Should every child be made to play chess? | Hacker News Reader

Should every child be made to play chess?

bbc.co.uk

32 pointssoitgoes37 comments

Chess has great historical significance in the West, but Go is a better choice for universal education in abstract strategy. Most important reason: the handicapping system is rational. Chess handicapping has a way of leading to hurt feelings in young children: "see? I beat you without my knights! you suck!"

Also, the rules are simpler, the play is more complex, and (most subjectively) it teaches better lessons outside the context of the game. I would rather people's native mode of competition be "oops looks like this mostly belongs to me now" rather than "I am going to relentlessly pursue you until you're completely murdered"

Regarding those two lessons, I'm not so sure. Rephrased, you might say that chess's lesson is that small advantages snowball and give you leverage to make bigger advantages. That is certainly a key insight that needs to be in your intuition for everything ever.

While I believe this to be true, I also believe it to be in the (very large) category of overlapping lessons between chess and Go.

As a 1 dan in igo aka baduk aka wei-qi, I can attest it is an excellent skill to make asian friends and just friends in general. Chess offers you access to the western world...which is a declining commodity. Also, go is a more computationally interesting problem at the moment. The strongest computer is far weaker than even top amateur players....let alone professional players who are even far stronger.

As only a 5 kyu, I like Go, but I think it's extremely silly to claim that a game is more interesting for humans because computers are worse at it. Computer chess has made the game more fun for humans, not less; it's as if you have the world champion sitting next to you helping you review every game, point out your mistakes, and evaluate alternative choices. Computer analysis frequently unveils interesting possibilities in games that humans don't find.

I agree that the notion that chess is "less complex" than go for humans because it is more amenable to algorithmic play under current computing limitations is silly. Both games are, for all practical purposes, infinitely complex when played by people. Logic, creativity, intuition, structural thinking, they all have to come into play.

I don't think he was claiming that Go is more fun for humans because computers are worse than humans at it. The statement was: "computationally interesting problem". I think he was thinking in terms of the challenge it posed to computing science, not whether or not humans found it enjoyable to play. But he also does seem to enjoy Go for its social benefits.

4kyu player myself. I enjoy how Go allows for extremely complex play with far simpler rules.

That's true, I made a bit of a straw man up there, but in my defense it's one I have encountered in non-straw form over and over.

I learned this lesson from Go rather than chess, but I'm not sure why (having been exposed to chess for far longer).

Compulsory chess education may work in Armenia, where chess has achieved almost 'national pastime' status, but it would fail terribly in the UK or US. Westerners are incredibly strong-willed, and you'd probably incite more interest in chess by banning it than by forcing everyone to learn it.

People in the west relish controversy, whether it's violent video games being pulled from shelves, or dungeons and dragons being linked to satanism. These incidents only serve to increase the popularity of the banned game. As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity (except in your own obituary).

Yep, there's no better way to make children hate something than to make it compulsory.

There are so many great pleasures in life (reading novels, exercising) that I never got to enjoy until I left high school and stopped being forced to do 'em. Let's not add another to the list.

A similar question would be, "Should every child be entered into a mathematics contest?" Mathematics contests, like chess games, have a win-and-lose aspect to show who has really learned the skills, a progression of skill development through practice, and a mixture of knowing technical tools through deliberate practice and creative insight developed by broad experience with competitions. A good discussion of the pros-and-cons of widespread schoolchild participation in mathematics contests (which has been going on in some countries

http://www.komal.hu/lap/archivum.e.shtml

for a century) can be found on the website of the Australian Mathematics Trust.

http://www.amt.canberra.edu.au/mc20011.html

One thing chess taught me -- for better or for worse, I'm not sure -- is that for certain kinds of intelligence there is a very cleanly delineated hierarchy among people. There were chess players that were better than me at the game and they would usually win. There were chess players who were worse than me and I would regularly beat them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

Please read the section about her early life.

Edit: In case it's not clear:

Judit Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. He and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject.

This doesn't refute the original point. It may even reinforce it! Her father and mother imparted some excellent genes, raised their daughters, and taught them in a way no school can. Judit Polgár and her sister were possibly born geniuses. However, it may show that female geniuses (made or born) can be as good as male geniuses (made or born), if given the chance (which I believe).

I guess it depends on what the original point was--I took narrator's point to be that certain people have bigger chess smarts than others, where smarts is something that you're blessed with at birth. I may have read too much into that.

