People, especially chess players themselves, utter the stupidest things about chess and about chess players. Here are a number of of our favorite misconceptions about the royal game. A few of these sayings are definitely untrue, some of them are uninformed opinion, and some of them are controversies that might or might not be true.

1) Chess is hard to learn.

Chess may not be the easiest game to pick up, but it is far from the most difficult. You have to have to learn the moves of the six pieces, where the piece with the least value, the Pawn, has the most complex moves. Then you have to learn the rules about attacking and defending the King, including castling. Then there are a small number of rules about games where neither player wins. One aspect of this myth is true ? it is hard, very hard, to learn to play chess well. One player in a hundred achieves supremacy.

2) You have to be smart to play chess.

There is some relationship between chess ability and general intelligence. Minimum smarts are required. Cats and dogs will never learn the basics; no one has tried teaching dolphins and chimpanzees. Chess does involve, after all, using various advanced compartments of the brain as skillfully as applicable. People from all walks of life have fun playing chess, many attaining mastery. Some very clever people delight in playing but never progress beyond novice rank.

3) Chess is for nerds.

As a matter of fact, this isn't a misstatement, because chess is for everybody. It is for dweebs, oddballs, eggheads, and boffins, as usually as it is for anyone else. People who need to call other people unpleasant names should better say, 'chess is only for nerds', but this is decidedly false. Even if it were true, so what? Intelligent, awkward, offbeat people have made more contributions to the advancement of society than have the rest. If they want to play chess, that's their business

4) Computers play chess better than people.

In 2006, the finest computing machines played chess better than 99.99% of people, but are evenly pitted in contests against the top humans. If, as some experts consider, computers are attaining 20 - 30 rating points per year, the time will soon come when humans have no chance against the best machines. It should not be omitted that computers are always checked by squads of human specialists who program them in psychological areas like opening repertoire. Removing this help would eliminate their excellence.

5) Chess is a sport.

Here we run the risk of upsetting the many outstanding chess organizers who have spent years trying to convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that chess should be admitted as an Olympic sport. Lifting little pieces of wood or clicking quickly on a computer screen is not physically demanding activity. As any quantity of photos from foregone high level chess events will demonstrate, chess players don't always cut a slim, trim, athletic profile.

6) Chess isn't a sport.

Here we try to make amends with those same organizers who almost convinced the IOC that chess is a sport. Chess has been admitted as a medal sport for the 2006 Asian Games. A contest between two top chess masters is full of tension, where good nerves can make the difference between a victor and a loser. Grandmasters have been known to lose a lot of weight during the action of a month-long contest.

7) Women can't play chess as well as men.

To date it is true that women have not performed as well as men in chess events. There are numerous conceivable reasons for this. One may be that male players are often expert at making female players feel ill at ease at chess events. The Polgar sisters have gone a long way to convince the chess world that women can play wonderfully. Maybe one day we will find out that women can even play better than men. No one truly knows.