A wonderful piece by Tom Vanderbilt in Nautilus about learning chess with his four year old daughter:
“It wasn’t long before it struck me that chess seemed to be a game for the young. When my daughter began doing scholastic tournaments, I would chat up other parents and ask whether they played—usually the reply was an apologetic shrug and a smile. I would explain that I too was learning to play, and the resulting tone was cheerily patronizing: Good luck with that! Reading about an international tournament, I was struck by a suggestion that a grandmaster had passed his peak. He was in his 30s. We are used to athletes being talked about in this way. But a mind game like chess?”
Read the whole piece, it’s a good reflection on how our brains change with age. I particularly like this sentence:
“As we get older, there is one thing at which we get worse: Being a novice.”
I always found it depressing that my phone, even set to the lowest level, can beat me at chess.
