Powered By Critical Thinking:

Chess is a sport that provides pleasure to millions of all ages, all over the world. It’s a sport where critical thinking skills determine the winner. It’s a battle of creativity, the ability to be objective, to think logically, and to remain calm under pressure while dealing with limited resources, limited time, and spatial constraints. Improving these skills will not only help you to succeed in the game of chess, but also in life.
“The game of chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it.”
– Benjamin Franklin
It is our goal to teach critical thinking through the game of chess. A player learns from mistakes, whether their own or those of other chess players, and uses this information
to make informed decisions in each game. Chess has something for everyone, and it is our goal to identify what it is that motivates each child and use that to help them develop
important life skills through chess. In chess there are no losers, just winners and students.
Check out these surprising facts and benefits of playing chess and then consider your next move:
“Even if you do not become a professional chess player, this game will still help you
make the right moves in life. Chess taught me to see my own mistakes and accept them.”
– Levon Aronian, fourth highest rated chess player in history.
What Our Customers Are Saying








1. Chess increases children’s problem-solving
skills
Every day, we all face numerous problems that we have to work through. And as a
parent, it is often a priority to prepare our children to face and tackle such problems.
The earlier this kind of skill is taught to our children, the more independent and self confident they become.
Chess is a brilliant example of an activity that helps children master these skills from a
very early age.
2. Chess improves spatial skills
In chess, players can often visualize the position of the pieces as many as 10 moves
ahead in order to calculate their current move. This difficult kind of analysis in incredibly
important to chess players and is a skill they work hard at improving.
Through these types of visualizations, children can improve their ability to understand
abstract information, an important skill in many areas such as math, science, and
reading.
3. Chess improves memory
A crucial part of learning chess is the memorization of games, both your own and other
players’. From memorizing and analyzing games, chess players are able to learn what
works and what doesn’t work in certain positions. Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen
has been reported to have over 10,000 games completely memorized!
Because of the importance placed on this skill, it has become a documented fact that
playing chess greatly improves one’s memory – an important skill for growing young
minds
4. Chess exercises your child’s creativity
Although chess is a game with a set number of pieces and specific rules, there are
endless possibilities for how each game can go. With every game, chess players are
faced with brand new problems to solve and can try new tactics to win. It is not only a
game of memorization and study, but one that encourages great creativity and
imagination.
Children are filled with imagination and creativity, which makes it the perfect time for
them to further explore those skills through chess! Many of the greatest moments in
chess occurred when a player made a move no one expected, but thanks to their
creative plans, they pulled through with a win.
5. Chess improves concentration
Concentration is key when playing chess. Every move from the opponent can drastically
change what’s happening on the board, and chess players must make sure they pay
attention to every detail.
Children especially learn the value of paying attention when playing chess. When they
play games, their opponent won’t tell them when they’ve made a move or what it was.
And if the child doesn’t see the move or remember where the pieces were before, they
will have missed out on very important information concerning their opponent’s plans.
By learning how detrimental a wandering mind can be in their chess games, children
quickly learn to practice concentrating, a skill that can not only aid them in improving at
chess, but also in their schoolwork.
6. Chess teaches planning and foresight
Most people can think back on when they were a teenager and did some things they
now regret because, at the time, they hadn’t considered the consequences for their
actions. While that’s natural for everyone to go through, chess teaches us valuable skills
to help prevent and minimize those types of experiences.
A huge part of chess is the practice of thinking hard about what kind of consequences
you might have from each move before you make it. Only once a chess player has
determined that this is, in fact, a good move to make, should they play it. Not only can
this prevent you from making avoidable mistakes in chess, but it helps you to learn to
exercise that kind of thought process in life.
The longest recorded time for a chess player to make a move was two hours and twenty
minutes!
Chess can actually raise your child’s IQ
Chess is highly linked with a high IQ. In fact, a study in Venezuela showed that 4000
students, both boys and girls, exhibited higher IQ scores after only 4 months of chess
instruction. The Venezuelan government was so impressed with the results of this
study, that they introduced chess to all Venezuelan schools!
Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, who started playing chess at the age of 5,
famously has an IQ of 190. For reference, the average IQ score is 100 and Albert
Einstein’s was 160!
Chess is a remarkable, unifying sport that has no boundaries concerning ages,
languages, backgrounds, etc. And while it’s fun to play, chess players all over the world
are also gaining extremely important skills with every game.
We not only hope to share our passion for this incredible sport with your child, but also
that everything we teach your child on the board will help them with their lives off the
board, too.
Think wisely. Think creatively. Think CHESS.