Chess is an ingenious human construct which has evolved over millennia.
If you've followed my posts, you probably know that music and nature are my passions. Although I'm not a student of chess, or even a serious player, I suspect I play at least 10 games a day, and in a bit I'll explain why.
I learned the basic rules of chess when I was twelve years old. A military officer who lived nearby wanted to learn to play chess, so he recruited me as an opponent. Initially it went fairly well, and I held my own. In contrast to me, he took it seriously and began reading a book about strategy. In no time I began losing after just a few moves, and gradually lost interest. I returned to less taxing pursuits, but I remain grateful that he introduced me to chess.
Over the years I played occasionally to pass the time, but it wasn't until Windows 7 that I began routinely playing chess (against a computer.) When Windows 10 was released I was frustrated and angered that “Chess Titans” had been removed from Windows. That was when I realized just how hooked I was on chess. Fortunately, I was able to find a source for Windows 7 games and was able to get it to run on Windows 10.
If you're not familiar with the origins of chess, here is an excellent five minute video from a documentary about the chess master Bobby Fischer.
I suspect I can't really offer anything particularly insightful about the game of chess, especially because there is such a strong community of chess players here on the platform. But I would like to share something about the effects of playing chess. Chess is good for your brain, it raises the IQ of children, and it helps prevent dementia in the elderly. Source
By chance I discovered something about chess which motivated me to begin playing much more frequently. For as long as I can remember, I've had the desire to master the art of meditation. The deluge of thoughts, known as “monkey brain” had often thwarted my efforts. After a while I gave up and began intensely listening to music in the dark as an alternative to meditation.
Then several years ago I began wondering if biofeedback might be the solution to the problem of learning to meditate -- might it be possible to learn to generate alpha waves with biofeedback?
After an internet search I learned that there was a relatively inexpensive device available on Amazon which might make that possible. It is a headset made by a company called NeuroSky which:
The MindWave Mobile safely measures and outputs the EEG power spectrums (alpha waves, beta waves, etc), NeuroSky eSense meters (attention and meditation) and eye blinks. The device consists of a headset, an ear-clip, and a sensor arm. The headset’s reference and ground electrodes are on the ear clip and the EEG electrode is on the sensor arm, resting on the forehead above the eye (FP1 position). It uses a single AAA battery with 8 hours of battery life. source
The headset was a one-size-fits-all and I personally found it to be uncomfortable, and the version I had back then was tricky to keep connected to my laptop. Nonetheless, it was interesting and there were various games which were designed to show you when you were relaxed and or concentrated.
One day by chance I decided to take a break from their games and simply play chess and allow the monitoring to continue in the background. When playing chess I was highly focused, and the high concentration score didn't surprise me.
What did surprise me was that I was not only highly focused when playing chess, but I was also highly relaxed!
That seemed strange, because quite frankly when I'm in the middle of a game it often feels like I am fighting for my own survival. It is extremely intense.
I laugh and say the house could burn down around me when I'm playing chess, that's an exaggeration, but I've learned never to cook when playing computer chess – I'm simply in another world.
I lost the connector to my headset, and I'm not sure if it would work under Windows 10 anyway, so I can't give you any screen captures of what I'm talking about. However, I can assure you that playing chess, in my case, is something I consider akin to meditation. I suspect that would hold true for others too.
I wish I could give you the link to "Chess Titans," but I no longer have it. It worked perfectly and was clean, but if you decide to look for a “Chess Titans” download, be careful. If anyone knows of a safe link to it, please post it in the comment section. Similarly, if you can recommend an alternative free chess game that would be great.
I would love to read your thoughts about chess as meditation.
Lead photo is a collage, chessboard is from pixabay, musician cutouts from twitter photos.
Last photo is from pixabay with effects by
