Strategy Games of Chess, Checkers or Shogi are thinking games that improve the brain. You've heard it said, “If you don't use it, you lose it.” has been proven true in science and in the medical field. Chess has been the only game in history in which 1000's of studies have shown that if a person learned to play chess that it improved their marks and all kinds of skills. Some of the studies shown here are a teachers guide to the benefits of chess, and by extension, checkers and shogi. Studies have also shown how persons who have ADHD, ADD, and dyslexia can benefit by playing chess. The same site goes into listing incredible amount information and other links. Studies have proven older people can continue to learn new things.

Excerpts from ...

... quadcitychess.com quoting from main.uschess.org.

An experimental group showed a significant advancement in spatial, numerical and administrative-directional abilities, along with verbal aptitudes. The improvements held true regardless of the final chess skill level attained.

A four-year study (1979-1983) in Pennsylvania found that the chess-playing experimental group consistently outperformed the control groups engaged in other thinking development programs.

During the 1987-88 “Development of Reasoning and Memory through Chess,” all students in a rural Pennsylvania sixth grade self-contained classroom were required to participate in chess lessons and play games. None of the pupils had previously played chess. The pupils significantly improved in both memory and verbal reasoning. The effect of the magnitude of the results is strong (eta 2 is .715 for the Memory test gain compared to the Norm). These results suggest that transfer of the skills fostered through the chess curriculum did occur.

A 1989-92 New Brunswick, Canada study, using 437 fifth graders split into three groups, experimenting with the addition of chess to the math curriculum, found increased gains in math problem-solving and comprehension proportionate to the amount of chess in the curriculum.

During the 1995-1996 school year, two classrooms were selected in each of five schools. Students (N = 112) were given instruction in chess and reasoning in one classroom in each school. Pupils in the chess program obtained significantly higher reading scores at the end of the year. It should be noted that while students in the chess group took chess lessons, the control group (N = 127) had additional classroom instruction in basic education. The control group teacher was free to use the “chess period” any way he/she wanted, but the period was usually used for reading, math or social studies instruction. The control groups thus had more reading instruction than the chess groups. Even so, the chess groups did better on the reading post-test; therefore, the gains in the chess groups were particularly impressive.

Students who participated in a school chess club showed twice the improvement of non-chess players in Reading and Mathematics between third and fifth grades.

Researchers and educators have questioned what causes this growth. The Venezuelan study claimed: “Chess develops a new form of thinking, and this exercise is what contributes to increase the intelligence quotient.”

Why does chess have this impact? Briefly, there appear to be at least seven significant factors: 1) Chess accommodates all modality strengths. 2) Chess provides a far greater quantity of problems for practice. 3) Chess offers immediate punishments and rewards for problem solving. 4) Chess creates a pattern or thinking system that, when used faithfully, breeds success. The chess playing students had become accustomed to looking for more and different alternatives, which resulted in higher scores in fluency and originality. 5) Competition. Competition fosters interest, promotes mental alertness, challenges all students, and elicits the highest levels of achievement (Stephan, 1988). 6) A learning environment organized around games has a positive affect on students' attitudes toward learning. This affective dimension acts as a facilitator of cognitive achievement (Allen & Main, 1976).

Instructional gaming is one of the most motivational tools in the good teacher's repertoire. Chess motivates them to become willing problem solvers and spend hours quietly immersed in logical thinking. These same young people often cannot sit still for fifteen minutes in the traditional classroom. 7) Chess supplies a variety and quality of problems. As Langen (1992) states: “The problems that arise in the 70-90 positions of the average chess game are, moreover, new. Contexts are familiar, themes repeat, but game positions never do. This makes chess good grist for the problem-solving mill.”

Rob Roy of Connecticut: “Children with special problems can also learn chess. I taught a successful course for emotionally and educationally disadvantaged children in the Waterbury schools and used chess as a way for them to learn and practice self-control.It was like turning on switches in their heads. You see the child looking at a problem, breaking it down, and then putting the whole thing back together. The process involves recall, analysis, judgment and abstract reasoning.”

So if the above paragraph is true and it is,
how much more so a game played in 3D!
When playing a game in 3D, it teaches someone to think dimensionally or spatial thinking. After all, the world is in 3D. Therefore 'Technical Drawing' or 'Interior Decorating' all require spatial thinking because there is cubical space in a room not just floor space!

Some have said, after playing a few games in 3D, they did not want to go back to a regular flat board. You don't have to be a master at these games to reap the rewards as mentioned in the list on the right. So give it a try.

So can the brain multitask? What is multitasking? Is it good or bad?