71
votes
How has chess managed to remain a competitive sport despite engine dominance?
For the same reason the Tour de France is still a thing even if you could perform much better on a motorbike. Most chess enthusiasts didn't stop playing chess after noticing there's some other person ...
- 16.3k
67
votes
How should I make a 6 year old think more?
What else can I do to make her understand this
Wait a few years. A 6 year-old's mental capacity is very limited. The good news is that at that age and for several years to come her mental capability ...
- 97.1k
66
votes
Accepted
Why do children move so quickly?
The answer is very simple. A 6 year old child does not have an adult brain. It has the very immature, underdeveloped brain of a 6 year old. It has a short attention span and struggles to sit still for ...
- 97.1k
53
votes
Is chess a good game for recovering addicts?
Stack Exchange has a site dedicated to medical sciences.
If you open that, you'll immediately see that on the right column there's a disclaimer that you won't find on any other Stack Exchange site. It'...
46
votes
How do you keep chess fun when your opponent constantly beats you?
There are many people who want to play chess with you. You can play chess online! Online sites such as chess.com and lichess.org will match you with opponents of similar rating so you should win about ...
- 5,031
46
votes
Accepted
Why aren't there any women super Grandmasters (GMs)?
I don't know a lot about chess or even gender differences in cognition, but I do know enough that chess involves certain aspects of cognition and that there are gender differences in cognitive ability....
- 562
44
votes
Accepted
Why do high level players memorize specific games?
Memorization is mostly a side effect, not the end goal. Top players can spend hours or days analyzing a single game to try to understand all of the instructive ideas. Memorization naturally flows from ...
- 7,584
41
votes
Accepted
Carlsen beat a high ranking GM with 1 Nh3. Conclusions?
It was one game in online rapid. You cannot deduce from one game that 1.Nh3 is sound or not sound. Carlsen was actually MUCH worse out of the opening, and just outplayed Dreev later. It really means ...
- 32.5k
39
votes
How do you keep chess fun when your opponent constantly beats you?
There are lots of ways to play with a handicap in chess. One way is to give one player a starting material advantage, where the weaker player starts with an extra queen, or the stronger player ...
- 538
37
votes
Why aren't there any women super Grandmasters (GMs)?
Women played chess as much as men did for a while until the beginning of the 17th century. At this time, chess rules changed in that the queen and bishop gained much more significance and power in the ...
- 1,078
32
votes
Accepted
How should I make a 6 year old think more?
From my 15 years experience as a chess teacher - and then chess dad.
Stop telling her to think longer !
This is the wrong thing to do.
First, it is useless: as you have noticed, even telling her so ...
- 16k
29
votes
Is chess a zero sum game?
When I said chess is a zero sum game in that answer, I wasn't referring to anything involving ratings. Obviously if we include ratings then chess isn't strictly a zero sum game, since the gains and ...
- 19.8k
28
votes
How has chess managed to remain a competitive sport despite engine dominance?
An analogy often used here is to compare people to cars. Sure, cars can travel far faster than people like Usain Bolt, but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining to watch. When people watch players ...
- 19.8k
27
votes
How should I make a 6 year old think more?
Math educator here. It's very difficult for children at this age to think much ahead in their heads.
According to Piaget's theory, they don't even reach "concrete operational" stage at this age, ...
- 371
26
votes
How do GMs “play the man, not the board”?
As you mentioned, playing the man can mean several different things, but before I answer I want to say that no one can become a better player by only playing the man - objectivity is the number 1 ...
- 2,168
26
votes
Accepted
As a beginner, how do I learn to win in "won" positions?
There are two key things you need to do.
The first is to know how to win a won endgame. You do that by studying endgames. That will do two important things for you. Apart from teaching you how to win ...
- 97.1k
25
votes
How to minimise your opponent's fun in a game?
I play for two purposes:
to win the game, or when winning is unlikely, to draw the game.
to improve my chess skills, which eventually enables me to win/draw more games.
These are good ...
- 97.1k
24
votes
Why do people say blitz chess can be bad for your chess?
I am answering only as an expert player, so who am I to answer this, but I think that "blitz ruins your chess" was a very popular view some time ago rather than nowadays... Anyway, given the very ...
- 6,826
22
votes
Is chess a zero sum game?
Chess is a zero sum game. There is 1 point available and it is divided over the players, what one gains the other loses. It is a simple concept with a simple answer. Tournament rules mention some very ...
- 28k
21
votes
How do GMs “play the man, not the board”?
It's all Sun Tzu; If the player is a tactician, play positional. If the player is positional, play tactical. If the guy is booked up in a line -- don't play into it unless you have a surprise...
...
- 6,111
21
votes
Accepted
Do grandmasters think on every move?
I will try to answer this in a different manner, the way I understand this topic.
Do we think on every signal, turn, fork when we drive?
Do we think every time we eat food or walk on the street?
The ...
- 620
20
votes
How do you keep chess fun when your opponent constantly beats you?
If you can change your attitude from this being a competition that you are "losing" to this being a tutorial, that should help a lot. Every time you play a game, you get more famailiar with lines and ...
- 2,262
19
votes
How has chess managed to remain a competitive sport despite engine dominance?
As much as people fear losing their jobs to machines that can do them better, Chess has seen the exact opposite take shape.
That's because chess is a game. People enjoy playing it, and they enjoy ...
- 781
18
votes
Why do so many children stop playing chess?
Dan Heisman writes about this in one of his books. He states that 90 % of children who start in 1st grade or kindergarten stop playing around 7th grade. I have seen this in my work as Executive ...
18
votes
Accepted
Famous grandmaster games of "torturous" winning or flaunting out of arrogance?
Are there such examples of torturous winning, where a grandmaster
resists his urge to resign and lets the opponent take all of his
pieces before he gets checkmated?
No, there aren't, for the simple ...
- 97.1k
18
votes
As a beginner, how do I learn to win in "won" positions?
I remember reading about this from one of GM Yasser Seirawan's books. What you want to do is:
Pick a target
Figure out how to attack it
In this case the obvious target is the White pawn on a3. Why ...
- 27.2k
18
votes
Accepted
Is chess a good game for recovering addicts?
Addiction is a complicated and multi-faceted issue, and although dopamine plays a role it's far from the only important factor to consider; this also depends on which type of addiction we're dealing ...
- 7,998
16
votes
Carlsen beat a high ranking GM with 1 Nh3. Conclusions?
Carlsen is the strongest player in the world. He can get away with playing sub-par openings against average GMs because of the large difference in strength. Granted, Dreev is above your average GM, ...
- 19.8k
16
votes
Why do children move so quickly?
I would propose another plausible explanation:
Time moves slower for children.
I don't mean that in a gobbledey-gook spiritual sense but in the sense that the way humans experience temporality is ...
- 177
16
votes
Why after 1. d4 Nf6, 2. c4 is so common but after 1. c4 Nf6, 2. d4 is so rare?
To answer your question, I think it mainly comes down to selection bias. The White players of the games after 1.c4 Nf6 are often not intending to play a Queen's pawn opening (at least, not right away ...
- 19.8k
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