In a recent experiment, half the subjects were expert chess players; the other half had never played  First, the subjects were shown chessboards at various stages of actual games for ten seconds  Each expert was able to recall the positions of the pieces at least twice as well as any nonplayer  Second, the subjects were shown chessboards with the pieces randomly arranged, again for ten seconds
In this case the experts recalled the positions only marginally better, on average, than did the nonplayers
People who play chess have better memories than people who do not play chess.