And yes, I agree that a sample size of three + massive survivor bias makes for tricky interpretation :) But I think the Polgar story is fascinating; Laszlo had a theory about how to develop genius, and he (rather creepily!) decided to test it out.

From Bounce [0]:

Realizing that the only way to vindicate his theory was to test it out on his own future children, he started corresponding with a number of young ladies, in search of a wife... A young Ukranian named Klara was one of those women. "His letters fizzed with passion as he explained his theories of to produce children with world-class abilities," Klara, a warm and gentle lady, a perfect counterpart to her husband, tells me. "Like many at the time, I thought he was crazy. But we agreed to meet."

What's more, Laszlo would take issue with saying his daughters were born geniuses.

As Polgar puts it: "If they had seen the painfully slow progress, the inch-by-inch improvements, they would not have been so quick to call Susan a prodigy."

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Bounce-Federer-Picasso-Beckham-Science...

If Lazlo Polgar had really wanted to test his thesis, he should have adopted, not had biological children. He is pretty clearly an exceptional intelligence of his own, reading his Wikipedia page.

That said, chess is simply not an inherent skill. But small differences in native ability can lead to large differences in interest, hence time spent, hence results achieved.

That's a pretty unusual conclusion. I would suppose that chess might teach the opposite -- it's apparent that when you practice chess deliberately, you get better and better, and that improvement is reflected very clearly in your results. Beating other kids or beating your dad is a kind of improvement that is more concrete than the other kinds of things you learn in school at that age. It might help demonstrate the virtue of directed effort.

I personally spent some time a few years ago teaching elementary-schoolers chess in a club after school. A lot of them weren't good students, but all of them took a lot of pride in getting better at chess. I think it would be really worthwhile if we had a tool to get the pleasure of self-improvement into kids' heads.

One of the great things about the internet is the ability to play chess against anyone online, through any of the many sites such as Yahoo! games etc.

I used to play a bit online, and as well as improving my chess just through more play, the pressure of playing under time limits really forced me to develop a strategy, something I'd never realized, despite playing many games over the years.

Playing on-line, self-improvement should be pretty clear, just from watching your number of wins and rating gradually improve.

I played chess with my co-workers at a former job during lunch. I barely knew the rules when I started and struggled at first.

I began to practice somewhat obsessively and I got to the point where I could regularly beat most of my co-workers within a year. It could be argued I have an inclination for something like chess, but the connection between practice and payoff was more apparent playing chess than just about anything else I've ever done.

Chess has also taught me to think ahead a few moves and to realize that sometimes a short-term loss is worth it for a long-term gain. All things I see as essential for entrepreneurship.

In my youth, I used to just think people were just "good" at something, and there was little they could do to influence it. I did software because I was "good" at it. Over the years, I've realized that an inclination or talent is important, but relentless years of honing one's craft are more important. I've watched a couple of my "smarter" friends waste away due to lack of focus and other people shine seemingly in spite of themselves.

I wonder if it just means that Cchess is a very approachable game that can be played at wide range of skill level? It is not a hard game to teach and anyone can start playing immediately. Basically it is a game a 6 year old can play and a game for world championships as well.

I've always been an adept chess player, but I never spent the required time to become truly competitive. I agree with you that skill and ability differences lead to predictable outcomes; functionally, how would an educator address this in using chess as a learning instrument? Speculating as a non-educator, dividing the class into skill subsections would lead to more equal and competitive play, most likely increasing both motivation and learning.

My co-founder joined our start-up after spending a year traveling through Asia, and brought back with him Chinese Chess. The pieces are incredibly similar to traditional chess, with slight movement variations. We adopted the game as our 3am work-break for a while, and were able to build up a record over a few weeks. Unlike traditional chess in which my win rate would be near-absolute, he was able to win approximately 25% of Chinese games, with his win rate stable over time as we both developed our knowledge of the nuances of the game.

We had just learned how to play chess in school. I was about 10 years old I think. Another guy challenged me to a game... he was friendly, but not exactly someone I would have called a friend at the time. We set up in a corner of the library, and he nailed me with the 4 move checkmate. He was extremely satisfied with himself, mainly I think because he had managed to hustle me. He wasn't any better at chess than I was, he had just heard of the 4 move checkmate before I did. I was, if not crushed, somewhat perturbed that this could happen. In my 10 year old life, it was a completely new experience. I realized that playing a game had a lot more to do with just knowing the rules.

