Suzanne's Mom's Blog

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The Simpsons play chess, too.

One of my grandsons lives and breathes chess. He will represent his state and age group in a national competition in Grand Rapids this July. I told him his idea of beach reading is Ten Thousand Tried and True Pawn Structures to Terrify Your Opponent, and he couldn’t disagree.

Turns out, he is not alone.

Hannah Natanson writes at the Washington Post, “Jeffrey Otterby, a middle school teacher in Illinois, is facing an epidemic of student distraction. When his seventh-graders are supposed to be learning social studies, they are glued to their school-issued Chromebooks. He has taken to standing in the back of the room to monitor their screens, where he can see the online game they’re all playing:

“Chess.

“ ‘I guess I’m happier they are playing chess rather than some shoot-’em-up game. Actually, I love it,’ said Otterby, a chess enthusiast. ‘I just need them to do it at a better time.’ …

“Across the country, students from second grade to senior year have stumbled across a new obsession, which is, in fact, a centuries-old game. Interviews with teachers and students in eight states paint a picture of captivated students squeezing games in wherever and whenever they can: at lunch, at recess and illicitly during lessons, a phenomenon that is at once bemusing, frustrating and delighting teachers.

“Data from Chess.com, whose usership is the highest it’s ever been, and anecdotal evidence nationwide suggest a fervid, growing base of young users. This month’s U.S. Chess Federation National High School Championships in D.C. had to add overflow rooms to accommodate a record 1,750 attendees — spurring fears of a shortage of participation medals.

“A California school librarian this year set aside a portion of her library for chess-playing students to indulge their habit during lunchtime. An Illinois teacher bought 24 chess sets to meet surging student demand. And in Hawaii, passion for chess is messing up the morning routine. …

“It’s unclear what is driving the sudden adoration of chess among tweens and teens. Students and chess spectators point to the influence of chess stars and social media personalities such as Levy Rozman, whose YouTube channel GothamChess has more than 3.5 million subscribers; Hikaru Nakamura, an American grandmaster with 1.9 million YouTube subscribers; and the Botez sisters, elite American Canadian players who boast a combined following of close to 2 million on YouTube and Twitch.

“Max Magidin, a 15-year-old attending California’s Burlingame High School, said chess content began showing up on his and his friends’ TikTok feeds early this year. Almost immediately, it seemed everyone in the Bay Area’s San Mateo Union High School District was playing the game — including Magidin, who nowadays fits in between two and four hours of chess daily. …

“Chess has always been something of a faddish sport, said David Mehler, president of the U.S. Chess Center. He recalled a big jump in interest in the early 1990s after the release of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, which tells the story of a 7-year-old chess prodigy and is based on the life of Joshua Waitzkin.

“More recently, chess experienced a spike in popularity among adults at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and again when many people confined to their homes streamed The Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix series, said Erik Allebest, the chief executive and a founder of Chess.com. After the virus arrived, Chess.com’s average daily user count of 1.5 million rose to between 5 million and 7 million, he said. …

“As of April, Chess.com is averaging 12 million users a day, Allebest said. Chess.com does not track users’ ages, Allebest said, but as best he and Chess.com staffers can tell, the latest wave of fandom is dominated by middle and high school students. …

“He sent links to viral Reddit posts in which K-12 teachers lament an outbreak of chess enthusiasm and grade school students share tales of administrative crackdowns limiting access to Chess.com. (The Washington Post found no examples of the latter.) Allebest also noted that his own son, 15, has become a chess convert — not because of his father’s job but through watching GothamChess on YouTube.

“Some teachers have mixed feelings about the clandestine playing of chess in their classes.

“Justine Wewers, a high school geography teacher in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin district, said she has seen a wearying number of student infatuations over the years, including video games, ‘Uno’ and fidget spinners. By comparison, the chess craze strikes her as a healthy activity for young minds. …

“James Brown, a teacher in New York’s South Colonie Central School District, sees nothing but positives. Brown, who teaches computer science and programming at Sand Creek Middle School, has long set Fridays aside as a free period for children to pursue activities of their choice. Since January, many students have chosen chess, leading Brown to buy three more chess sets to augment the 10 he already owned. …

” ‘It’s all things we want to instill in the student,’ Brown said. ‘If they’re doing that on their own, in a format that is fun for them, it ties right into what I’m trying to do. I don’t see it as a distraction; I see it as a benefit.’

“Another benefit of playing chess is its transcendence of social groups, said Maurine Seto, a librarian at California’s Burlingame High School. In early 2023, she said, students started stampeding into her library before school, during lunch and in snatches between classes to play chess at a handful of tables.

“ ‘It pairs different sets of kids together that you don’t normally see,’ Seto said. ‘They come up and say, “Hey, do you wanna play chess?” and I normally would never see those two kids interact.’ ”

More at the Post, here.

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