Why Everyone Should Play Chess (Persuasive)

Chess is a game of strategy and sacrifices, thinking out every move you can make to eliminate your opponents pieces without sacrificing your own or sacrificing your pieces to win in the endgame. I did not start playing chess until a couple months ago and in all honesty I just thought it was a nerdy game that was hard and confusing, but when my brother asked me to play I said okay, he taught me the different moves and we played. I was beaten so badly and that really upset me. The real reason I lost was because I wasn’t thinking 3 steps ahead and planning out my moves, sacrifices, and gains. I kept getting beat over and over until I realized that in chess you can’t be spontaneous and wing it, you need to have a plan and pay attention to every single piece on the board. You need to calculate your opponents moves before you can calculate your own moves. The more I played and thought about it the better I got and I started to win. I had been playing a couple games everyday and completely falling down the rabbit hole, reading chess books, watching chess shows, and looking up different moves. I had been looking up chess when I stumbled across the fact that children who play chess have higher math and reading scores, which is another great benefit. I can totally understand why chess caused these higher test scores because after I had been playing a while I started to see the lessons in chess translate to my own life unintentionally. When faced with real life decisions I found myself thinking more logically and weighing out every possibility. Before chess I would think about the decisions I made and weigh them out but after I feel I can make quicker more thoughtful decisions. I had no idea the effect chess would have on me and my thought process. Chess had a huge impact on me and I think everyone should at least play a couple games.