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The Top 10 Benefits of Learning and Playing Chess
…And why you should pick up the game of chess
I don’t recall exactly when and how I picked up the game of chess. But I know it was between the completion of high school and before I went to university.
I recall frequently visiting a family friend almost every week. And one of the favorite things I did was to play chess with the kids. At the time, I did not have a chess set of my own so it was always exciting to visit this family as it gave me the opportunity to teach the kids and play with them.
When I started University, I did not realize they had a chess club. One evening, as I was heading to the cafe for dinner, I saw a group of students around a few tables playing and watching chess. I was so excited. I felt like I had suddenly found a precious possession! I got hooked and would spend hours playing and studying chess. The passion for the game was so strong that all I did and thought was chess. It got so strong that it distracted me from my studies and as a result, I failed one of the first-year courses and did poorly in some of the other courses.
This was a wake-up call that taught me how to balance my hobbies with my academics. After my university days, I stopped playing competitive chess for many years until I recently moved to Oakville, Ontario in 2015. This is when I introduced my kids to chess and we plugged into a chess club in the area. In 2017, I founded Elevate My Chess and a few years later, we started the Oakville Chess Club as a way to stay grounded in our chess community, a community we love and cherish.
In many ways, I’ve been blessed by the game of chess. Over the last few years, I’ve had the privilege of creating many opportunities for others to learn the game and to play competitively. I have invested both time and money because I know the benefits that chess can provide, not just for the individual player, but for the community as a whole.
The game of chess is one of the oldest board games and it is loved all over the world. You will often find people gathered in living rooms, pubs, plazas, parks, and libraries to match wits over the cherished chessboard. And you may wonder…