In school, you tend to play games with people who are your friends for the most part. Chess is a bit different though... you seem to end up playing against people you don't know well or at all, yet especially when you are starting out in chess, trying to work out what sort of player (and by extension, what sort of person) your opponent is becomes quite important. I think there are a useful set of skills to do with that, which you would otherwise miss out on as a kid.

My knee-jerk reaction to 'made' was of course not. And then I thought about it. We 'make' children learn how to do fundamental mathematics and it doesn't seem do them harm (yes there are serious arguments about when and how we should do that, but setting that aside...) I have always been in favor of chess being offered in school. I've always thought that if it is good enough for West Point, then it is good enough for the local school system. Even out here in the 'sticks' of Idaho, we have a thriving academic chess program with no apparent damage. This is merely an escalation of elective to requirement--- still no harm. Obligatory admission; I regularly play tournament chess as a rated player (silly addiction :) ).

It's the same aversion we recall our childhood selves and react to anything our parents "force" us to do. Force isn't so effective -- it would be best if parents found creative ways to entice their kids with chess and chess-like activities (why not Backgammon, which I prefer, or Go?). They make us eat vegetables, play instruments, do our homework, etc. In the end, years down the line, I'll thank them for it.

Personally, I'm disappointed that my parents never made me play an instrument or an intellectually stimulating game like chess. It wasn't until relatively (<4) years that I picked up Backgammon and classical guitar, and I cringe when I think about how I would have benefited from years more experience.

>We 'make' children learn how to do fundamental mathematics and it doesn't seem do them harm

Ask adults on the street what is 6 * 9 and most will fail to answer correctly. Probe further and most will apologise and announce with a smile that they were never much good at math at school.

This is fossil evidence of the harm caused by early coercion in the area of arithmetic.

Instead of what?

On a more serious note, this would be a complete non-issue, except that education is state controlled. So now it's politics. Where it private people could choose what's best for their child without choosing what's best for everyone elses.

Well, any parent who wants his children to learn chess can teach it to 'em. That is, I guess, how most children learn it.

In the opposite case, where chess is compulsory and the parent doesn't want the child to learn... well, big deal. I must have learned to play dozens of games at school, from tunnelball to rugby, and throwing in an extra one isn't gonna do much harm.

As an occasional Go player, I mainly clicked through to see if the very first comment on the page would be someone mentioning that Go is a better choice than chess. The internets do not disappoint, regardless of whether that's a true statement or not.

I think kids should be taught a few classic games, chess, checkers, mancala, backgammon, etc. For the simple fact that most of those games are universal, regardless of language the chess rules are the same, so if there is a board you can strike up interaction regardless of language.

It also introduces rules and strategic thought. Some kids might get into chess, most probably won't, but like most of the stuff in school, part of it is to expose kids to concepts that they might have an interest to persue.

"Made to play" is a contradiction.

a long time ago a chess-playing friend of mine said "a good chess player has developed their mind. a great chess player has wasted their mind."

I was usually top of all my classes up until my teenage years (and got lazy and became the chancer I am now!) so I was pushed into playing chess, joining the chess club, etc, and I totally sucked! I could randomly beat people who barely knew the rules of the game but otherwise I was at the bottom of every ladder going, despite practicing.

So I'm not convinced chess is a natural fit for everyone or a way to increase intelligence. It did nothing for me except make me realize I couldn't be good at everything that was vaguely academic. Or maybe it says something about a certain type of intelligence that I totally lack(ed)? Scrabble, OTOH, I can win any time..

I think anything that encourages focussed/prolonged abstract thinking about complex systems should be encouraged. In chess, the mental discipline to think through a series of moves without actually seeing them, and also to formulate heuristic strategies ('if i put this piece here, it will stop any threats coming from...'). There probably is not enough of that at school - I think reading and analysing novels is the closest you get. And some kids do that very passively (like they'll completely miss the implied point of chapters).

While children should be exposed to both go and chess, I would argue against compulsory extended training.

There comes a point where much of extended training in chess is counter-productive to being a productive human being.

I would trade my Fide Master title in a heartbeat for more learning of discrete math(there is no reason predicate logic cannot be taught in junior high school) and programming concepts at an early age.

Chess isn't a bad thing. Neither is devoting yourself to mastering a subject. But like the article says, there are other equally good or better pursuits we can teach from an early age. So choose chess, go, piano, painting, math, programming, writing, golf, tennis, or any number of things. Just do something and do it well.

I think so. I believe that thinking competitively is just as important as thinking.

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