Musings on Chaturanga-6        Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan The stereotype of the chess player is someone who is smart, logical and good at maths. This is why so many parents around the world are keen to get their children playing chess – in the hope that the game might help to boost their son or daughter’s intelligence levels and help them succeed in a wide variety of subjects

Musings on Chaturanga-6

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

 

 

 

 

The stereotype of the chess player is someone who is smart, logical and good at maths. This is why so many parents around the world are keen to get their children playing chess – in the hope that the game might help to boost their son or daughter’s intelligence levels and help them succeed in a wide variety of subjects.

 

But apart from chess being a great game, its history rooted in eastern India military,

is there actually any evidence to show that playing chess can make you smarter?Studies have shown that chess players exhibit, on average, superior cognitive ability compared to non-chess players. And the skills needed to play chess have also been shown to correlate with several measures of intelligence – such as fluid reasoning, memory, and processing speed.

 

But while the existence of a relationship between general cognitive ability and chess-skill is clear, is this simply because intelligent people are more likely to engage in the game of chess, or does engaging in chess make people smarter?

 

 

 

 

 

Forget the research papers. They are too technical and beyond my  ken. I am going by my friends Chappai  Ramakrishnanan and Thirukural Thomas. Both had IQ of less than Zero. If you can see, what I am suggesting. They struggled in every subject. For them Mathematics and science were from outer space. Even if you added the marks they obtained in 5/6 subjects, they did not pass even in one subject.

 

Imagine this. They both were very good in Chess. They represented our Gopalapuram Boys’ High School, and since they studied in every class, at least 3 years, before the school kicked them upstairs in sheer frustration, they were sub junior, junior and senior chess champions in the chess circuit. Unfortunately, they were not introduced to Tal Chess club or any trainer and therefore they ended up as – Chappai the Carpenter and Thomas the Tailor.

 

 

 

 

 

The notion that playing chess makes you smarter goes something like this: chess requires concentration and intelligence, and as mathematics and literacy require the same general skills, then practising chess must also improve one’s academic achievement.

With this idea in mind, the Institute of Education. conducted a large investigation to test the effects of chess instruction on the academic skills of nearly 4,000 British children.

 

The results were disappointing – it seemed chess played no effect on children’s attainment levels in mathematics, literacy, or science. Promptly, the chess community questioned the reliability of the results, particularly given that there were other studies which revealed  a more optimistic picture about the academic benefits of chess instruction.

 

 

 

 

Sorry, the study must be correct. Otherwise Chappai and Thomas must have crossed at least SSLC. Our head master RLN- R Lakshminarayanan  said, “ Dey Kadangara, How can you play chess so well but not able to write/repeat even the question paper correctly. I think it all lies in your likes, interest and passion. You dislike studies. Psychologically you refuse. How I wish we threw  you out of this school and put you in some Chess Gurukulam. I apologise”- this he said when we met in the playground during Old Boys’ sports meet- a decade later.

 

I have met brilliant chess players who were totally nincompoops at GK. Simple quiz questions were passed over by them. Where does their cognitive sense and skill come from? Honestly, I don’t think Chappai and Thirukural Thomas provided only anecdotal evidence. That is why IQ matters little in chess, or so I idiotically believe  and brilliant minds could be beaten by those low down on the ladder. Do you agree?

 

 

 

 

Read this evocative Anand quote- “The time after I won the title of Grandmaster brought with it my first experience of the aftermath of obsessively chasing a goal. I was suddenly left without a purpose. I felt empty and bored, almost listless. All this while, I had been solely fixated on a singular pursuit. But once I got to my destination I kept looking back rather than at fresh peaks. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Tournaments and scores didn’t excite me any more, and my results took a beating. For six months I was caught on a conveyor belt of despair. It was through my interactions with other Grandmasters on my travels for overseas tournaments that I realized this was a normal phase and one that almost all players experienced. Sometimes, a goal can be such a big deal, such an all-consuming theme in our lives, that we just don’t know what to look forward to any more after we’ve achieved it. Gradually, I managed to pull myself back together, just in time for the next phase of my life as a chess player to begin.”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For ordinary you and me with no goals or lie bars, we refrain from putting in efforts as we assume and are convinced that we are incapable. And we engage and indulge in multiple sports and wasteful activities which take us no where except to where we may be. Excuse me, Jack of all trades does not mean you become master of none. We can become master of one like say Roger Federer. David Epstein in The Range demolishes the Ten Thousand Hours specialisation in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. You can have a hand, arm, leg, head, heart and mind in many disciplines and yet  become a champion in one like Federer. Tiger Woods is not the rule – that he was a golfer since two years old. Yes, just a toddler.

 

This is what Chess does to you. On a cold day in December 1943 two chess players were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin playing each other and were deeply immersed in the calculations of various chess variations in their game.The Allied Forces were bombing the city heavily and suddenly there was a terrible big noise outside, right in front of the coffeehouse. Something must have been hit and blasted away.

 

Bloody noisy outside today!”, murmured one of them deeply in thought. “Shut up, damned!”

After about ten minutes the other one said: “It’s very cold in here! Why, for Christ’s sake, can’t they turn up the damned heating?”

After the game was finished they went in direction door. The room seemed to be somehow bigger as usual.

 

 

 

 

“Hey, there is something wrong here, don’t you think? I can’t find the door.” It was already late at night and dark, they went further and suddenly they were standing on the road. They had a look around and were amazed to see, that the forefront of the coffeehouse was completely missing and that a lot of houses were completely destroyed.

 

Let’s seek more at least till  Aug,8,2022 when the 44th Olympiad winds up. Shall we?

 

( Author of Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiyar,Kalaimagal Publications, to be published on 15th Aug,2022-and practising advocate in the Madras High Court).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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