Maths and Chess

Tim Harford pits his wits against a math-professor-turned-professional-chess-player, John Nunn. Having gone up to Oxford aged just 15 to read maths, John Nunn gave up his eventual post as maths professor there in the early '80s to pursue a career in chess. At the highest point in his career, John ranked 9th in the world.

He has written numerous books on chess strategy, and his latest, John Nunn’s Chess Course, explains how the German chess World Champion and mathematician, Emanuel Lasker, used logic to defeat his opponents in the early 20th Century. But is it really true, as is often said, that ability in mathematics and chess are somehow linked?