I like playing chess. I won a tournament when I was 16 years old. I do not like the ego-boosting dimension of it. I forced a draw once in a tournament and I saw the father of my opponent almost crucify his son because of it.
I was playing against a young boy of about 12 and I was myself about 17. I was not accustomed to timers and the whole surrounding of high tumult was distracting me. I was losing to this boy and frankly, he was better than me. Then his father finished his own game and came by watching us play. He was jubilating over his son winning our game. I was losing but I saw a way out.
Since he was young, he was surely lacking the experience, so I aimed at a draw and hoped he wouldn’t notice. I succeeded and made a draw by “no movement possible”, in front of his father.
You should have seen the father’s face and the frowning. That discouraged me to play in tournaments forever. I also play rarely against a human beings because of the ego dimension.
When I was in my forties, I played against the son of a lady friend of mine because she asked me to teach him a little about his newly discovered passion. I played a few games and won because I do not believe it to be good teaching when you let somebody wins at any activity. After about three games, he never spoke to me again.
>> “But while the existence of a relationship between general cognitive ability and chess-skill is clear, is this simply because intelligent people are more likely to engage in the game of chess, or does engaging in chess make people smarter?”
theconversation.com/does-playing-chess-make-you-smarter-a-look-at-the-evidence-76062