because we are on chess.com, why does it follow that we should always zoom in on the cell of Chess?  After all, as human beings, most of us probably feel that Chess is not actually the most important thing in the entire universe!  Imagine what would happen if we zoomed out a bit, so that the microscopic window showed the larger picture that is Your Life, in which Chess was just one particular component cell.  Would Chess be a large cell or a small cell?  Would its relationship to the entire organism of Your Life be symbiotic, parasitic, or perhaps neither?  If we take a moment to set our zoom level at Your Life, then suddenly the question "Is Chess A Waste of Time?" becomes just as natural of a question as "How Do I Avoid Isolating My Pawns?" was back when we were zoomed in on Chess.

Critics might say that it is inappropriate to zoom out to Your Life on a website whose focus is Chess.  However, I would counter by arguing that even at the Your Life zoom level, we can still learn a great deal about the Chess cell, and what it is doing in relation to its surroundings.

To be clear, I am one person submitting one post, so there is no way that I can do anything more than begin to scratch the surface here.  But hopefully it will lead to important discussions and ideas that empower us to improve Our Lives.

For the record, I have no doubt that if we are fortunate enough see a meaningful continuation of this thread, then the crude yes/no question "Is Chess A Waste Of Time?" will fade away, replaced by more nuanced questions with more fruitful answers.  But you have to start somewhere, so let's address this question as if Your Life depends on it.  Because it does!

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IS CHESS A WASTE OF TIME???

(1) If you make money from playing chess, then this is a fairly strong argument against the assertion that chess is a waste of time in Your Life.  The question then turns to the importance of money, and chess joins the category of all professions from Wall Street to Hollywood which may or may not be sufficiently meaningful to the worker.  But for at least the rest of this post, we will assume that you do NOT make money from playing chess.

(2) If you enjoy playing chess, as most of us probably do, some might argue that this already defeats the assertion that chess is a waste of time.  After all, there is real value in enjoying Your Life.  However, I would counter this argument with the concern that playing chess may be enjoyable in itself, while at the same time, jeopardizing enjoyment in other cells of Your Life.  Does spending too much time on chess strain your marriage?  Does it negatively impact your sleep, diet, exercise, or other aspects of your physical health?  Does it take away time from other activities that you might have enjoyed more, such as going out, calling a friend, or participating in other leisure activities?  Does it prevent you from taking time to advance your career in ways that would be satisfying to you?  And there are of course many more similar questions that are important to consider.  Hopefully, the answer to these questions for most of us is "no," but I'm guessing that if we are thoughtful and honest with ourselves, there are at least some questions whose answer is "a little" or "sometimes" or even "yes."

(3) Some might argue that chess is not a waste of time because it connects us to others.  Perhaps we make friends with a new person, or perhaps playing a game of vote chess helps us connect to a larger community.  The greatest weakness for me in this argument is that I believe that the social connections achievable over the internet cannot compare in depth or satisfaction to social connections that are face-to-face.  Of course, if you do make social connections through chess face-to-face, then my concern does not apply to you.  But for me, and I would guess for many others on chess.com, my chess involvement is almost entirely on the internet.

