FEED YOUR MIND (self-reference alert):

 I would argue that chess is of positive and absolute social benefit, and that it would be a major step forward in the solution of social problems and unrest in urban civilisations, if chess were not only encouraged, but also added to school sports curricula, like cricket, swimming, hockey, football or rugby in England.

The American thinker, Robert Ardrey (1908-1980) in his work The Social Contract -- not to be confused with the book of the same name by the 18th-century apostle of the Enlightenment, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) -- suggested that in all higher animals, including humans, there are basic inborn needs for three satisfactions: identity, stimulation and security. Ardrey described them in terms of their opposites: anonymity, boredom and anxiety, maintaining that a society or government so designed, as to present its members or citizens with equal opportunity to achieve identity, stimulation and security, will survive, whereas one that fails in this psychological function will, in the long run, be selected out.

Ardrey wrote that, like some monstrous whale devouring plankton by the acre, so the organisation of modern life devours the individual. Specialisation reduces the individual to a needle lost in a bureaucratic and organisational haystack. Classification will place the individual with all beans of equal size.

In support of Ardrey, I challenge any reader who has had a complaint or a query directed to a large organisation, such as a bank, airline or some branch of government, to deny that they have been at some time ignored, or given a circular, quasi-Kafkaesque run-around, leading, via multiple buck-passing, back to the point of origin.

I propose that mind sports, such as chess, bridge and draughts, made available in schools and clubs, can help to solve such problems as erosion of identity. Winning a game does wonders for one's sense of personal identity and victory does tend to cancel out memory of the losses. Likewise stimulation, and where the individual is personally committed, this seems to me a stimulation of a generally higher order than the vicarious variety provided by mass tribal attendance at, for example, a football match. What can be more stimulating than personal involvement in an intellectual struggle, where the result depends entirely on you alone and not on some umpire or referee or touch judge who might rob you of a well-merited victory by a fatuous decision, as so regularly happens in football for example, even with the dreaded VAR.

In chess you can clearly see the outcome of your efforts and, above all, you are personally responsible for the result. In this sense, the Stakhanovite chess promoter, Malcolm Pein, with his charity Chess in Schools and Communities, has performed inspirational miracles in getting chess accepted in mainstream education.

With the problem of increasingly empty time (i.e. a potential stimulation-vacuum) we need an activity that occupies time in a meaningful, stimulating and identity-boosting fashion and that will also act as a counterweight to the often drab and repetitive tasks of mundane social existence. So why not encourage chess in the young? It will do more for them than "waste" mtheir time.

An article in The Times newspaper of September 7 Chess Mania lures millions of players to get on board helpfully hammered home many of these points. The author Jack Malvern pointed out that chess sets are selling out quickly, as the TV hit Queen's Gambit and the pandemic , causing empty time, are together causing demand to surge in dramatic fashion.

Anya Taylor-Joy's portrayal of the chess prodigy could have been a short-term boost, but insiders assert that enthusiasm is still growing at alarming speed, while the pandemic has forced people to find new ways to entertain themselves, and thereby driven vast numbers to play and follow chess online. Thus, Chess.com  , the gaming platform, according to The Times, has 72 million members worldwide, up from 50 million in December 2020 and a colossal increase from the 20 million of four years ago. Lichess , a free chess gaming service, recorded 5 million games in March 2020, but had shot to 100 million a year later.

The annual Norway Grandmaster Tournament attracted 2.5 million television viewers, in Norway alone.  The Times went on to catalogue a further series of plus points in favour of chess, including:

• The boxers Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson, actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stephen Fry, Humphrey Bogart and Director Stanley Kubrick were, or are, committed chess fans.

• Chess players burn upwards of 6,000 calories per game during tournaments based on breathing rates, increased blood pressure and muscle contractions, according to Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University researcher (2019).

• Learning chess improved reading test scores and reading performance in primary school pupils, a two-year study in the US found in 2011.

• Playing chess has the potential to raise a person's IQ scores and strengthen problem-solving skills, according to research by Peter Dauvergne, Professor of International Relations at The University of British Columbia.

• Elderly people who engage in mentally challenging games, such as chess and bridge, are two and a half times less likely to develop dementia, a US study found in 2006 (Professor Joe Verghese of the Albert Einstein Institute of New York).

• Chess could even enhance the creative part of the brain. The Times article cites a 2017 study in India, saying it helped to give children "the ability to think divergently".

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