Teachers nationwide are flummoxed by students’ newfound chess obsession | Hacker News Reader

Teachers nationwide are flummoxed by students’ newfound chess obsession

washingtonpost.com

Someone on reddit says this is due to Andrew Tate's influence. I barely know who Andrew Tate is, but other commenters there seem to believe it too.

https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/12n0yxh/article_teac... :

> GoodNormals 35 points 4 hours ago

> I’m a high school dean and former teacher and chess coach.

> While new students playing chess is great, and I see it all the time at school, unfortunately it’s the result of Andrew Tate’s influence. I’ve asked many students lately while they started playing, and Tate is brought up almost every time.

Related: GothamChess 2 month ago on why there is a chess boom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt8Y0vvDRYI

I had a year in school where everyone became obsessed with chess. The teacher allowed kids to play chess who finished their work before everyone else was done. Haven’t thought about that in years.

Same, had a chess fad around 2007 in my high school. It faded by the end of the school year. Funny how things repeat.

2007 in my school as well.

In my school the fad was assal horizontology.

I like chess but naturally I learn games by trial and error until I develop an intuition for it. You just can't play chess like that, you have to study strategies and moves. I play against computer sometimes but I have 0 time I can invest into learning the moves. I feel like for those of us not in the top 1% of intellectually capable people what makes or breaks your chess ability is the amount of time you put in studying strategies and effort you put into practicing but the former more than the latter.

Chess is an absolute waste of time. There is just nothing there of any interest whatsoever.

No, it improves many skills, including logic, memory, pattern recognition, visualization, calculation, decision-making, abstraction, time management, risk management, etc.

Yes, but only in regard to chess -- as soon as you move on to sudoku you're back to square one.

>You just can't play chess like that

You most definitely can, it'd just take more time since you have to rediscover a lot of things that could be given to you as advice.

>I play against computer

Don't play against the computer if you're a beginner and want to improve, bots play in an exotic way and that won't help you.

>I have 0 time I can invest into learning the moves

I don't spend time learning opening theory either (I am just 1800 on Lichess), I just play and use the engine to see where I screwed up and what was the better move (I advise you to use Lichess (https://lichess.org/) over chess.com because open source + don't have to pay for engine analysis and puzzles). Talking about puzzles, play a lot of them, they'll train you to spot tactics. Finally, don't forget to have fun :)

https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/12n0yxh/article_teac...

EDIT I'm leaving the link for any posthumous curiosity, but I'll be removing the quote since fellow commenters here have made me realize they might not be entirely truthful in their assertion.

I was hoping for the influence of streamers like brodin

Anonymous commenters on the internet aren’t the trove of honest reporting you seem to think…

Your comment piqued my curiosity, so I decided to see if their comment history supported their claim...yeah, a two year old account with a high karma count but no comments older than 12 days ago....i think I'll edit my comment, they might not be honest

Well that's disappointing :/

As a high school teacher with years of experience, the other thing I've heard a lot is that they picked up chess because of 4chan posts that Trump was playing chess while Hillary was playing checkers.

That's bullshit but if I'd posted it on Reddit, someone on HN could've quoted it.

Another commenter raised a similar red flag, so i have removed the quote. I am not an American so I am not as up to date with American high school culture, apologies for any misinformation.

My 9yro and 18yro regularly play. Including with each other on some online deal. Kinda cool how the internet lets them play together even when the 18yro is off at uni on the other side of the country.

We played chess in high school. I learned a lot about life, other people, the consequences of one’s actions. Attempting to ascertain the intentions of another based on their actions… I remember the lessons I learned playing chess in the coffee shop more vividly than I remember any of the lessons I learned in class.

Can you put those lessons into words? I'm having a hard time imagining what lesson applicable to real life one could glean from playing chess.

Chess elo seems more useful to me than the sat or other iq tests. also more fun and scalable to the global population.

My favorite youtube channels for chess are chessbrah and gotham.

The rating climbs are the most fun.

Tangential…

   The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

By Josh Waitzkin > https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/857333.The_Art_of_Learni...

He gave up chess because he couldn't make grandmaster. The original book written with his father, "searching for Bobby Fischer" is much better I think. It's not the same as the movie, which is mostly imaginary.

I think chess is an absolute waste of time. It is like spending your time doing long division for no reason. You learn nothing at all that is applicable to any domain outside of chess. You could spend your time reading a good book instead.

What if I read a good book about chess?

what if you happen to find chess fun? is fun a waste of time?

Would you say the same about golf?

What’s wrong with doing long division for fun?

I gave up trying to police people’s choice for fun. Let people watch baseball or ferret racing or whatnot.

Comically, I remember as a kid people telling me that reading a book was a waste of time. And asking why I would ever read something not assigned.

Someone will always think my thing is dumb. Someone is always smarter. Someone is always dumber.

So what. If it’s not harming themself or others, then I let it be.

It's a fad. But it's also almost completely neutral to social media filters so can get pushed without backlash.

Something will be everywhere and then it will disappear. The chess folks should make use of the popularity while it lasts.

..flummoxed?? Strange choice of a word. I was delighted when my son took up, chess when he was seven years old. I think chess should be something that is taught in school, alongside music, art, and history.

Art, music, and history have some relevance to life, but chess does not.

Depends on who you ask. For people who play chess, it is art and it has great relevance. The fact you're commenting on this shows it.

I feel sorry for people who play chess -- especially those who devote their lives to it.

Why?

Why -- because you spend your free time in a much more useful and productive manner?

Non-paywall link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/04/15/school-c...

For every silver lining there’s a cloud.

depressing to read the strap-line calling it a "fad", somewhat dismissively.

Compared to eating, I guess a game played for 1400 years is a fad ;)

I've never really put a lot of time into chess, but maybe learning to play better with my kids might be fun, and a "fad" /s is a good enough reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com