How Does Chess Improve Your Brain? 5 Key Benefits

Chess is a globally popular game with millions of players every single day. The birth of online chess and free-to-play options like 247Chess means even more people can get involved with this thrilling strategic game. As well as being extremely fun and a great way to pass the time, chess is linked with a host of long-term brain health benefits. In fact, it’s a game everyone is encouraged to take up if they want to maintain optimal mental capacity and build on their existing skills.

How exactly does chess improve your brain? We boil it down to five key benefits:

1. Boosts Cognitive Skills

What are cognitive skills? Coursera explains things brilliantly by stating that cognitive skills are your brain’s functions to think, pay attention, process information, and remember things. In other words, it’s the way in which you take things in and make sense of the world around you while coming to conclusions. Someone with good cognitive skills will easily be able to read a book and take in the information they consume or solve simple mathematical equations without needing a calculator.

We need cognitive skills to function in the big wide world, but our brains naturally decline as we get older. Research suggests that cognitive decline can happen as early as your midlife, though most people experience a drop when they get to 70 or older. However, you can delay this decline and stay cognitively active for much longer if you develop your cognitive skills throughout your life - and that’s where chess comes in.

The strategic nature of this game forces players to think on their feet and process lots of information at once. You must view the board, assess the right moves to make, and try to predict what your opponent will do. It’s the ultimate form of brain training, which is why a study found that chess enhances mathematics and overall cognitive ability in both primary and middle school students. In the simplest of terms, the game forces you to think and focus on the board, improving your ability to process information and make decisions.

ScienceDirect also discovered that people high in cognitive ability are more likely to play chess than those with lower cognitive ability. This is because the game demands a lot from your cognitive skills, which stands to reason that the more you play it, the more cognitively developed you’ll become. It’s especially powerful in younger chess players, though older players will also see great cognitive benefits and can slow down age-related cognitive decline by playing chess regularly.

2. Enhances Problem-Solving Abilities

Chess, by nature, is all about problem-solving. The whole concept of the game revolves around figuring out how to out-maneuver your opponent and checkmate their King. You’ll run into countless problems during a match, starting at the very beginning with your opening move. If you go second, you have to counter your opponent and try to figure out what their game plan is - all the while staying two steps ahead of them.

The more you look at it, the more you realize chess is one big problem-solving puzzle, so it’s not surprising to learn that playing it will improve your problem-solving abilities. There have been countless studies and research papers that back this statement up, such as a series of academic studies that concluded chess promotes academic performance in children, specifically in the problem-solving area.

Another paper from 2017 showed that chess enables people to improve their mathematical problem-solving abilities. Most of the studies are done on children or teenagers, but it still proves the point: playing chess will enhance your ability to solve problems, which you can translate to all other aspects of your life.

Start playing chess once a day for a few weeks, and you’ll notice a difference yourself. You spot problems or patterns in the game and quickly grow accustomed to how to deal with them. Then, when presented with real-life problems, you can think on your feet and assess the situation from all angles, working out the best way to proceed. In turn, this also means that chess improves your decision-making because you can solve problems and figure out the right solutions without feeling stuck.

3. Improves Memory and Focus

You can’t play chess unless you’re focused. It’s a game that demands constant attention, as one slip-up can mean you lose. There are also loads of nuances involved in a game of chess, meaning you need to remember different things like the general rules of castling, how to move a Knight correctly, and which strategies are the best for certain situations.

The more you play, the more you start remembering these things and learning how to focus on the game. Evidence backs this up - one research study analyzed people’s brainwaves and found that there were increased theta waves when entering a “flow state.” This is a term given to someone who’s totally focused on a task and thinks of nothing else; it’s like they’re wrapped up in their own bubble. Amazingly, the same study also discovered that theta waves increased when playing chess. In other words, chess helps you enter the “flow state” by forcing you to focus and avoid outside distractions.

More evidence from a 2016 study solidifies this claim. The study took 100 school-age children with ADHD and discovered a 41% decrease in inattentiveness and over-activity after playing chess. There’s a clear and indisputable link between chess and focus - the more you play, the more focused you become.

At the same time, chess is amazing for memory retention. This is already part of your cognitive abilities, though a 2019 research paper found that the mental stimulation of chess can reduce your chances of memory loss and dementia when you get older. The game of chess makes you remember things, and you improve at it when you remember strategies or certain moves. It’s like we mentioned earlier: chess is the best brain training tool you can find. It hits all the right parts of your brain, including those that help you retain information and remember things.

