By

Renzo Verwer

Chess has been the subject to a torrent of publications. Chess is supposed to be popular among young people. Chess helps students do better at school. In particular, the Dutch psychologist Karel van Delft is an enthusiastic proponent of these ideas. Chess, he says, is capable of bestowing not a single benefit but several different ones. It brings people closer together. It promotes concentration, self confidence, and creativity. It is a kind of mental gymnastics and teaches players how to cope with difficult situations. By providing immediate and clearly visible feedback to one’s moves, it can even bring young offenders back to the straight and the narrow.

Speaking for myself, I love the game. More so, perhaps, than some grandmasters do; that is why I went to watch the recent Dutch championship tournament. However, the kind of worship mentioned in the previous paragraph always makes me a little uncomfortable. Is chess really what tea used to be in seventeenth-century Holland (and what cannabis supposedly is today), a cure for any- and everything? Some people, including the Dutch international master Hans Ree, are not so sure. The idea that chess can strengthen the will and develop logical thought, he says, is pure nonsense. To the contrary: authoritarian countries consciously and deliberately use the game in order to prevent people from thinking; this is done by canalizing them into an isolated culture that, separated as it is from ordinary life, has no further consequences for the latter. Chess as the opium of the people, perhaps? He also mentions the cruel joy he experienced as he saw his opponent squirming. Not the best or healthiest of emotions, he says.

This is something I know from my own experience. “What an idiot. He did not dare pursue his advantageous position but tried to husband his miserable pawns instead, with the result that he lost. What I felt was pure contempt. And if that causes you to despise me, that is your good right.

I asked Karel van de Weide, one-time Dutch grand master, to give me his considered view of the game. Here is what he told me:

Advantages? Chess is mental gymnastics. It helps you with your arithmetic and also to postpone the onset of dementia. Whoever is good as chess is someone. That is something I sometimes miss, for by now I am a nobody and will probably never recover my former status. As one of my colleagues, upon being dropped from the FIDE list, exclaimed: ‘I simply ceased to exist!’ (he may have been joking). Others argue that chess plays a useful role by providing some people who cannot easily fit into society with something they are good at. Agreed. And a certain kind of recognition too, of course.

And what are the disadvantages of chess? Chess may promote autism. It keeps you away from women [MvC: men play chess much better than women do, which is why, in tournaments, the sexes are separated] and is sufficiently demanding to keep you away from other, perhaps more useful, forms of training. It may make those who take it up as a career more accident prone, decreases their chances of making good, economically, and can even help turn them into social outcasts. As has been said about former Dutch champion Maarten Solleveld, had it not been for this obsession with chess he could have got his position as a professor of mathematics at Leiden much earlier than he did.
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Another prominent Dutch player and author, Tim Krabbé, told me about the less sympathetic aspects of chess, as experienced and observed by him. Especially in the kind of coffee house where the game is played:

Chess bears a strong resemblance to addiction, the kind you get by taking drugs—though I myself have never been addicted to them. Doing something you cannot resist even though you know that you should stop is very, very bad for your life. None of the prefaces to the books that teach the young how wonderful the game is and how to play it have a word to say about this danger. No, chess is always great, good for the brain and I do not know what else. Truth is, chess can be very dangerous and people should be made aware of that fact.

The psychologist Paul Kirchner criticizes the kind of research that “proves” that chess is good for all kinds of things. Nor is chess the only activity that has been advertised in this way. “Similar claims” he says, “have been made on behalf of other fields of study. Such as learning Latin, geometry, and, today, writing code; it all seems so simple and logical. Truth is, you can learn all kinds of procedures. But a procedure that will enable you to master all procedures does not exist.”

In other words: by learning how to play chess, the most important thing you learn is… how to play chess.

* Renzo Verwer (Woerden, the Netherlands, 1972) is an author and a dealer in second hand books. He has published books about love, work, and the chess master Bobby Fischer. His most recent one (in Dutch) is titled Freedom of Thought for Beginners. His website is www.artikelzeven.nu. His books: http://www.amazon.com/Renzo-Verwer/e/B00ITG41ES/chess.