Chess is a fun game packed full of benefits. Even casually playing each week will give you some of the benefits of life skills that may be applied in different ways.
Consider hiring a chess coach to maximize your potential.
Here are the top 7 life skills we strongly feel chess has to offer:
- Planning ahead: Chess teaches you how to visualize a problem, learn how to overcome it, and set goals to achieve a solution. One constant in life is dealing with uncertainty and change. Planning ahead skills will help you become more resilient to these changes.
- Good Sportsmanship: One of the first lessons you will learn is to shake hands with your opponent before and after a game. This handshake occurs after each win and more importantly each loss. You will often learn more from your losses than from your wins. This helps you value sportsmanship no matter if you win or lose.
- Problem Solving: Whether you are playing a game or solving puzzles chess is filled with problems to be solved. A good chess coach teaches you how to overcome these problems and look for solutions they also help you identify that a problem needs to be solved.
- Analysis: Not only will you learn how to play chess. A coach will also teach you how to analyze your games. This offers you the ability to not only learn your own strength and weaknesses, but also those of your opponent. This critical skill is transferable in life in so many ways.
- Strategic Thinking: As you advance in chess you will begin to learn how to think more strategically. You will learn the value of pieces and advantages of squares on the board to form offensive and defensive play.
- Decision Making: There are many variables in chess. Playing this simple yet challenging game encourages you to improve your decision making process. Whether it is to capture a piece, or put the opponent’s king in check you constantly are refining this skill.
- Pattern Recognition: Recognizing patterns is a way to increase your visualization and memory. With hours of playing and learning chess different patterns emerge, and you will recognize them helping to bring past experiences into the present.
Chess Made Fun offers group classes and private lessons for beginning to advance chess players. Sign up today to join our community and get matched with a coach who can help you receive all the benefits of chess.