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People, particularly chess players themselves, utter the stupidest things about chess and about chess players. Here are a number of of our favorite misconceptions about the royal game. A few of these sayings are definitely untrue, some of them are uneducated impressions, and some of them are controversies that might or might not be true. 1) Chess is hard to learn. Chess may not be the easiest game to pick up, but it is far from the most difficult. You have to have to learn the moves of the six pieces, where the piece with the least value, the Pawn, has the most complex moves. Then you have to learn the rules about attacking and defending the King, including castling. Then there are a few about games where not one nor the other player wins. One aspect of this myth is true – it is hard, very hard, to learn to play chess well. One player in a hundred achieves supremacy. 2) You have to be a genius to play chess. There is some connection between chess talent and general intelligence. Minimum smarts are required. Cats and dogs will never learn the basics; no one has attempted giving lessons to blackfishes and chimps. Chess does involve, after all, using numerous sophisticated sections of the mind as efficiently as possible. People from all walks of life enjoy playing chess, several achieving mastery. Some very smart people enjoy playing but never go beyond beginner. 3) Chess is for nerds. In fact, this isn't a myth, because chess is for everyone. It is for nerds, geeks, eggheads, and boffins, as much as it is for anyone else. People who want to call other people unpleasant names should better say, 'chess is only for nerds', but this is decidedly false. Even if it were true, so what? Intelligent, clumsy, offbeat people have established more contributions to the development of society than have the rest. If they want to play chess, that's their business 4) Computers play chess better than people. In 2006, the finest computing machines played chess better than 99.99% of people, but are evenly matched in games against the best humans. If, as some experts think, computers are attaining 20 - 30 rating points per year, the moment will shortly arrive when humans have no prospects of winning against the best machines. It should not be omitted that computers are always checked by squads of human specialists who program them in psychological areas like opening repertoire. Getting rid of this help would eliminate their excellence. 5) Chess is a sport. Here we run the risk of upsetting the many outstanding chess organizers who have spent years trying to convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that chess should be admitted as an Olympic sport. Hoisting light pieces of lumber or clicking quickly on a computer screen is not physically demanding activity. As any quantity of photos from foregone high level chess events will demonstrate, chess players don't always portray a lean, shipshape, muscular profile. 6) Chess isn't a sport. Here we attempt to make reparation with those very same organizers who almost convinced the IOC that chess is a sport. Chess has been admitted as a medal sport for the 2006 Asian Games. A game between two top chess masters is full of tension, where good nerves can make the difference between a winner and an also-ran. Grandmasters have been known to lose a lot of weight during the action of a month-long contest. 7) Women can’t play chess as well as men. To date it is true that women have not performed as well as men in chess events. There are many possible reasons for this. One may be that male players are habitually adept at making female players feel uncomfortable at chess events. The Polgar sisters have gone a long way to persuade the chess world that women can play wonderfully. Perhaps one day we will discover that women can even play better than men. No one truly knows.
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James Bryant is a researcher and writer working for www.sports-megastore.com, for the best sports equipment at the best prices. Visit us for all your sports equipment needs.
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