In 2022 Cristiano Ronaldo broke the record for the most-liked Instagram post for a sportsperson. The photo he shared featured two of the biggest footballers of all time: himself and Lionel Messi. But for a cohort of those who hit the like button the photo’s appeal lay not in Ronaldo, Messi, or their rivalry, but rather in the way in which that rivalry was depicted: over a game of chess. Crude symbolism, perhaps, but also confirmation of something many have known for years: chess is cool now.
Of course it was more than just an Instagram post that started the trend. In 2020 and 2021 Netflix’s hugely popular TV series The Queen’s Gambit created something of a chess frenzy, and sent sales of chessboards soaring. By then streams of chess games were becoming mainstream, and novel ways of playing the game were entering the fold.
There was PogChamps, a series of amateur chess tournaments, streamed on Twitch, in which internet personalities played rapid games. There was chessboxing, as strange as the name suggests: a combination of chess and boxing. There was Mittens, an AI chess-playing cat, who wooed the chess community with her combination of playing ability, hypnotic eyes, and strange patter (“All chess players eventually crumble under my mighty paws ... I mean, miaow! Hehehe,” she might message her opponent mid-game).
Publicity of the more negative kind also abounded, with a high-profile cheating scandal in 2022. By January 2023, the website chess.com had risen to 10 million active members, and its servers were struggling to cope with traffic that had almost doubled in the space of a month.
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Come September interest will be further sparked in the game with the release of Sally Rooney’s chess-themed new novel Intermezzo, which tells of Ivan, a 22-year-old competitive chess player.
At Trinity College Dublin chess society sign-ups have been steadily increasing over the past three years. “Two years ago we had about 180,” says chair Jacob Barron. “This year we had about 250.”
Barron started playing when he was seven, and joined a club aged 12. He feels that in Ireland, generally there’s been a rise in events and tournaments. “Two, three years ago there would have been 20 or 30 and now there’s about 60.” He points out that there are bars that host chess nights, such as Board, a newish bar serving only non-alcoholic drinks in Harold’s Cross, Dublin. “It’s definitely getting more popular.”
For him using your brain for chess has a creative aspect to it. “I could be spending two to three hours a day on my phone, but on the train I can just pull out a game of chess and just relax or think about something for 10 to 15 minutes.”
For Barron there are also other benefits to playing chess. “I think a lot of it is social. Especially if you’re, say 17, 18, you can travel a distance by yourself – I met a lot of people just going to tournaments. You sort of have to get out of your comfort zone, talking to people who are probably as nerdy as you about chess.”
Trinity chess society hosts a mix of tournament nights, where players build up points over a succession of games, and social chess nights, where casual players and beginners can get involved. Earlier this year the society hosted a rapid-play tournament and invited players from all over to take part.
“We had 120 people and we held it in the Goldsmith Hall. We plan to do one a year. And it was quite interesting because we had a set of digital boards, so we had someone streaming it the whole time.”
On the day former world champion and streamer from Limerick Diana Mirza provided commentary. The streaming and rapid-play elements of tournaments like this have large appeal among young chess enthusiasts.
As in much of the chess world a lot more men than women are involved in Trinity chess society. “The ratio in the society is probably 90/10 [men to women],” Barron says. “Although the women who go probably go every week.”
Why does he think so few women are involved? “It’s been the same way for years. I think it’s a psychological side – how you grow up.”
At tournaments he feels the ratio is more or less the same, though among younger children the girls are “getting more into it now”.
Dr Michelle Cowley-Cunningham, a postdoctoral researcher at Dublin City University, says that from a gender perspective boys and girls are still encouraged differently in terms of the interests they have. She says that this is a cultural trait, associated with first-world countries. “You don’t see that [gendered] effect as much in the developing world or in countries where chess is a cultural asset. The women there are phenomenal.”
For years experts have wondered whether there is “learning transfer” from chess to academic areas of life (in other words, does chess make you brainier?) Dr Cowley-Cunningham says while very recent studies suggest modest transfer, mostly for maths, there’s little evidence otherwise.
