There are strong indications that people are thinking less and less, and that many now consider a 30-second video too long. But there is also evidence that more people are playing chess than ever before, using it as an educational tool and a form of mental exercise (an approach supported by a growing body of research).
Among its devotees are high-profile figures such as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, tennis player Carlos Alcaraz, comedian David Broncano and soccer players Erling Haaland and Unai Simón. It serves as a source of inspiration in professional sport, for figures such as Pep Guardiola and Ernesto Valverde, and in the arts, for creators ranging from Arturo Pérez-Reverte to Humphrey Bogart, Stanley Kubrick and Miloš Forman. And at least tens of millions of people play it online every month. Why does chess continue to captivate people 15 centuries after the beginning of its documented history?
“There’s something hypnotic about it.” Or: “It’s like a magnet.” “There’s something magical here.” “I don’t know how to play, but the atmosphere is captivating.” These were some of the remarks heard on May 2 at Matadero Madrid, the cultural venue that hosted EL PAÍS’s 50th-anniversary festival. Chess holds a unique place at the newspaper: it is the only column that has appeared every single day for 50 years. Spanish-Iranian woman grandmaster Sara Khadem took on 20 opponents in a simultaneous exhibition after an interview with this reporter. Afterward, only soft background music could be heard, yet many spectators stayed there for more than two hours.
Iran, then known as Persia, served as the bridge between sixth-century India and the court of Baghdad in the seventh century, allowing the Arabs to bring chess to al-Andalus in the eighth and quickly spread it across the Iberian Peninsula, as recently highlighted in an exhibition at Valladolid’s National Sculpture Museum exploring the cultural and artistic journey of chess through history. King Alfonso X of Castile, known as “the Wise,” made it clear in his remarkable Book of Chess, Dice and Tables (1283) that the game was played by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, by men, women and children.
Nearly two centuries later, around 1475 and probably in Valencia, the queen became the most powerful piece on the board. Spaniards then exported the modern version of chess to the Americas and much of Europe, while cleric Ruy López, sponsored by Philip II of Spain, came to be recognized as the game’s first unofficial champion in the mid-16th century.
Almost five centuries later, the strongest chess player is no longer human. It calculates millions of moves per second and can run on a cellphone. Yet chess as a sport is still as meaningful as ever because beauty in chess is often born from imperfection: one player makes a mistake, the other punishes it brilliantly, and together they create a work of art, much like the 570 masterpieces featured in this newspaper’s El Rincón de los Inmortales (Immortals Corner) video series, published every Monday.
Over-the-board tournaments continue to grow. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has 203 member federations, more than any international sports body except those governing soccer, athletics and basketball. But online chess is expanding even faster. Chess.com reports more than 250 million user accounts. Counting only those who play at least once a month, and adding other major platforms such as Lichess and Play Chess, the total reaches tens of millions.
The boom was turbocharged by the pandemic and the global success of The Queen’s Gambit. Netflix has since added two more chess-themed series: Queen of Chess, about Judit Polgár, the only woman ever to rank among the world’s top 10 players, and Chess Mates, about Magnus Carlsen’s unproven cheating allegations against Hans Niemann. Far from being a passing fad, the game’s popularity continues to grow month after month, as does the list of celebrities drawn to it.
The first reason is simple: anyone who falls in love with chess is unlikely ever to be bored again. The number of possible chess games (a 1 followed by 123 zeros) exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the known universe (a 1 followed by 80 zeros). Chess also intersects with an extraordinary range of fields: education, artificial intelligence, mathematics, teaching, psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, film, literature and international politics. Few human activities can boast more than 1,500 years of documented history, making chess a gold mine for journalists and storytellers. Those 15 centuries have produced hundreds of characters worthy of novels and films.
Consider a few examples of the extraordinary range of subjects that fall within what might be called chess culture. The game has played a significant role in the development of artificial intelligence, from Alan Turing’s pioneering work in 1947 to Demis Hassabis’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024. It was banned by the Spanish Inquisition, by the Chinese government during the final years of Mao Zedong’s rule, by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and, today, by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Globally, there is roughly one female player for every 10 male players. Alongside music and mathematics, it is one of the fields most closely associated with child prodigies. There is also strong scientific evidence that chess develops both cognitive and emotional intelligence and helps slow age-related cognitive decline, potentially delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Former world champion Garry Kasparov, now living in exile in New York, ranks high on Vladimir Putin’s list of enemies. His great rival, Anatoly Karpov, a lawmaker for Putin’s party, was found unconscious on a dark street shortly after publicly opposing the invasion of Ukraine.
Nearly 1,300 years after chess formed part of the education of Andalusian nobles, Spain is at the forefront of efforts to introduce the game as an educational tool, thanks above all to a rare unanimous resolution passed by Congress on Feb. 11, 2015. The country also leads in the social and therapeutic uses of chess, particularly in the Spanish region of Extremadura, where it is used in programs addressing cognitive aging, prison rehabilitation, addiction recovery, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and Down syndrome, among others. And since the enormous success of the 1987 Kasparov-Karpov World Championship match in Seville, whose final game drew 13 million television viewers in Spain, the country has also hosted more international chess tournaments than any other, with several hundred held each year.
It is an encouraging picture, one that contrasts sharply with the culture of intellectual laziness fostered by the misuse of social media and, more recently, ChatGPT and similar tools. Millions of people now simply copy, paste and submit material with little original thought when asked by a boss or teacher to complete a task, raising questions about whether Homo sapiens will continue to deserve its name.
Goethe, one of history’s greatest men of letters, set a high bar when he said: “Chess is the touchstone of the intellect.” Yet an Indian proverb reminds us that mastery is not required to enjoy the game: “Chess is a sea where a gnat may drink from and an elephant may bathe in.” Perhaps the German master Siegbert Tarrasch, one of the world’s best players a century ago, captured its essence best: “Chess, like love and music, has the power to make men happy.”
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