Should you be good at maths if you are good at chess?

Some young children show a remarkable ability to master mathematics, music, and chess within a short time of learning the basics. Often referred to as "child prodigies", it seems these people's brains are somehow "wired" in a way that makes these subjects seem simple to them.

Some examples are chess players like Capablanca, Morphy and Reshevsky; mathematicians Gauss and Einstein; musicians Mozart and Khachaturian. Some people are "gifted" in more than one area--Philidor was also a leading comic opera composer in his time. However, there is no evidence that someone with this extraordinary capacity in these fields necessarily has similar abilities in the other fields, nor that they must have a genius-level IQ.

This question has been studied extensively, and the current evidence supports what the parents were saying. A comprehensive 2016 meta-analysis identified almost 2,300 scholarly articles on the issue! The meta-analysis then looked at the 19 most relevant studies incorporating 26 independent samples. They did find a statistically significant correlation between chess skill and numerical ability. The correlation was fairly robust (r=0.35, p<0.001). They conclude: "The results suggest that cognitive ability contributes meaningfully to individual differences in chess skill, particularly in young chess players and/or at lower levels of skill."

1. Alexander P. Burgoyne, Giovanni Sala, Fernand Gobet, Brooke N. Macnamara, Guillermo Campitelli, David Z. Hambrick. The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Intelligence, 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2016.08.002

You don't learn calculus from playing chess and you don't get good at chess from learning calculus. Being good at math doesn't necessarily make you a good chess player but if you are a chess player that can learn opening theory and tactical elements you got the traits that collerates well for learning calculus.