hey i read this page because i was curious about the brain and chess. if you are right handed you are usually left brain dominant and vis versa. if your left handed and analysis is on the right side of the brain would that give you an upper edge in overal learning of the game and how quick you can become better?
http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/dominance/index.htm
I'm left handed!
And, if you go online you can find thousands of articles analyzing the differences -
some of which, are much more researched and/or credable.
as for chess, well, do a little reasearch......
See how many GM's are left handed - then compare that to the ratio of left/right handers in the general population.
Ohh, and unfortunatly the issue isn't as simple as that
Am I left handed??
I write with - left
throw a ball - right
play tennis - right
cook - left
draw - left.
etc, etc
^ while I write with my left hand the majority of other things (such as sports) I tend to favour my right. -- thought it must be siad that when it comes to things such as tennis i have to play with both hands, then decide which one I am better with, because niether seem more/less 'natural' than the other...
What a great question! I just wish I had a good answer.
I managed to dig up a couple of papers that reference a study by Cranberg and Albert (1986) in which they showed that left-handedness is more frequent among chess players than among non-players. However, nothing is mentioned about whether the lefties were better at chess than right-handers.
I wasn't able to locate the actual Cranberg/Albert study on the internet. The papers that I found referencing the Cranberg study are:
http://wjh1.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris1999d.pdf (see page 73)
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~athe0007/BNEsig/papers/NeuroscientificBasisOfChess.pdf (see pages 3 and 4)