Math in chess?

Of course there's math in chess. Not "academical" math, of course, but...when you calculate how many attackers or defenders one square has, you're doing math.

It's hard to imagine how could you do this operation without the basic knowledge of numbers and how we use it for counting. The same ocurrs in basically all other human activities.

Furthermore, semiologists sustain that all human thinking is based on language. No thinking or logics could be done without language in our head. Words and gramatics make the basic pieces and rules of which thinking is made of.

So, chess has a little of math and a little of language on it, intrinsically.

As a product of human's mind, you can't leave out this two extraordinary tools we humans come out with.

Math and language have modeled anything around human activity in history. Maybe it's in our nature, and chess can't escape our nature.

Like said already by someone else, logics and maths are closely related.
For instance, I have fun to proove that a knight defending two squares is always overloaded. ;-)

There are some similarities between mathematical thinking and chess thinking. For example there's chessboard geometry where sometimes you have to see "If his king is inside this square, it can catch my pawn before it queens." Plus if you then go on to think "I will sacrifice my piece to lure his king out of the square, and then he won't be able to stop me from queening", you're using similar chains of logic to that often used in math. (If X then not Y, if not Y then Z, therefore if X, then Z.)

The math you learn in school or college doesn't apply to chess particularly, but because of the similarities in thinking styles people who are good at one are often good at the other as well.

#13 I like this answer. Others also make sense but this seems to address something I can relate to.

See schach.chess.com/forum/view/general/does-chess-make-you-better-in-math

Best posts ibidem IMHO:

"i dont know but Lasker and Euwe, two world champions, were mathematician."

"And they both had a cat too."

"math and chess both have the same core function: logic"

Regards, Karl

@ #2:

Nope. There is some math. See:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight's_tour

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics

For example...

Regards, Karl

Most games have elements that could be considered combinatorics, but not in a way that any knowledge of the mathematical field called combinatorics would help with playing them at all!

In a similar way, you might be able to calculate the trajectory of a ball in sports using calculus, but that doesn't mean knowing calculus is at all useful for being a good player of that sport.

Knowledge of math is probably more useful for playing poker or Monopoly than chess, where being able to calculate probabilities and return on investment is actually beneficial.

In chess if you can count how many pawns each side has, count the number of moves needed to queen a pawn, and add up the material value of two or three pieces, that's about all the explicit math that is of any use for playing.

My guess is that the main benefit of math to chess playing and vice versa is that they both provide drilling in chains of logical reasoning and in being careful about examining possible cases. So the thinking habits you develop from one can be helpful in the other.

A bit of discrete maths for the algorithmic thinking, I guess.