Chess is useless

George Bernard Shaw once said "Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time." I guess the same thing can be said of any game. Shaw is now dead and chess is still alive. Maybe that tells us something. Maybe he wasn't a very good player and was bitter about it. Opinions about the game differ wildly - they swing from one extreme to another. Charles Dickens said that "love that has a game of chess in it can checkmate any man and solve the problem of life." On the other hand, someone named Cassirer said "What chess has in common with science and fine art is its utter uselessness." Nobody knows Cassirer but everyone knows chess. For me, it's a lot better than watching a sit-com. One final quote: "Chess is the gymnasium of the mind." - Anderssen