4. Encourages Strategic Thinking

Chess does a fantastic job of making you think strategically. Believe it or not, strategic thinking is part of daily life and is crucial for work, school, and other areas. It's your ability to look at multiple factors and figure out the best approach to achieve your goals or objectives. For instance, a business owner will use strategic thinking to try and drive more sales during a month. In chess, you use strategic thinking to work out the best way to win the game in as few moves as possible. You also call upon this ability when you’re stuck in a corner under duress - perhaps your opponent has hit check a few times, and you need to find a way to flip the tables. Strategic thinking comes naturally when you play chess because it’s what the game is all about.

There is no chess without strategy - and frequent players learn to adopt new strategies and ways of doing things based on what the board shows them. It’s one of those things you develop and improve without realizing it. When you play your first game of chess, you’ll make lots of mistakes and might lose the game. The next time, you remember some errors and make smarter decisions. Fast forward a hundred games, and you’ve developed a winning strategy with ideas on how to alter your moves depending on what your opponent does.

Like everything we’ve mentioned in this post, you can look towards scientific evidence to prove this claim. One 2006 study by behavioral scientists took two groups and gave them a common cognitive functioning test devised around planning and strategic thinking. The first group played chess regularly, while the other didn’t play chess at all. The results were striking - the chess group showed far better planning skills and spent more time making decisions to work out the right conclusions.

It’s as good a proof as any that playing chess enhances your ability to be strategic and plan your next move. Better yet, the study shows that your skills from chess are transferable to other aspects of life. Being able to think strategically gives you a leg up when planning things for work or doing something simple like planning a holiday and figuring out how to get the best deals.

5. Lifelong Mental Benefits

The fifth way that chess improves your brain is by giving you a long list of lifelong mental benefits! All of the things mentioned above come together to create the healthiest brain conditions possible. You’re training your brain in complex ways to continuously improve problem-solving, retain information, assess situations, focus on tasks, and much more.

As you can imagine, all of these things will lead to a healthier brain for a longer period. We’ve already looked at a few studies that prove you can reduce cognitive decline and stave off dementia by playing chess regularly. However, there’s more to this story when you look at the long-term mental benefits of chess.

Most of what we’ve been talking about looks at the left side of your brain. This is the part of your brain that deals with logical thinking and reasoning, which is where improvements in cognitive ability come in. Chess also targets the right side of your brain, which has more to do with creativity and seeing the bigger picture. With that in mind, researchers once looked at how chess impacts creativity, and a study found that students who played chess were more creative than those who didn’t. We put this down to chess’s ability to make you think outside the box and be creative with your strategies. You need to outthink your opponent - and there’s a degree of bluffing involved as well. The most creative chess players come up with strats that lure opponents into a false sense of security before turning the tables and striking back!

Playing chess also helps you control and regulate your emotions. You can’t rage and get in the face of your opponents - it’s a game that rewards you for being calm and managing frustrations. This is incredibly beneficial for your mental health, and there’s evidence to suggest that chess helps to reduce stress, as well. Studies have found that playing chess reduces the stress response in your body and can help calm you down if you’re feeling on edge.

When you take all of this into account, you see just how beneficial chess is for your brain and mental state. The best thing about all of this is that you don’t see random bursts of improvement that fade away. If you play chess consistently, then you’ll see a lifetime of benefits for all aspects of your brain and mental health. We can’t think of many games that even come close to doing this!

Chess: The Ultimate Tool for Life Improvement

In conclusion, chess is the ultimate tool for life improvement. What better way to pass the time than a game that directly improves your brain?! Unlike other games, chess is easy for anyone to get involved in. It’s free to play at 247Chess.com, and you’ll find all kinds of themed chess games to try whenever you like. Again, unlike some online games, you don’t need anyone else to play along. You can play chess against a computer opponent that gets progressively harder as you turn up the difficulty settings. This makes it a beautiful way to occupy your free time when you want to do a bit of brain training.

But most of all, chess is fun! It’s a game that rewards you for thinking outside the box and being patient. You see a steady state of progression, which makes it very engaging and easy to keep playing. The younger you are when you start playing chess, the longer you have to see all of these fantastic brain benefits.

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