When it comes to chess’s effects on attention spans, however, there are green shoots in the research. A recent study by Hilario Blasco-Fontecilla and colleagues suggests chess might decrease the severity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among young people. (Some 44 children aged six to 16 were studied. After an 11-week chess-training programme they had improved in SNAP-IV and CPRS-HI – these are rating scales designed to measure ADHD).
“It’s pilot data so the samples are quite small – but it is statistically significant,” says Dr Cowley-Cunningham.
The most notable benefits of chess, Dr Cowley-Cunningham says, are associated with wellbeing. “Chess is a game and it’s a type of play, and psychologists and educators have a lot of evidence and a lot to say about the benefits of play.”
These include: teaching young people to resolve conflict without the intervention of adults, encouraging them to listen to other children, and helping them to develop competitive spirit within a rules-based environment and more.
“If children learn: I won a game today, I solved that puzzle today, that’s going to contribute to a child’s self-efficacy, which is a fancy word for a child’s confidence,” she says. “That would not be unique to chess, it could be football, it could be GAA, it could be sewing, knitting, but the child now has a memory of being able to win. And with chess what might be distinctive is that [chess] is perceived as intellectual. And that child might say, if I can do this, if I put my mind to something...it’s not learning transfer but it’s a ‘belief-in-me’ transfer.”
When it comes to the competitive side of chess in Ireland, it’s impossible to get far without talking about Dublin’s Gonzaga College. For years the school has been known as a chess powerhouse. It has two International Masters on its past pupils list, Mark Quinn and Sam Collins, and boasts a six-year streak in the Millfield International Chess Tournament. A chess-playing tradition that was started in the 1970s by music teacher Gerry Murphy has continued into the present day, with teacher and past pupil Daniel Lynch leading the charge since Murphy’s retirement.
Current pupil Jason Liu (15) will start third year in September. He has just returned from the Scottish International Open, where he defeated both an International Master and a Grandmaster. He first started playing chess when he was 10 and says the best parts are “probably winning and making new friends”.
A unique aspect of chess is how it brings together players of vastly different ages. And the more experienced player is by no means a shoe-in to win. Current Irish over-50s champion Jonathan O’Connor (61), learned to play when he was 14 and loves that it is a lifelong endeavour that brings together diverse people and age groups.
“I can go anywhere in the world, walk into a chess club and make friends, even if nobody can talk the same language. [And] chess players play people of all different ages. Recently I lost to a very strong eight-year-old. My school classmates who played rugby have long ago stopped playing against anyone, let alone children and teenagers.”
Liu says that “the older players, some of them are good, but they play a bit slowly so it’s easier to play against them.” He thinks the optimal playing age is “maybe in your 20s [to] 40s because you have experience and you’re not old yet”.
When asked if he gets nervous for big games, he says “sometimes at the start, but because you play so much it’s like the same every time”. Some of the ways chess helps in life are “concentration, and maybe dealing with losing,” he says.
This tallies with the experience of Hugo Sweetman (12) and Adam Darker (11), friends and classmates at St Catherine’s National School in Dublin. Both are eager chess players who are not fazed by losing.
Darker, current Irish under-12s champion, says that he got better by practising and not being discouraged if he had a bad result. “If you play a couple of bad games or you have a really bad loss I would say don’t be discouraged and keep on playing.”
Sweetman points out that “if you play a better player, you keep on getting better. But if you play players that are worse than you then you’ll never really get better.”
Since third class both Darker and Sweetman have been taught by April Cronin, a retired principal, chess coach and former Irish champion. With Cronin’s guidance they’ve been able to hone their skills and travel around the world playing chess.
Aoife Clarke, Adam’s mother, says that chess is really good for them, but she points out that compared to other sports like soccer it can be time consuming. “It’s a lot of commitment for chess parents. The tournaments are not just a morning, it’s a full weekend of all-day [games]. So it’s quite an intense sport for them.”
But it has been great for making friends and meeting people from different walks of life. This month Darker and Sweetman will take part in the Glorney Cup in England.
