Studies repeatedly show that chess skills correlate with high reading ability, as well as memory and maths skills. The most direct career application would be computer programming, Pein says. “Chess is about pattern recognition,” he explains. “And if you say to a kid ‘you’re going to learn coding’, they might sit and do it if you’re lucky.
If you say, ‘here’s a game you can play with your friends and siblings and you’ll probably end up beating me’, then they’ll learn these attributes through play.
It gives children skills for the new economy.”Perhaps our most prodigious coder is Demis Hassabis, a London-raised child chess genius who moved into computer science and neuroscience.
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