Current Events > Are any of you here really good at Chess?

(+) Yeah! (+)

And do you think you have to be really smart to be a great chess player?

Chess is a great game, you can be amazing at it without having to be highly intelligent. Of course it helps, but it's really about pattern recognition and problem solving. Kind of like an evolving logical puzzle you have to be able to see what pieces you move will cause what pieces of the opponent's to move, which will make you want to move other pieces, to make them move other pieces.

Proceed along that course of action to get yourself a win.

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im not great, but like it. my dad used to stomp me alot, but once i learned his pattern and won a few times he refused to play me..

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Pretty decent, used to be serious.

The game favors pattern recognition and memorization. You can be a complete idiot otherwise, and believe me, there are plenty of idiots playing chess to be able to say they're smart.

The primary factor in being good at chess, at least outside of the top 10%, is just wasting all your time on it.

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A lot is actually about memorization and recognizing scenarios. So you don't have to be super smart. You can study specific cases and learn what are the best moves to make in that case. Then you just have to recognize which cases you are dealing with in an actual game.

A lot of chess websites have chess puzzles which are basically an instance of a game and you have to choose what move the player should make. If you get good at those and then can apply that knowledge to an actual game, you will be a solid player.

Obviously grandmasters are on a whole different level and most of them are probably extremely intelligent.