Stole my comment! :) You're right, though. I started playing chess to improve my concentration as a teenager, mostly for the purpose of improving my ability to

Stole my comment! :) You're right, though. I started playing chess to improve my concentration as a teenager, mostly for the purpose of improving my ability to focus on math. Then I realised that I got better at concentrating at math by... doing math problems instead of wasting my time playing chess. According to Wikipedia: G. H. Hardy described proof by contradiction as "one of a mathematician's finest weapons", saying "It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game." You don't even need to proof theorems in algebraic geometry to start seeing the beauty and power of mathematical thinking. Get a mental arithmetic app on your phone and spend a few months routinely practising some sums. What first appears as a dry activity will soon become a highly personal exercise in creative reasoning, of finding the best way to represent and manipulate with numbers. For example, I solve arithmetic problems visually but my friend works best by reasoning aurally (I don't get it either, but seeing as he can multipy two 4 digit numbers in seconds it works for him). I'll say that learning to multiplying large numbers in my head has done more for me in terms of mental training than chess has!