(4) We can argue that chess is not a waste of time because it makes us smarter, which many would agree is a valuable consequence.  Personally, I am still undecided about whether chess is making me smarter in general, or just smarter at chess.  Probably it is making me a little smarter in general and a lot smarter in chess.  Maybe holding lots of information in my head at once will make me more resilient to the risk of declining short term memory in old age.  Maybe writing out different lines and their variations improves my aptitude at logical thinking, as well as my aptitude at communicating my logical thinking effectively to others.  Maybe chess clues me into insights about My Life that I would not have otherwise seen.  For example, it was actually on my sunset walk just now that I realized that my ongoing struggle to expand my chess game to include strategy (and not just tactics) can apply to many important cells of My Life!  Many times within my job, I do an outstanding job tactically, taking frequent short term actions that generally should lead to positive long term results, but I neglect to think enough about how else I could be lining up my strategy to actually aim for those results.  My entire job in itself is a tactic in the cluster of cells that is My Career, but am I certain that I'm using this job in a way that effectively points towards strategic career goals?  Even going on chess.com is often a tactic in my goal of being in a good mood.  But perhaps if I thought strategically about my good mood goal, it might lead me to decide to play for only a short while, or to go on certain parts of the chess.com website and not others, or to just quit now before I blink and lose two hours!  Another example of a chess-derived lesson comes from the classic knight fork.  Things turn out well when I can take an action that is guaranteed to lead to good outcomes whether the environment may respond in one way (e.g. the queen moves out of reach) or another (e.g. the rook moves out of reach).  It's what happens, for example, when we choose a college major that naturally puts us in a position to apply for jobs in several different career areas.  All in all, chess's ability to make us smarter may be its strongest argument against the assertion that it is a waste of time.  Nevertheless, I do still remain undecided about the relevance of these improvements to our intelligence, and how much they generalize beyond the Chess game to other aspects of My Life.

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I don't know if chess is a waste of time, but it's time I started thinking more about how Chess fits into My Life.  Maybe if we all thought more about the potential of Chess to make things better or worse for us, we could be wiser about the way we use Chess and make it more of a positive force in Our Lives.  So here's the "Call To Action" I promised in the title:

Comment!  Or submit your own post!  Share your voice and help contribute to our community's discourse on this important but neglected question.

Thank you so much for reading, and best wishes to all.

Yes, it is a waste of time, but so is everything else. You must choose how to waste your time carefully.

No.

The question of whether or not chess is a waste of time is a question we each must answer for ourselves. One persons waste of time is another persons precious moments. Personally I find chess to be an important part of my life. It allows me to destress from even the worst of days. When everything else in my life is going wrong I can set down with my board and concentrate solely on my game and not think of anything else. It is invaluable to me. Beside this there is also the fact that it increases my ability to concentrate and helps me practice patience. So for me the answer to the questions is no, chess is not a waste of time.

That would be an appropriate criticism if this thread was off topic.

Hah! Great answer!

It was a really long book post -- not that I should poke fun being long winded myself but to be honest I just scanned it.  Basically you give 4 possible ways chess may be seen as important.  Money, happiness, sociability, self improvement in that order.  As long as we're going philosophical on this, I'd have to ask how important money is.  Happiness is a better argument.  Sociability is questionable, and self improvement (specifically intelligence) I don't think carries much weight.  As long as you use it sparingly chess may help concentration or reason to some small extent, but beyond that chess training only ever increases your ability to play chess.

No offense, but you might as well ask me to intensely examine what music means in my life, why I listen to it and what it does for me, how can I use it etc.  I listen to music because I like to, I play chess because I like to.  Chess doesn't do anything itself... other than me playing it.  

It's a common and harmless activity to play, so I don't feel the need to critically examine it -- I focus in on other "cells" in chess because chess itself is a broad topic.  If you have a specific question about my philosophy of chess I wouldn't mind answering, but a sort of scatter shot of what is it, why is it, and what does it mean is really too much :)

Most things in life are a complete waste of time. Thinking too much comes to mind. It's something I do far too often. I believe people miss most of life if they spend most of it pondering...pondering...and well...pondering.

How much time should one spend pondering the next move in a 3 day per move cc game? Something to think about. Arg!

Is music a waste of time? Is poetry a waste of time? Beauty can be created in the form of chess games. The perfection of a skill has existential merit and appeal. When you don't feel like examining the "chess cell," there are many other cells on the internet and in the world in general that may be more rewarding that day.

fnewman

This is possible the longest OP that I have ever seen. But you do ask a very philosophical question that appears to be very important to you. You also provide a lot of point-counterpoints to a lot of reasons why people value spending time in an activity: gaining money, finding a successful career, improving intelligence, finding new friendships, and finding enjoyment/happiness in general. I would suggest a few others: finding deeper meaning/fulfillment in life, proving something to others/impressing them or proving something to yourself/achieving a personal goal.

