i’m thinking of learning to play chess, are these good reasons?
Friday, July 9th, 2010 at
9:36 pm
i think the first and most important reason is i want to make better life decisions. the second reason is to apply it to martial arts. i also think i can get more confident. i talked to my therapist and she said it shouldn’t be about compensating something i’m insecure about. how do i know that studying chess will really be what i want rather than just compensating?
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Tagged with: better life • chess • life decisions • martial arts
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Well, developing any new skill will help your confidence. Chess is great for that, but so is basketball or knitting.
It also won’t do much *specifically* for making better life decisions, except so far as gaining confidence from any new skill will do that. (Exception: if you expect to be commanding an army in the future, then yes, chess will help you make better life decisions.) As for applying it to martial arts – well, sort of. Chess is more about strategy than the immediacy of martial arts, although the mental discipline can’t hurt.
However, I don’t want to sound like I’m dissuading you from playing chess, because I think chess is fantastic and you should certainly learn it, even though those are not the reasons I would give. For one thing, to successfully play chess you have to be thinking at least 3 or 4 moves into the future. You have to try to anticipate your opponent’s moves, and adapt when they surprise you. You have to hold in your mind the position of all your pieces and what each does, which is not easy at first. All of which exercises your mental skills and will help you when it comes to outthinking people – which we all have to try to do on a regular basis. Chess isn’t a cure-all, don’t get me wrong, but it’s definitely a skill worth honing.
You’re over analyzing this. If you want to learn to play chess, go for it. End of story.
~Dr. B.~
good grief, just go play chess.
I believe you think that learning how to play chess is a path full of wonders. And it is not. If you don´t like the game there are many ways to get what you want. Chess is just a game. You are not talking about the game, there seem to be life issues that you want to change. What you are looking for is not on the game it is on the player. There is also a book written by Kasparov, he explains a lot of things through the chess-player view, but has no solid foundation. In the end the hole idea is just a metaphor He is a exception, that worked for him. Don´t leave you life in the hands of a game and make you move in life. You haven´t talked about the real Essence of the game, you just want thing on your life to change. You have no good reasons to learn. Have you thought that it might be funny or it just has to be a way of improving life?