Why is chess, along with music and mathematics, one of the intellectual endeavors where children with little experience can excel?
Chess is a discipline which does not require many fundamental building blocks. Like a young Mozart in music or a 9 year old who solves graduate school problems in trigonometry, a young chessplayer can often achieve truly remarkable abilities with little experience. There’s still plenty of mystery about what makes a gifted child, but much work has been done in the types of pattern recognition that are behind a chess prodigy’s ability. As chess people note, some kids just “see the board”. A child with an acute ability to see patterns need only gain an understanding of the few simple rules of chess to become a formidable player. A gifted child can look moves ahead, and determine the best strategies with an effortlessness that is astounding. Some of the best known stories about chess prodigies concern the Cuban world champion Jose Raoul Capablanca. One of these stories tells of the time the young Capablanca watched his father and a friend playing a friendly game. At one point, Jose noticed
