Chess and AS

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I could write a book on this. Maybe one day I will.

The kids on the spectrum I've taught fall roughly into three categories.

Some of them can't hack the game at all due to problems with attention or learning difficulties.

Some are potentially good but lack competitiveness and are reluctant to play other kids.

For some, chess is, as it was with me many years ago, a lifeline.

The chess world, which I've inhabited for more than 40 years, exists, it seems to me, somewhere between the AS world and the real (NT) world. The traits I have which make me very different from most in the real world are, shall we say, not exceptional in the chess world.

The English writer and International Master Bill Hartston said something to the effect that chess doesn't make people mad: it keeps mad people sane. I see exactly what he means.

I've been working in the chess world full time for some years now (although I'm currently branching out into other areas of education) as a tutor/teacher/webmaster/writer/editor/proofreader/controller/arbiter and occasional, very reluctant, player.

If any of you out there care to visit my website you'll find free online interactive chess instruction taking you from learning the moves to club standard, free downloadable chess books, five computer programs and much else.

If you have any specific questions feel free to email or pm me and I'll do my best to reply.

For me, chess is simply wonderful. I don't play competitively anymore. My nerves are shot, I can't handle the stress. But the beauty of the game! Logic, justice, truth. It's all there on 64 squares. When I was a teenager, ridiculed, humiliated, good at nothing - along came chess and - oh my goodness - I was good at something. It was perfect for me. I didn't have to talk. I didn't have to look at people or engage in small talk. My lack of coordination didn't matter so long as I could move the pieces. Really. Chess made it possible to get through those awful years. I think Bobby Fischer was an aspie too. Beware though - it can be addictive. The particular intellectual stimulation that chess involves can be so pleasurable that you don't want to stop it.

I learned a lot from chess too that I apply in my work today. It's a way of thinking and fosters an ability to focus for hours on something totally. Bottom line. I owe a great deal to chess.

I have good chess understanding, but often lack the patience to apply it to real games.

Bobcat, I could echo that word for word.

But I DID get addicted, although I never much cared for playing because, like you, I found it too stressful. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to get involved in other aspects of chess: teaching, writing and organizing. Through that I was able to give something back to the game that gave me so much.

It was partly through teaching kids with AS that I found out about myself and finally came to terms with what happened in my own childhood.

Dyspergian,

Coming to terms with my childhood has been difficult. I have little contact with kids. It takes all of my energy to keep myself together and do the kind of work I do. But I'll retire soon and then do volunteer work, with animals mostly. We have a lot in common. Take care.

Bobcat

Thanks - I will.

It was discovering (as a result of the Fischer boom in the 1970s) that I was able to relate well to children that transformed my life.

It's strange how life plays tricks on you. As a teenager I couldn't wait to grow up so that I wouldn't have to have anything to do with kids any more!


Good luck and take care yourself.

I also have a high IQ and can't play chess, or just about any other game!

I studied chess for 6 years and I'm really good at it, and I have a low IQ, so I think. I don't think chess and intelligence go hand in hand, it's just your willingness to understand the game.

I have a very high IQ as well, but I was also the loser in my class. Once I knew the information (After only reading it once) I would not do the homework. It was more than the homework was boring, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I think part of my reason was because I was made fun of for being a brain with flesh around it, so I didn't want to show anyone up. I got bullied a lot. I still do. But I'm ok with it now. So that was my I had all F's

I think grades should be based on ability not homework. Maybe once someone can pass the test on it, they shouldn't have to do the work...

I now remember when and why I stopped playing chess. My dad took me to a chess club that was held at someone's house. They had all sorts of neat boards and pieces. I liked playing, but any time I was waiting to play someone I got really distracted by everything else in the place. I ended up wandering off and investigating random stuff. Like I would spend 20 minutes just staring at the pieces of one chess board, fascinated at the way a set was carved.

I think we went once a week for a month or so. Over time the novelty of being able to play chess against someone other than my dad and brother lessened a bit. People I didn't know tried talking to me and unless it was about chess I wasn't paying them any attention, because I was there for chess club. I fidgeted and was really antsy unless I was currently playing. My discomfort grew to the point of I didn't want to go there because of the unease I felt when not actually playing rather than any disinterest in the game.

