one fun thing about being a teacher in march 2023 is that chess is a literal epidemic among teens. we are starting to have meetings about how we can STOP teenagers from playing too much chess which is like if we were trying to figure out how to stop them from reading for fun. When i was in high school five years ago chess was nerd shit only but now it is transcending every social and language barrier and is absolutely rampant. kids aren’t on their phone texting in class anymore it’s ONLY chess.com. kids are playing chess on their phones while playing chess in real life. this is still better than tiktok because at least the kids are developing an attention span from this
the worst part of this is that they’re on chess dot com instead of getting an education. but the BEST part of this is watching high schoolers develop the weirdest goddamn strategies I’ve ever seen. One of my students invented something he calls the “evil advisor gambit” where he gets a third person to give out constant terrible advice to both teams hoping that his opponent falls for it straight-up or that his opponent thinks HE fell for it and will act accordingly thus worsening their own strategy. he has won every game he has been able to pull off a coordinated evil advisor gambit in. this is chess innovation never before seen in its 700 years on earth
