Mangalore: Chess - The Mind Game Gains Popularity Among Children
By Rajesh S
Daijiworld Media Network—Mangalore (CN)
 
Mangalore, Apr  4: As the game of chess has gained popularity among children, many schools and colleges in the city conduct competitions with the responses increasing each year.
 
Students of primary classes form the bulk of participants.
 
A large number of schools in the city, which have other games and sports also, listed chess as being helpful in improving memory. Teachers of these schools also noticed that the students who play chess are good at studies or have good powers of concentration. 

“It is a game of the mind”, said Ashwini Kamath, a primary school teacher in the city, when asked about why her school has more chess players when compared to other sports. She adds that playing chess improves brain power as the players concentrate on the game for hours, unlike other games.
 
As per her observation, most of the schools in the city have a good number of chess-playing students and most of the parents want their children to be chess players so that they will excel in academics also.   
 
“The children, by focusing on the game, can improve their concentration gradually”, said Prasanna Rao, administrator, Derick’s Chess School, M G Road. He adds that even some hyperactive children also concentrate on the game.
 
“Several parents have opined that chess has improved their children’s concentration power. Most of them agreed that improvement in concentration has resulted in better academic performances,” added Rao.
 
Samuel Titus, resident of Urva Store in the city and father of Sunny David Titus, who is studying in class III, opines that his son can focus more despite all the disturbances in the environment after he started playing chess. “Earlier, in the KG classes, he had no concentration for studies”, he added.  
 
But there is a wrong notion that only intelligent students are fit to play chess.
 
Rao said that there is no such classification for chess and gave the example of the achievement of average children in chess.    
 
Kanishka, a student of class IV is an average student in her KG class, but has bagged several trophies in chess tournaments. Her parents have noticed an improvement in her progress academically and increase in understanding capacity with each year. 
 
When talking of the popularity of chess in the city, the contribution of the chess school in the city also needs to be mentioned. Derick’s Chess School started by Derick Pinto, has trained several thousand children in the past decade.
 
As a formal training school, it has achieved the goal of creating chess players in this coastal region of the state. The school, without any kind of donation or government funds, trains budding grandmasters. 
 
However, chess is thought of as an intelligent game and there is a bright future for the students who master chess. They will be achievers academically or will become grandmasters in chess.