Chess and Dementia

Close to a million people in the UK are living with dementia, and there are few families it hasn’t touched. So it is one of the most natural questions in the world: is there anything I can actually do about it?

You may have heard that keeping the mind active helps — crosswords, puzzles, learning a language, playing chess. It sounds almost too tidy, the kind of thing that gets repeated because it’s comforting rather than because it’s true. So we went and read the research. Here is what it actually says — the genuinely encouraging parts and the honest small print — written for people who know nothing about chess, dementia research, or both.

What researchers keep finding

The striking thing about this field isn’t any single spectacular result. It’s that for more than twenty years, in different countries, using different methods, studies keep pointing the same way.

In the Bronx, researchers followed 469 people over the age of 75 for years, tracking what they did with their leisure time and who went on to develop dementia. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, became one of the most cited papers in the field: reading, playing musical instruments, dancing — and playing board games — were each associated with a lower risk of dementia. The more cognitive activity people did, the lower their risk.

In Scotland, scientists had a rare treasure: a group of over a thousand people, all born in 1936, who had taken the same intelligence test at age eleven. Researchers retested them at 70, 73, 76 and 79, and asked how often they played games — cards, chess, crosswords. The result, published in 2020: people who played more games declined less, even after accounting for how sharp they’d been at eleven, their education and their social class. Better still, those who increased their game-playing in their seventies did better than those who let it slide — suggesting it’s a lever you can still pull late in life, not just a habit fixed in childhood.

In Australia, one of the largest studies of its kind followed 10,318 healthy adults aged 70 and over for a decade. Published in JAMA Network Open in 2023, it found that people who regularly did mentally demanding leisure activities — the researchers’ list includes puzzles, cards and chess by name — were around 9–11% less likely to develop dementia than their peers. Intriguingly, simply having a big social calendar of outings and restaurant meals showed no such association. It seemed to be the thinking that mattered.

In Chicago, a study published in Neurology in 2021 followed nearly 2,000 people with an average age of 80. Those with the most cognitively active lifestyles who went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease did so, on average, around five years later than the least active. Five years is not a rounding error. The study’s author made a point worth repeating: it’s never too late to start — the activities were inexpensive, ordinary and available to anyone.

Why would pushing wooden pieces around help?

The leading explanation is a lovely idea called cognitive reserve. Think of it as a savings account for your brain. A lifetime of mental challenge — education, work, hobbies that make you genuinely think — seems to build extra capacity and flexibility: more robust networks, more alternative routes between brain cells. When disease later starts to cause damage, a brain with deeper reserves can compensate for longer before symptoms show.

Chess happens to be a fairly complete workout for exactly the faculties involved. A single game asks you to hold possibilities in mind (working memory), plan several moves ahead, switch plans when your opponent surprises you, spot patterns, and concentrate — properly concentrate — for an hour or more. You don’t need to be any good at it for this to be true. A beginner puzzling out their third-ever game is thinking just as hard as a master, arguably harder.

The honest small print

This is the part health headlines usually skip, and we’d rather you heard it from us.

These studies show association, not proof. Almost all of this research observes what people do and what happens to them. It cannot fully rule out the reverse explanation: that people in the earliest, invisible stages of dementia quietly drop their hobbies years before diagnosis, or that the kind of person who plays chess differs in other healthy ways. Researchers work hard to adjust for this — the Scottish study’s childhood test scores are one elegant defence — but no observational study settles it completely.

Nothing prevents dementia outright. The Alzheimer’s Society is careful to say that there’s no strong evidence that commercial “brain training” reduces dementia risk, and no game is a vaccine. People who did everything right still develop dementia; risk is about odds, not guarantees. The Australian researchers put it well: mentally active leisure is “not a magic pill” — it belongs alongside exercise, a decent diet, not smoking, and looking after your hearing, eyesight and blood pressure.

But the direction of travel is real. The 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia — the most authoritative review in the field — concluded that around 45% of dementia cases worldwide are linked to fourteen modifiable risk factors. Cognitive engagement runs through that story, and so, notably, do social isolation, depression and physical inactivity. Which brings us to the part of the research that a chess club is peculiarly well placed to act on.

Why a chess club, rather than an app

You could take all the evidence above and buy a puzzle app. But look again at that Lancet list. A weekly chess club night quietly addresses several risk factors at once:

• Mental challenge — two or three genuinely demanding games in an evening, against opponents who don’t play like a computer set to “easy”.
• Company — a room of regulars who notice when you’re missing. Loneliness is on the Lancet’s list of fourteen; an app can’t fix it, a club does it without trying.
• Routine and a reason to go out — same evening, same room, every week, through winter. The unglamorous engine of most good habits.

And chess has one more quality that matters enormously here: age is no barrier. It’s one of very few games where a nine-year-old and a ninety-year-old meet as genuine equals. You cannot say that of five-a-side football. Whatever your age, you are not too old to learn — the Chicago study’s “never too late” applies to the game as much as the benefit.

If dementia is already part of your life

A word for readers who aren’t thinking about prevention, because someone they love is already living with dementia. Games don’t stop mattering at diagnosis. Long-practised skills often endure remarkably well, and familiar games can remain a real source of enjoyment, focus and connection when conversation gets harder. Researchers are actively studying chess and similar games as gentle, sociable activities in early cognitive decline — and whatever those trials conclude, an afternoon of moves and quiet company has a value no study needs to prove.

The move to make

The research, read honestly, says this: no promises — but keeping your brain genuinely busy, in good company, week in and week out, is one of the most sensible bets an ageing brain can place. And it is a rare piece of health advice that is actually pleasant to follow.

So here is the practical bit. Tunbridge Wells Chess Club meets every Monday evening at the Tunbridge Wells & Counties Bridge Club, 40 London Road — and your first visit is free. Total beginners are genuinely welcome: if you’ve never played, start with our guide on how to learn chess (a weekend is plenty), or just come along and say you’re new — we’ll make sure you get a friendly first game. Rusty after forty years? Even better; it comes back faster than you’d think.

Join us, or get in touch and we’ll look out for you on a Monday. Your brain will thank you — the research suggests it might even remember to.