Playing a Chess game online can help you develop some important skills. Know more about those skills that can make you a formidable competitor while playing chess online.
Playing chess online is a fun thing. Beyond that, it comes with implementing, developing and mastering some skills that can further help you in routine life as chess is known to be the ‘Game of the Mind’. The rules and techniques involved in it can effectively exercise and develop both sides of your brain.
Playing this game online is not only an effective way to develop some skills but can be a lot of fun too. While playing a chess game online, you get to flex your visualization and calculation abilities, along with learning key tactics. During a chess game, you learn to perform a proper evaluation of a scenario, with timely calculations, develop a bigger picture vision and address threats.
In this article, let us go through top skills you can master by playing a chess game online.
1. Visualization
Chess can help improve visualization of future moves and positions. You can master the skill of anticipating future positions that you need to take based on the actual positions before you and whether those moves bring you closer to winning the game.
For this level of mastery in an online chess game, you can try doing some pure visualization exercises like taking some random positions, reading some moves of notation, then formulating a new position from scratch to check whether your visualized moves & positions are correct or not. This broad vision helps you to avoid chess blindness, which is the term for blunders that seem obvious to the opponent (but not you), who then takes immediate action to inflict damage to you.
2. Time Management
This skill is a must for those looking to master the game of chess as you have to implement several tasks together, with an eye on the clock. These include analyzing your position on the chessboard, keeping an eye on the opponent’s moves, planning your strategic attack, and making your next move. You learn to implement these within a stipulated time period. While you may take a lot of time to make certain moves, when you are playing a specific format such as speed chess, you have to be really good at time management.
3. Good Memory
This skill helps in the ability to perform calculations on when to pause, compare moves, when to backtrack some moves, etc. When the game requires you to pause and plan your next move, you also need to recall the latest attacking chess moves & maneuvers of your opponent so that you do not lose sight of a potential attack, on one of your chess pieces, that might go unnoticed. Such a situation helps you to improve your memory. Also, when you are playing against known players, you would do well to remember their strengths as well as weaknesses.
4. Sense of Analysis
While an online chess game involves a lot of futuristic planning, you should be able to analyze your current position and understand whether it is more favorable to you or your opponent. The idea should always be to win every move that makes your opponent take a backfoot. This helps in mastering skills helpful in the analysis of any real time-critical situations.
5. Evaluation
The skill to evaluate accurately helps you clearly visualize your future position. Since there are chances that you may realize at the end of your move that you under or over-estimated the strength of your position. This may happen due to several reasons during the game, such as fatigue due to the prolonged game, or maybe due to a long thought over a single move. This skill can help you visualize the future position so accurately that you can make a winning move by making yourself familiar with related common patterns in the game.
6. Problem Solving
The game of chess helps you get the problem-solving skills as it needs you to decide which move will be effective on the chessboard. You may not always make a winning move and some of your moves might land you in trouble. This is where a solid strategy will help you to overcome short-term problems on the chessboard. In your attempt to win the game, you learn to solve problems that you encounter.
7. Keeping Cool Under Stressful Situation
When you need to play this game under time restrictions, you may tend to feel the stress of making an effective move before the time ends. This particular situation helps you learn to keep your calm in order to carry out winning moves by thinking and calculating the best possible moves. Mastering this skill further helps you make decisions under any sort of pressure in real-life situations.
8. Patience
Patience is key when you play chess online. There can be an average of 40 moves that need to be played in a game, wherein each and every move needs to be made carefully with thought-through calculations, planning and execution. Also, there is no shortcut to winning a chess game. You have to apply your strategies, stay strong in defense, and wait for the right opportunity to attack the opponent. This brings in the virtue of patience while staying focused on every move during the game.
Final Thoughts
You can play a chess game online to test your ability to strategize and also to master a few crucial skills along the way. Once you play chess online on a consistent basis, you would realize that you are getting better at the above-discussed skills. Download MPL app now to play online chess and to experience the thrill, excitement, and fun.
