When I first introduced my six-year-old to backgammon, his reaction was delight, quickly followed by confusion and suspicion. It has dice! Like Mousetrap! But also: loads of plain counters, an extremely non-intuitive board, and a conspicuous lack of mice, penguins or pies. Could this be – I could see the thought briefly rumple his perfect pink brow – an attempt to teach him something? Well, yes, my sweet boy, yes it was. Sorry. I think it’s sort of my job.
I mention this because Rishi Sunak, whose stance on backgammon I’m unsure of, is engaged in attempt to teach us all something by building the national interest in chess: with plans that reportedly include expanding instruction in schools, installing 100 chess tables in public parks, and financially backing the English Chess Federation.
“It’s a great skill, and it’s really good for helping you think, and it’s a great hobby,” he told US students 3D-printing their own pawns, during a recent visit to Washington DC. Maybe not that great for helping you think of interesting adjectives on the spot, then, but who cares about that? It’s probably good for thinking strategically or problem-solving or something – the Bletchley Park codebreakers, apparently, loved getting the odd game in between bouts of trying to crack Enigma.
This is one of those policy inventions that probably sounded absolutely amazing in a 3am strategy meeting while everyone was high on cans of Monster energy drink. It sounds good, it reaffirms the PM’s commitment to making the country cleverer, and it costs basically nothing. A hundred chess boards across the country’s many thousands of public parks!
Chess is also having an extended moment in the spotlight, with high-level players getting millions of views for game analysis and grandmaster gossip on YouTube and Twitch. Chess drama The Queen’s Gambit was an unexpected global hit for Netflix in 2020. Some of the most popular internet personalities you’ve never heard of have their own avatars on the Chess.com app, and even chessboxing is making a comeback. A plan that appeals to the kids and their education-anxious parents? Checkmate, Mr Starmer.
Here’s the problem with all this, though: it’s unclear that getting good at chess helps you do much except … win at chess (which, granted, is what the English Chess Federation is hoping for, delivering some more grandmasters along the way). But to Sunak’s notion that it has a wider benefit, there are some studies that show it can improve young players’ theory of mind and abstract problem-solving, but one detailed meta-analysis suggests that much of its apparent positive influence might be a placebo, saying that there are “serious doubts about the real effectiveness of its practice”.
Improvements in memory, for instance, are typically domain-specific: chess masters are great at recalling complex board configurations, but not much better at remembering shopping lists than anyone else. There’s also a whopping great opportunity cost attached to getting really good at chess, as most enthusiasts will happily admit: fine if you’re in it for the love of the game, but less so if you’re expecting it to pay off in other ways.
Smart People Play Chess is a TV and cinema trope because it’s so easy to convey: show your main character swapping bon mots over a board, and it’s instantly established they’re clever. In real life, though, there’s every chance that another, less established pastime can do just as much for your brain. If the Bletchley Park boys were in business today, they’d probably be playing Street Fighter 6.
Which brings us back to backgammon. Life, as I’m not quite ready to tell my son yet, is a game of asymmetrical advantages and absolutely wild unfairness. It’s also filled with heaping dollops of luck, and mostly relies on us having incomplete information. This makes it a lot more similar to dice-based strategy games than chess – and arguably even more similar to poker, though I’m not quite ready to go there with a six-year-old.
Backgammon, arguably, is the best of these, with historical resonances that put chess to shame: boards representing older versions of the game have been found in the ruins of Mesopotamia, and Egyptian tombs.
And, as it turns out, backgammon is great with a small child: the rules are quick to pick up, and there’s a satisfying race-to-the-finish style to beginner-level play that’s a lot more satisfying than the grinding nastiness of an extended chess endgame. Meanwhile, the randomness of the dice rolls (alongside my own incompetence at the game) means that there’s a chance the boy can beat me without me exactly letting him win – and there’s an outside chance that if I don’t overdo it, I might be able to sneak a bit of entry-level probability in while he’s revelling in my strategic idiocy.
I still play chess with him, obviously – he’s more into Fischer random rules than studying his Ruy López openings – but I think the best way to prepare him for the world is probably playing him at anything he wants.
Cluedo? Great for deductive reasoning. Pachisi? All about the brutality of life. Penguin Trap? An object lesson in the dangers of hubris, and a terrifying reminder of the realities of the climate crisis (when he’s older). Guess Who? You’ll have to ask him, he absolutely thrashes me at it. So here’s my plea to the PM, and anyone else who still thinks of chess as the shortcut to a more refined intellectual life: broaden your horizons a bit, and play another game for once. I hear Street Fighter 6 is excellent.
Joel Snape is a freelance writer