“We sometimes play football and stuff in between games,” says Sweetman.
Darker says chess is becoming more and more popular among his peers. “At my age we’re kind of the age group where everyone plays.”
Darker has many pastimes – football, swimming, hurling – but chess is his favourite. “Because I think chess is kind of harder. “After four moves there’s like a billion positions that can come after that.” Asked if there’s anything he doesn’t like about chess, he says “there are these computers that are basically solved chess”.
He much prefers to play at the chess board, though he will watch famous players play online. “There’s Magnus Carlsen – he’s the best player in the world.”
Sweetman is also an all-rounder – he plays football and tennis alongside chess. He thinks chess is “getting a lot more popular” but that participation numbers are still quite small “compared to how many people play other stuff like GAA or soccer”.
The hardest part about chess is that “sometimes if you play a very long game it can get quite tedious and you can make mistakes”, he says. What appeals to him about the game is that it’s “quite relaxing, but it’s also a bit tense, but I like that about it”.
The positive, resilient mindset shared by Liu, Cronin and Darker is not unusual among young chess players. Ficheall is a network of primary schoolteachers promoting chess in the classroom. It prioritises participation over the promotion of players of outstanding ability, and sees chess as a teaching tool to build social skills, cognitive skills and mental fitness.
Jennifer Tedstone, a teacher at Scoil Iosagain in Donegal, has taught chess to pupils throughout the school, as well as to other teachers on the Inishowen peninsula.
“We teach the 10 beginner lessons which Ficheall have on their website. Each lesson begins with a discussion statement, such as: how do you feel whenever you lose a game? What are the positive aspects of losing? Things like that. All of the beginner lessons are matched to the SPHE programme for kids from first to sixth class.”
Tedstone says that language development is of concern for students, partly because of the effects of the pandemic, and partly because of time spent on devices in homes, and that teaching children to play chess “is an excellent opportunity for them to practise using eye contact, develop their conversational skills, [and] use the language of resilience and sportspersonship while having fun”.
Overall, children at the school respond positively to playing chess – Tedstone has yet to meet a child who doesn’t look forward to the lessons. “I think that chess appeals to our students, particularly the more senior pupils, because it’s seen as a ‘grown up’ game that adults play too. It’s creative, they’re practising thinking strategically and it’s a safe environment if they lose a game.”
For children who struggle with concentration, or who experience anxiety or shyness, it “helps them to regulate and reduce those feelings of anxiety whenever they sit down at a chessboard. You’ll notice whenever you go into a class and the children start playing chess there’s a real sense of calm.”
Tedstone feels that there is “a real movement at the minute” in chess among young people.
“Some of the kids just run with it. They go off and they find out about special openings or endings or they come in and tell me about famous chess games that they’ve watched on YouTube. And I really enjoy hearing children tell me that they’re playing with their grandparents at home or that they’re teaching their parents or siblings. Some parents have told me that their children will willingly put away their devices in favour of chess when their friends come over.”
Tedstone is a resource teacher, and the school has a large number of special classes. Chess is a place where special and mainstream classes integrate, she says. “It can be very preventive for bullying because when children play kids from different classes it really helps to promote that camaraderie among kids in school – they look out for each other in the playground as well.”
Among the teachers she has tutored the feedback is positive. “They seem to be experiencing the same benefits as me in terms particularly of children being able to accept defeat graciously when they’re playing the game, and to have conversations around what respect means to them and what the game would look like without respect.”
Seeing the children benefit from the game in a holistic way is what drives Tedstone. “What motivates me is watching the kids develop as they learn to play chess. The beginner lessons constantly reinforce that if you’re losing you’re learning. So they help the children to become more resilient and develop that growth mindset.”
For more information, or to find your local chess club, visit the Irish Chess Union at icu.ie. Ficheall primary teachers’ chess network can be found at ficheall.ie. The 103rd Irish Chess Championship takes place from August 3rd to August 11th in the Talbot Hotel, Stillorgan, Dublin.
