But in the end it is a game. If they enjoy it and learn a way of thinking, great. But I will not encourage them to master it either.
I was reminded of some cautionary voices from this: http://www.laweekly.com/1999-03-18/news/the-go-club/full/ , an interesting LA Weekly article (1999) about the Korean female reporter's experience at a Korean Go Club in Los Angeles (note: Go is known as Baduk in Korean):
But Go players, regardless of nationality, are mostly men — and Korean women, particularly wives and mothers, think they’re full of shit.
"You know the people who play the Baduk," my mother answered disgustedly when I asked her about the game. "They are just the lazy people who like to smoking."
My friend Mia has a more dramatic tale. One day her mom came home to find Mia’s dad teaching her and her brother Go. She immediately grabbed the kids by their shirt collars and carried them out of the room. I will not allow you to turn my children into Baduk players, she informed her husband. "She wouldn’t let us learn," Mia explained, "because Baduk sucks your life away."
(There's lots more to the piece -- if you're interested in the game and some of its sociology, check it out).
You've hit upon something which is a Deep Truth (TM) of parenting. There is nothing wrong with a child committing to that time and effort in chess, or gymnastics, or baseball, or anything, under one condition.
That condition is that they love it. Not for the parents, not for the coaches, or for the accolades. They have to deeply love whatever it is for its own sake.
For example, learning a new language means learning lots of new patterns. A lot of those patterns are new grammatical rules. If you were to learn a Latin derived language like Spanish then a lot of those same patterns can be re-used to learn another Latin derived language like French. With chess, unless those patterns you've learned exist in other domains then they are useless and can only be used to play chess.
One of the thing chess can do you for you is increase your memory, maybe, since as you said you need to become a chess database. The cost is probably too great and the reward too little, though.
And yet, after a couple of years of them playing tournaments and taking classes from our local master I pull them out of the entire thing and only allow them to play an occasional tournament here and there for fun. Why?
Because playing lots of chess only makes you good at playing chess. Yes, you learn deep concentration, situational analysis, etc. However, these skills do not translate linearly to other activities.
Playing blitz chess does not make you better at avoiding an accident on the freeway when things get out of hand. In other words, you don't become some kind of a super-fast general-purpose thinker. You simply become really good at fast chess.
The same is true of "traditional" slow chess. Again, the skills you learn seem to be focused around the game and very little of it translates to the outside world.
There are teachings that do, for example, one mantra I repeat to my kids while learning chess and try to reinforce in other activities is: "Is there a better move?".
The other problem with chess study is the fact that in order to move past a certain level you have to become a human chess database. I personally detest that paradigm shift in the game. Yes, you have to know how to analyze the board and evaluate positions, of course you do. However, without committing to memory a huge library of openings, end games and even mid-game strategies (and specific move sequences) you simply can't get past certain thresholds. This, from my perspective, is an absolute waste of time, talent and effort that no kid should be subjected to.
Please consider this to be my opinion and only that. Don't be offended if your position is diametrically opposite mine. It's OK to disagree. Life goes on.
The first couple of years of learning chess can be fantastic if, and only if, they are used as a conduit for learning important lessons. For example, teaching kids to deal with loosing can be a part of this. Teaching them to take a situation apart to examine the pieces is critical in nearly every engineering discipline. If you don't take the time to make these connections while teaching chess then all you are doing is teaching chess. In other words, the connections will not be magically constructed by your kid simply because they can now check-mate another kid.
What should kids have a really good grasp of? Lots of things, but if I had to name three it would be Mathematics, Physics and Programming.
Math gives you the most fundamental toolset you'll need for just about everything, from balancing your checkbook to building a rocket. Very important.
Physics connects math to the real world. If taught correctly kids get a real "touch-and-feel" sense of how things work and why.
Programming, again, if taught correctly, teaches, at the most fundamental level, about problem solving. How do you take a seemingly huge problem, break it into a bunch of little components and methodically solve each one of them. And it can teach quick real-world problem analysis as well. For example, I've done things like play "if-else-then" games with my older kid where we break down the things that could happen if you place a glass too close to the edge of the table.
That said, chess is great. And, in moderation, as a conduit for learning other ideas it could be fantastic. Nothing wrong with that.
BTW, there's an interesting connection between Steve Jobs and Armenia:
http://tert.am/en/news/2011/10/06/jobsarmenian/
https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+armenian&aq=f...