What IS chess actually good for, anyway?

Yeah... we all know.

Chess is enjoyable, it is good to fill the hours, and it's a way of comparing wits and intellectual ability.  However... it doesn't, at first glance, appear to be a very useful pursuit.  I often tell people that Chess is probably the most useless activity that I regularly engage in, especially when considering how much time I have devoted to it over the span of my life!

What is Chess ACTUALLY good for in the non-chess "real world"?  Anything?

This is what I've noticed.

Chess requires compex visualization of a sequential nature.  Any field of study involving complex interactions over time (example: mechanical engineering) can benefit from honing these types of abilities.  Chess also involves (when played correctly) evaluation of material trades, often in a variable scenario depending on the order of the trades.  This seems a lot like certain elements of financial planning and other fields involving trades of volatile commodities.  Finally, Chess seems to have a VAST field of knowlege that must be absorbed and applied before a player really begins to excel at the game.  I cannot help but think that this aspect of Chess would tend to serve the practitioner in almost ANY real-world endeavor should he or she apply the same level of discipline, research, and memorization to it.

What do you all see as the "usefulness" of Chess?  Is it truly as worthless a pursuit as most people think of It, or are there certain elements of the game that can be applied to non-chess pursuits?

You can makes up all kinds of ways chess or anything else is supposedly good for something else. 

You can say gambling is good because it involves thinking about probabilities and about predicting and visualizing how things are going to go. 

You can say playing pool is good for mechanical engineering because you have to view up all the physics of the ball and consider what will happen and make a judgement based partly on theory and partly on human judgement. 

You can say spending all day playing videogames must be good because hey they train your visual abilities and your skills and you must have a vast sum of knowledge to succeed in some tasks.

You can say watching tv is good because you are actually studying people's interactions with each other and so understand society and people better.  

All of these arguments are hopeless, they don't show chess as being good for anything.   

What is anything at all good for?

Things simply are, people attach values to them based on their views.

Once I lost my spoon (if I only use one it makes doing the dishes easier).

Anyway, so there I was with a bowl of cereal getting soggy real quick and no spoon to use to eat it. That's when I realized chess could be used as a spoon in a pinch.

So that's one thing chess is good for.

....nothing.

Chess helps challenge your mind in a fun way. :)

Chess has shattered many young man's dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious
to spend playing chess these days
Chess can't give life--it can only take it away! ooooh!

"Chess has shattered many young man's dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious
to spend playing chess these days
Chess can't give life--it can only take it away! ooooh!"

So... it IS good for something after all!

Tournament chess allowed me to practice budgeting time and practice focusing for long periods.

It also encourages a critical eye to any seemingly good ideas I have, and after losing many games can teach humility.

Although it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. I strongly suspect I stuck with chess because I enjoyed these types of things in the first place... still, it's probably not bad practice for anyone.

Chess has been heavily used to study human psychology and skill development & mastery.

Why would anyone need an excuse to do something they enjoy?

Sometimes chess immitates life. Also it gives you confidense on your own power, specialy if you win, or if you see the reasons of your defeat.

+solskytz, I agree!

Chess is an end in itself.

Cool bro !!

Chess is my best defense against early onset Alzheimer's... but, I can't remember why I think that... where are my keys?

You're telling me that looking at pieces of wood and imagining the ways they can theoretically move is better for children (or anyone) and their development than learning about actual things in the actual world?   

It's amazingly rich to talk about other things as being fantasys when at least with those things there are human things to it. With chess there is literally nothing, nothing you can learn from almost as a rule, there isn't even the fantasy. Chess actually fills your head up in such a way that you CAN'T learn anything about the world while you're doing it.    

Chess, like many other activities, is a fun way to exercise your mind and develop key area's within it. Now like with many other things it can be overused so as to actually cause missed opportunities for the person to engage in other meaningful or necessary things too. Balance in life is always necessary.

Pay me  and I'll supply you with a comprehensive list of benefits.

Chess does helps in some good ways..  from passing time..  to escaping reality...  to building your mind through mental torture... 

Besides if we "chessplayers"  All have something against it...  wondering what non chess players would do then...