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Comment by mablap | Hacker News Reader

I'm a neophyte player (1250), actively learning. I can definitely see how learning chess to a respectable level (~1500) can help you make decisions in everyday life. I could elaborate a bit but this is a subject about which much has already been written.

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I really don't think so. Getting really good at a game involving a discrete territory relies heavily on developing spatial intuitions that are specific to the game. Through experience and study of prior games, you get increasingly aware of the possibilities of positions many moves in advance; humans aren't built to exhaustively analyze game trees like the naive chess AIs of the 90s. If the game isn't a transparent metaphor for something else in life, then the intuitions won't apply either. Real life doesn't have things that move like knights, or shape the board like pawns.

An Elo score of 1500 is not considered being "really good" at chess.

In real life, you have to make choices. Some choices preclude certain futures while enabling others. Sometimes you can make a sacrifice now in order to "win" later. Etc.

I am not saying that memorizing complex mating patterns for example can be directly transposed to real life decision making. Rather, realizing these exist, and appropriating the patterns of thought that make such analyses possible is what is beneficial.

You are right that we aren't "built to exhaustively analyze game trees", but this is precisely what makes learning chess a good thing: you get to train your mind to do that. Transposing that skill in real life is, I believe, beneficial.

I had always assumed ELO was an acronym of some kind, turns out it's the surname of the system's inventor; Arpad Elo. [0] And, according to Wikipedia, 1500 would be a mid-level player, so not really good, but certainly not beginner either.

> In general, a beginner is around 800, a mid-level player is around 1600, and a professional, around 2400.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpad_Elo

Of course you are right, vut part of getting good in chess is learning to think ahead in the first place, to stop thinking just about what you want to do, but about what your opponent wants to do...I think up to ELO 1500 is just learning to basic discipline in your thinking

I'm ~2200 and I wouldn't say it helps me much in everyday life.

Would you consider mathematics to help you in everyday life? I'm wondering because I know some people who argue that it doesn't, while I argue that it does. We might be confronted to a similar issue here?

Yes, probability is helpful to me in everyday life.

There are some basics, like thinking about your goal, thinking about your opponent's goal. A newish player will start realizing that they can advance their goal and foil their opponent's goal. A few shades beyond simply missing basic moves, and actively exploiting pins, forks, and skewers. That level, competent but far from elite, i think generalizes reasonably well.

I think you're at a much more specialized level. You need to see many moves ahead, and predict your opponent effectively. That won't generalize so well, because it's purely focused on the rules of chess.

Where can I read these things that have been written about chess's relation to daily life?

Here's a start:

http://wiki.c2.com/?ChessIsLife

> I'm a neophyte player (1250), actively learning. I can definitely see how learning chess to a respectable level (~1500) can help you make decisions in everyday life.

It won't. Chess is a game, you can learn chess to play a better game of chess and maybe you'll find other games where you can use the knowledge gained (but less likely), but you will rarely - if ever - be in a position where you apply a lesson learned in chess to a real life situation. And if you did you probably would end up making a mistake.

Being able to analyse scenarios is definitely useful.

But I've never had the patience for chess or go.

A lot of modern board games have just as much analysis involved and the themes make them way more fun for me.

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