I didn't want to go anymore because I felt uncomfortable, not because I didn't want to play chess. I don't think I could adequately describe my feelings at the time, so we stopped going because I didn't want to go. If I realized why I felt that way back then I could have done something with it and worked on my unease rather than running from it.

I find it fascinating to be able to realize these types of things now. It is like a cloud of confusion had surrounded me and I didn't even know it. Now that I understand more I am able to see a bit further through the fog with each new realization.

Criss, I don't mean to sound rude here but let me say I think your chess playing skills or lack of them are nothing to do with AS. I am an excellent chess player myself, I got that way through years of playing the game and much experience. Chess is just not some game you can suddenly play like a pro. Namaste.

I'm no good at chess (or other strategy ganes) either.

This is probably down to a combination of the following:

The chess pieces are 3-D as opposed to flat counters, & I have problems thinking in 3-D.

As someone posted above, I cannot look more than a couple of moves ahead. Therefore I tend to move "at random" at the beginning of the game until I can discern a possible strategy, and assume the other person is doing the same.

Then once I have decided what I am going to do, I get annoyed when my opponent stops me, because I don't have a "Plan B".

All this is probably my executive dysfunction preventing me from thinking in possibilities.

Hear, hear.

hear hear...
i have the potential to be better at chess...and i know how to play...but am not very good.
my last (NT) boyfriend and his (NT) friend, would sit around playing game after game for hours...When his friend was not around, he would play chess with me....sorta like bouncing a ball against a wall rather than playing a real game.

I have poor 3-D thinking too, but my recall for 2-D information like text is almost photographic.

In the December 2007 issue of Chess Life magazine, in the column First Moves, Jonathan Hilton writes about 19-year-old William John Barrow, who was diagnosed as autustic at age 2, and is now a chess expert -- that means he has an Elo rating of over 2000 -- and is also doing very well in college as a pre-med student. http://main.uschess.org/content/view/8030/426

Not to diminsh young Mr Barrow's achievemant, but I was surprised that Chess Life made such a big deal over this, because I had assumed that a significant percentage of the world's best chess players, and mathematicians and physicians and so forth, were autistic or Asperger. Perhaps I was wrong. Or perhaps I'm right, and most of these top-level chess players and mathematicians etc are never diagnosed, because it would never occur to most people that they might be autistic or Aspie, because they're so successful, and because there's a stigma attached to autistics and Aspie's and an assumption that we're handicapped.

My interest in chess can be divided into three stages. I learned the moves at a very young age -- I was born in 1961 and probably was playing chess by 1965 or so -- and played with family members and friends, but never found it particularly interesting. I won a school chess tournament in fifth or sixth grade, but it was an isolated rural school with no real chess culture to speak of. I pretty much gave up playing by the time I was a teenager, because it was no fun for me.

Then in the mid-90's I started to play chess again, and it began to become very interesting. I started to study chess books. I had trouble finding opponents to pay with me, until I got online in 1997, when I found all the games I could handle over the Internet. For ten years I played almost exclusively online. I studied some chess books. My chess was neither unusally good nor spectacularly bad.

Third phase: in 2007 I joined a chess club. I joined the United States Chess Federation. I've been played in rated tournaments and I have a provisional USCF quick-play rating somewhere over 1200. Which is far from spectacular, but there is no doubt that the club has made me a better chess player. It's been amazing how much my chess has improved as a result of irl contact with good chess players. Several of the club members are Class A (1800-2000) or higher.

I don't know how good I'll be, but I'm sure that I'll eventually be rated a bit higher than 1200.

I also don't know whether my positive experience with the chess club here means that I can expect chess clubs in general to be a good thing for me. I'll be moving soon to a town which has 2 chess clubs, including one which is open 7 days a week, which sounds pretty sweet. Here there's just one club which meets once a week, and a couple of others with no regular meetings, which host tournaments and such several times a year.

I get along really well with the other club members, which seems to support my suspicion that there is a higher percentage of autie's and Aspie's among chess players than among the general population -- also, several of them seem to be -- like us, autistic or Asperger. A lot of us are undiagnosed in the US, especially those of us over 30 years old or so. I'm 46 and I was first diagnosed as Asperger last year.

I had been feeling a bit isolated before joining the chess club, and if there are some others of you who feel you're a bit low on 3-D contact with other humans, maybe a chess club could be a positive thing for you, as it has been for me.