Everybody is talking that those two are a lot like each other. Recently even GM Susan Polgar started jabbering about it. Chess helps to develop human logica (yes, the Vulcan kind) which indeed helps your algebra. I doubt whether chess helps as much as GM Polgar claims it does.

Other opinions about Chess & Math?

I think chess helps thinking. Our brain is like a muscle. If you don't use it, it gets weaker. So, while I don't think that chess is directly helpful for getting better in math, it's at least indirectly helpful. While life is of course much more complicated than chess, it's not too bad to analyse a situation before acting. Endless planning also gets you into trouble etc. Not to mention dealing with losses and so on.

On the other hand some chess players might spend too much time with their chess pieces instead of real people.

Personally, I think chess helps you to develop some areas that aren't bad for your life. I've seen people in my chess club who were mentally very fit at the age of 90+ and probably chess had at least no negative effect on them.

Just a few quick thoughts without using my brain too much...

Very good Supergrobi, just let me add that playing chess helps you also with sth else, which is very important, for maths as well: imagination!

I tend to think its the other way around in that being good at math can help a person who decides to learn chess. Often times I've read stories or books about math experts that later became chess experts.

<off-topic>
I was just "scanning" Chess Cafe and found the following in Pandolfini's Q&A column:

</off-topic>

The best chess playing mathematician I can think of at the moment is GM John Nunn. The most famous is probably Lasker. I guess the reason why being a mathematician might be helpful for playing chess is the fact that mathematicians are used to delve deeply into solving problems. On the other hand a lot of people just don't seem to be able or willing to concentrate deeply. I guess that's the reason why a lot of chess players don't make real progress. As Rowson said in Chess for Zebras, you have to leave your comfort zone in order to improve. (I guess the more often you do that, the greater your comfort zone will get. Practice is always a good thing.)

Hey, Staunton did pretty good for himself. Sometimes it helps simply to have had skill at one point.

I'm with supergrobi on this. Concentration, especially when it applies to concepts you have to manipulate in your mind (no touch rule for irrational numbers!), is at the core of both.

Just my opinion. Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally. (Are there any mnenomics for chess openings, by the way?)

Chess emphasizes process and planning over memorization. Kids, and adults, get memorization and they'll memorize times tables, definitions, and all kinds of useful stuff. But then what?

Interesting problems in both math and literature involve breaking down the whole into a series of pieces that can be managed individually. Chess is about "the game." A game that has a beginning a middle and an end. Each of the opening, middle game, and end game involve additional smaller steps.

Breaking large problem into smaller pieces is taught in traditional math, but soooo many students just don't get it...they want to memorize and regurgitate.

I think it is difficult to relate the two in terms of similarity of thought process and so on. Personally i feel math is much harder. Ok Chess is hard, but is is theoretically a zero sum game ( or is it? ) that may / should be solved using math,or logic.

I feel, One either understands math well or doesn't. On the other hand,Chess being bound by more definite rules atleast makes it somewhat more manageable.
Chess is complex and can get deep enough to be beyond the grasp of even strong players, but if we analyse the game, with computer help, we may be able to understand the nuances of the game ( maybe do it even better with GM analysis ).

Math, for instance, I can never understand why Grigori Perelman got this year's Fields medal( I believe he proved something like -A doughnut cannot be shrunk without causing a rupture in its 3D shape ), Ok i heard that all that is math, but in my world it is certainly beyond the math i know of.


As for the topic in the thread, i would tend to believe that being good at Chess and number crunching may have somehting to do with studying patterns and calculation, but at a deeper level, i think they have no relation.