The Navy, seeking to beef up the ranks of its special operations force, commissioned a $500,000 Gallup study last fall to determine who might be the best candidates to become future US Navy SEALs. Topping the list were water polo players.
If a water polo player also happens to be a pretty good chess player, his odds of making it through training triple.
I haven’t done a formal study, but it has always seemed to me like we have more current and retired Navy personnel who are USCF members than any of the other branches of the military.
As a Navy vet and chessplayer, I am of course interested in this topic. But I am surprised, as I don’t ever remember seeing anybody play chess on my ship! Of course that was a few years ago now.
HEY - we can probably ask Brian Lafferty and Michael Aigner to collaborate on a scientific assessment of this correlation.
