Improve Your Thinking with Chess
Considered the ‘king’ of board games, chess has been around for thousands of years. It attracts people round the globe of all ages like magnets, including famous chess experts like Napoleon, Einstein, Nikola Tesla and Charlie Chaplin. And the game is well known for improving creativity, analytical thinking and judgment skills.
Nuts and Bolts
To get started playing chess, you can either head online to popular chess sites, or play offline with an 8×8 chess board made up of alternating black and white squares, and chess pieces: 16 white and 16 black. Both sets contain these pieces: a King and Queen, two each of Rooks, Bishops and Knights, plus eight Pawns. One player is called ‘white,’ the other ‘black.’ White starts, and the goal is to trap your opponent’s King.
The first dozen moves or so are referred to as the ‘opening’ phase of the game. Then comes the ‘middle game’ and finally the ‘endgame’, with only few pieces left on the chess board. Note that at any point in time, though, a game may end due to an unexpected move or incorrect move on either player’s part.
Basic Strategy
These general principles can be applied to the game of chess and to life:
1. Development Like with any good venture, good development is needed. For example, just as in the entrepreneur arena where you generally cannot simply open up a business without having developed or purchases license to a product or service line (either yours or someone else’s) and expect instant success, similarly in chess you cannot just jump right in and expect to win without developing your opening moves first.
2. Control Also important in chess as well as the world outside of the game, people constantly battle to take control of their central playing field. And while one person may indeed be in charge one moment, another may come along and bump that person out of center stage. It’s all part of the game, of chess, of life.
3. Safety Keeping your main interests, like your king, safe is a goal. For example, a move called castling should be done as soon as possible in the game to increase the king’s safety. And likewise outside the playing field, people have specific steps they can take to help ensure safety like using a bank for deposits and transactions instead of stuffing money under a mattress and using cash for everything in business.
4. Plan As the game of chess and life develop, people need to mentally develop a basic plan or strategy to succeed, and then strive to follow it, overcoming obstacles. Try to outthink your opponent and competition, and set out to win.
So join the experts and improve your thinking with chess. Improve your creativity, analytical thinking and judgment skills and go for a win!
Recommend this video from Youtube, “Derren Brown beats 9 chess players simultaneously.”