Many schools in Baltimore County have chess teams. These chess teams compete at a school tournament every year to decide which school could be that year’s champion. This annual activity is very competitive between schools and is a big part of chess culture. A lot of the people who take part in this chess program use chess.com to practice and study chess. Blocking chess.com on school computers would drastically impact the students who are part of the program, especially those who do not have other devices to study chess on. Students who rely on chess.com for training and studying for chess would not have access to a reliable site to practice chess, which would massively impede the growth of the BCPS Chess program. In addition to this, BCPS students would be at a massive disadvantage when competing with students from other counties if their means of studying got taken away. This disadvantage would be similar to what would happen if a sports team had their practice field or equipment taken away. They might grow a little bit, but they would not be any good on the field. The same applies to chess, when students don't have a chance practice, study, and get better. 

If BCPS keeps chess.com blocked, the chess program will lose large amounts of interest, and the chess program would collapse, along with the many communities that have been built on the basis of playing and studying chess. In addition to this, students who play chess show better cognitive skills such as enhanced memory, sharper planning, and more varied problem solving. 

Other skills that are seen to be improved with chess include more creativity, critical thinking, and exercises for both sides of the brain. These skills allow students to better meet and even excel BCPS’ standards, which helps to improve the standard of BCPS’ students and along with an improvement of BCPS’ image. The loss of the chess.com could lead to the decline of the chess program, which could cause the standard of BCPS’ students to fall.

Unblocking chess.com is important as chess plays a large role in many communities that work with the BCPS chess program, and without access to chess.com, these communities would suffer and the BCPS chess program would lose a lot of attention, leading to rapid loss of interest in chess. This will cause not only a massive loss of interest in chess but also an extremely large decline or even removal of the BCPS chess program, which has helped many students with their cognitive functions and helped to improve their academic performances and BCPS’ academic standard.

Below is an image of the Ridgely Chess Team, the winners of the 2023 BCPS chess tournament.