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“Chess is my world,” said the former Soviet world champion Mikhail Tal. “Not a house, not a fortress where I hide myself from life’s hardship, but indeed the world. The world in which I live a full life, in which I prove myself.” It is a place of beauty, challenge, fierce competition, endless calculation, a unique blend of art and science.

So bravo to Armenia for making it a compulsory part of the primary school curriculum. Educationists in that former Soviet republic argue that playing chess will breed a sense of responsibility in young children and be character-building. Well maybe, though in my experience the most likely result is that you go to bed at 2am having roundly abused someone in Minnesota who has just beaten you in an online game they should have lost. Chess is a vicious game – kill or be killed – in which you are supposed to lose with grace. I have yet to learn that art.

Armenia is an obsessive chess-playing country, one of the strongest in the world despite a population that is the same as – yes, you guessed it – Wales. In fact, Wales – and New Zealand, too – are good parallels. In the way that rugby defines those countries, chess defines Armenia. Another Soviet world champion of the 1960s, Tigran Petrosian, was born in Armenia, and the Armenian Lev Aronian is currently No 3 in the world and a credible challenger for the world crown.

The Armenians say their move is about making better adolescents rather than breeding great players, but it’s hard not to see a bit of nationalist sentiment at play. Armenia is locked in an endless chess war with neighbouring Azerbaijan, which produced the great Garry Kasparov, and the viciousness of the trolling between Armenians and Azerbaijanis on chess websites is unbelievable. Armenia wants its national team to be world-beating (and above all Azerbaijan-beating), and will be very happy if the new programme produces a few more Aronians.