What is your goal in posting this question: finding an answer to the question yourself, helping other people find the answer to the question for themselves, or to create an apologetics for chess?

The reason why I ask is because the answer to this question will be different for each person (although similiar people may have very similar/near identical answers). Defining a waste of time presupposes a prior question: how to you define "valuable use of time"?

In order for someone to discover what is a waste of time, they have to first have a knowledge of how they define a productive/good/valuable use of time. Of course, this answer will be unique to each person. As you pointed out, there are many goods that people must first sort through and prioritize.

Every serious answer to the question you pose will heavily depend on one's socio-economic situation, religious beliefs, what era you come from, education-level, worldview, culture, politics, and values.

Moreover, even if someone does answer the question, you have to keep in mind that people are constantly changing. Therefore, what is a relevant answer today may be invalid tomorrow!

In summary, this is a very high-level, philisophical question that is very difficult for a lot of people to truly grasp, and answering this question will involve a lot of personal scrutiny and honesty that is probably inappropriate to share here on chess.com, i.e. discussing race, religion, politics, etc. People ultimately have to answer the question, "What is the meaning of life?" Only then, could you proffer an answer that takes this view of the meaning of life seriously and can show how one particular aspect of that life (in this case it is one's participation in chess) helps one achieve one's ultimate goal in life, which would be the definition of value.

Yes, for me chess is a waste of time 

However, wasting time is a very important part of my life!

ModernCalvin asked: "What is your goal in posting this question: finding an answer to the question yourself, helping other people find the answer to the question for themselves, or to create an apologetics for chess?"

I guess I'd like to find an answer for myself, as well as help anyone else like me who may be struggling with the question.

I recognize that the answer will be different for different people, and that no single comment on this post will magically solve the riddle.  But I'm hoping that hearing other people's perspectives will give me ideas for answering the question myself.

Also, I imagine that skilled chess players are among the smartest people in the world, and I am curious how highly intelligent people make sense of spending so much time on an activity that may or may not be worthwhile.

Thank you to everyone for your comments, even the ones making fun of me!

Someone who is good/great/amazing at chess means little to nothing about how smart that person is.  Also if someone is smart, it has nothing to do with how well they can play chess.  This is probably the biggest misconception about chess players among the non-chess playing public.  The 2nd biggest I'd say is people think strong players win over weaker players because they can calculate more/see further ahead.  This is not true, you can ask a GM.  In fact to be honest I think I calculate less now than I did 100 points ago :p

Anyway back on topic... chess does not = smart at all.  If you don't believe me ask any titled player here.  I said as much in my earlier post which I hope you didn't skip because you thought it was making fun of you... even though it starts out with a joke the rest was serious :)

I think you wasted quite a bit of time, typing that thread.

Chess uses up time like any other hobby does, for us non-pros. It really can suck up the hours though, moreso than any other that comes to mind at the moment.

Mainly we get pleasure out of it. If that's a waste then chess is a waste I guess. The way it makes us better is old work. and has been left in the dust long ago. Now we're (most of us) just trying to get that last little bit of frosting on that we can.

I'm sure we could be productive and be earning/saving money instead of chess, gardening or doing charitable work. Etcetera. it's just a game, just a damnably fascinating game.

I really don't think that intelligence is related to chess, I have a Masters and I'm in my 3rd year of a PhD in kinaesthetis and constructivism, so I'm not stupid, but if you lok at my chess rating- I am realy dumb! The game I believe to be more about pattern recognition, and maybe I missed that when I was in pre school, as well as the sand pit. I remember being in the cutting and pasting corner, but not doing anything to do with pattern recognition, nor being in the sand pit. Am I derived?(or is that depraved)?

I also know that look is spelt look and not lok, I just can't type- also missed out in the typing stakes as well- can I sue for a wanton education ?

I think I agree with goldendog that chess has the potential to suck up a lot more time than other hobbies.  It's also easy to get in over your head by signing up for tournaments when your game load is low and then suddenly you are playing 85 games at once.

One of my chess-friends on Chess.com expresses quite succinctly (if misspelt) how many of us feel: