1. Only geniuses can play chess.
2. Chess is a war game.
3. Chess is racist (white against black, and white gets the first move).
4. Chess is sexist (after all, it's all about the king).
5. Chess is a gambling game.
6. Chess is the oldest board game known to still be played.
7. Men are better chess players than women.
8. Chess is a communist propaganda weapon.
9. Chess will soon be "solved" by computers, making human players obsolete.
10. It takes hours and hours to play a game of chess. (It's a very slow game).

1. "Chess takes an hour to learn and a lifetime to master" is an often repeated saying. Another one goes, "Chess is an ocean from which a gnat may drink or in which an elephant may bathe." Once you master the basic rules of chess, which will take about an hour, you can play chess for fun for the rest of your life. Getting really good at it takes a little more effort. However, the statement is FALSE. There seems to be very little if any relationship between intelligence and chess skill among skilled players. There are even cases where individuals considered mentally retarded have learned to play a very credible game of chess. What seems to matter most is--as with most things--how much effort you put into it.
2. TRUE. The best guess is that chess was invented in India about 1400 years ago. The chess pieces were designed to resemble the fighting elements of the local armies of that time: elephants, camels, chariots, etc. After chess was "westernized" about 600 years ago, the pieces were changed, although the association with the military remained in the form of knights, castles, etc. Most players don't think of it as a war game, but a knowledge of military strategy will not hurt your chess game one bit!
3. I used to hear this one a lot, but mercifully not much anymore. Chess pieces do not have to be white and black, although that is the modern custom. The story of why the white pieces move first is an interesting one. It used to be decided by lot which player got the white pieces, and then again by lot which player moved first. Chess players, who are as superstitious as anyone else, commonly believed that playing the black pieces was lucky. To have the black pieces and the first move was just too lucky, chess being a game of skill and all. So it was decided that whoever was lucky enough to win the right to play the black pieces would have to give up the right to move first. Thus, white moves first. So the statement is FALSE.
4. While it's true the king is the most important piece on the board (lose your king and you lose the game), he is also one of the weakest and typically spends most of the game cowering over in the corner behind a row of pawns. The most powerful piece on the board is the queen. So I'd have to say this statement is FALSE.
5. You can bet on anything, of course, and all board games were once condemned for promoting gambling. Chess is no more a gambling game than checkers. FALSE.
6. FALSE. Checkers is older. So is backgammon, as well as several others.
7. While this is TRUE on average, there are some awfully good female players out there. In fact, at this moment one of the strongest players in the world is a women. The playing strength of women has increased tremendously over the past several decades. When I first started playing chess in the late 1960s, I won a game against the woman rated number 50 in the country. (And I'm about average strength.) Today I'd have virtually no chance of doing that.
8. This statement is somewhat outdated now, but it is TRUE that chess was once used as a weapon of propaganda by the strongest chess playing nation on the planet, the Soviet Union.
9. Chess may be solved at some time in the future, but we're not close to that now. Besides, people who don't have the time to memorize the solution to every possible line will still enjoy the game. FALSE.
10. In a 19th century tournament, it was found that both players in one game had fallen soundly asleep. That led to the invention of the chess clock, a device that imposes a time limit on each player. You can set the time limit as slow or as fast as you want (in a friendly game). A game played through the mail can literally take months to play. In a "two-minute" game, each player has two minutes to complete all his or her moves, so the game will last, at most, four minutes. In such a game, the players have very little thinking time and must move very quickly. Such games can become quite frantic as the players scramble to beat the clock. On the other hand, I've played tournament games that have lasted over six hours. So the answer to this one depends on what you, the player, want it to be.

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