Online Chess Lessons for Beginners: A Fantastic Brain Exercise

Chess has a history that goes back 1500 years. This ancient board game has always been loved by the royals and commoners alike. You must have heard about grandmasters and chess savants. There is no dearth of people who like to play it for fun and leisure. It will not be overt to say that somewhere in our minds, we like to play and overcome the challenge of maneuvering thirty two pieces on sixty four squares. Chess has a sense of controlled argumentation and a victory, the feeling of eminence.

These days where everything is doable online, how could chess be left behind? One can not only play the game online against opponents from around the world but also learn about its nuances. Online chess coaching is a relatively new trend. Anyone, regardless of age, can learn chess online. Several champions and masters provide such training services. It is accessible anytime and from anywhere. Learning and playing chess online has many mental and psychological benefits.

• It WILL Help Raise IQ: Various studies and research has shown that moving those rooks and pawns will raise your IQ significantly. Chess has always been taken as a game of intellectuals and sharp people, but this is not true. Playing chess regularly for a period of time will raise your capacity for resourceful thinking.
• Helps Prevent Alzheimer’s: The brain, like muscles, needs exercise to stay healthy. Brain tissues can deteriorate and die after prolonged inactivity. This situation can lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s. Playing chess at the age of 45 and above will keep your brain active and strong.
• Builds New Neural Pathways: Dendrites are the small tree like structures in the brain. They work like conductors between neurons. They assist in the transfer of the neuroelectric signals that make the brain work like it is supposed to. While neurons cannot regenerate once they die, live ones can form new pathways to replace lost or absent connections. The more pathways you have, the better the capacity of your brain. In simple terms, more connections make you smarter. Chess can help build these pathways by activating and promoting critical thinking and reasoning.
• Activate Both Sides of the Brain: For most people, the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for creativity and left hemisphere takes care of reasoning and logical tasks. Activating and using b

oth sides of the brain is often associated with higher brain capacity. It helps you multitask and think when both hemispheres contribute and exchange information. Research shows that playing chess uses both sides simultaneously. Chess players are thus better at both creative and logical reasoning.

• Improves Concentration: Playing chess requires you to concentrate for extended periods. You have to pay attention to an opponent’s moves to adjust strategy. This promotes and inculcates the ability to concentrate in any environment and increases the attention span of youngsters.
• Develops Planning and Foresight: In Chess, you have to anticipate your opponent’s strategy and in response, alter your own plans over and over. There is perhaps no better metaphor for the challenges in life. You have to anticipate situations and plan for the future. This develops foresight and better planning capability.

IchessU stands for International Chess University. We are an online entity that specializes in chess education. We teach chess openings, chess strategies and more about the chess game in detail to kids.