Accepted Chess Program

Why Play Chess and Potential Benefits: Chess is the most played game in the world with 16 billion different board positions after 10 moves.

1. Improves concentration and memory. 

When playing chess ,you must be focused on your goal of checkmating the opponent’s king. While dedicating all your energy to concentrating on the board with a variety of pieces to choose from, chess significantly improves children’s visual memory, attention span, and spatial-reasoning ability. As concentration grows, it becomes easier to memorize other games played in the past, as well as future moves of pieces.

2. Enhances reading and math skills. 

Students learn various reading skills that transfer over during decoding, thinking, comprehension, and analysis. In one game, a student can develop skills like author’s purpose, cause & effect, and storytelling. When considering the deductive reasoning behind pieces having a numerical value and the game being a giant game of subtraction and sometimes addition, chess stimulates the brain centers that feature math skills.

3. Helps create logic, critical thinking skills, and creativity. 

Based on students learning cause and effect, students may think, “If I move here, then the person playing against me, can move there, there, or even over there to defend or take a piece.” That thought showcases logic which can be defined as, “a system or set of principles underlying the arrangements of elements so as to perform a specified task” or in layman’s terms, a series of moves that look to perform a goal such as checkmating the opponent’s king. The thought also showcases critical thinking, which can be defined as, the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment, by focusing not on the initial move, but the move that will counter. Meanwhile move alternatives train minds to play with possibilities while also providing a substantial physical example of the combination of these skills.

4. Encourages students to work hard while featuring an immediate reward.

Whether students are on the winning or losing end, they had to work hard to move each piece with deductive reasoning. If they do not accomplish their goal, they learned something about the game and themselves in the process. Chess offers immediate feedback. Lose your focus and most times it will cost you a piece. Practice and learn new strategies, and watch the wins pile up.