Anyone thinking that is clearly far from wise.

Chess teaches a wide range of skills including long term thinking, ,patience, concentration, strategy, memory

That is like when people try to justify music education by emphasising how its good for developing communication skills blah blah. Do we need a pricetag on everything?

No.

So chess, then.

I'm friends with one of the top Irish players. He used to play someone in Russia via postcards.

He has a lot of chess books. A lot...

Far from wise indeed.

There's no intelligence in advertising.

I also use chess.com, been playing for about 18 months, after a gap of 30 years.

I've been playing on here for about 8 years:

http://www.redhotpawn.com/

Haha, not clicking that link

It's a chess site.

Yes, jokefail

Do we need a pricetag on everything?

Yes, but by claiming a utilitarian value, your response undersells the very essence of humanity. Or something.

I'm now wishing I didn't play chess online using my real name, or else I could challenge the players here to a game. If there's enough interest in a JTT chess meet on chess.com or elsewhere, I'd create a 'gyratingtrampoline' chess account.

Yes, but by claiming a utilitarian value, your response undersells the very essence of humanity. Or something.

If there's enough interest in a JTT chess meet on chess.com or elsewhere, I'd create a 'gyratingtrampoline' chess account.

I'd join.

#26 You are correct of course. But there is something which offends me a bit about jumping straight for the 'good for your brain' aspect. I suppose because it encourages us to think in these moneygrabbing, good-for-your-cv terms, instead of proudly proclaiming the beauty of chess-for-the-sake-of-chess (or anything for the sake of anything - this is a general point).

bignose I've just made myself an account called 'gyratingtrampoline' on chess.com. Send me a challenge if you want to!

Nice, will set up an account tomorrow.

I found the standard on chess.com to be very good, I used to be a good player as a schoolkid, but was getting beaten the last few times I played on that site, which was a bit disheartening! Think there is a world of difference between those who know the rules and the moves and those who know good openings. I won a lot of games as a kid playing the French defence, which looks weak to your opponent until you unleash your attack! Great game chess, last played against a bloke who had learnt in prison, he wasn't bad but one wrong move and I would be in for the kill so it was just a case of waiting for that.

Chess teaches a wide range of skills

As in "Russians play chess, Americans play poker". That hasn't been decided yet, whatever Americans might think.

also, most computers come ready loaded with a chess game program that is good enough to defeat most people who are not at master level, so there's no real need to go online to do this stuff.

I've never studied openings or read any books about it, but I've got to the stage where most players on my level have, and so I know from raw experience what is likely to happen in any given situation during the first few moves. I've found that doing something a bit leftfield near the start throws people off if they're used to typical games. But actually most unusual things are unusual precisely because there's something wrong with them, so a more advanced player will have seen it before and know a way to use it against me.

And on that subject, if you want to play a wider spectrum of games, it's better to be black, because during the first few moves the white player is the initiator, so you will tend to have a more diverse experience if you play as black.