Chess: The Ultimate Thinking Game

Chess is a board game so full of ideas that people have been playing it for over a thousand years, and nobody has solved it yet. Two armies of sixteen pieces face each other, and every piece moves in its own way: rooks glide in straight lines, bishops slide on diagonals, knights hop in an L shape, the queen goes anywhere, and pawns bravely march forward one step at a time.

The goal is not to capture the king - it is to trap him so thoroughly that he cannot escape, which is called checkmate. That single idea shapes everything. Good players fight for the center of the board, because pieces in the middle reach more squares. They develop their pieces early so the whole army joins the fight, and they protect their own king by tucking him behind a wall of pawns.

Chess trains the exact thinking muscles this whole subject is about. You learn to look ahead - if I move here, what happens next? You learn that every move has a cost, and that the strongest-looking move is not always the smartest. And you learn to lose well: every great player has lost thousands of games, and each loss was a lesson wearing a disguise. The board is always ready for the next one.