Chess Personality

It seems to me that to really enjpy playing chess you must have a specific personality.

Blank is the classic jerk who wants to prove his superiority by beating someone at chess.

I had a person's name in mind but left it blank.

Me, my interest in chess is to try to figure out the game. Winning feels good and losing pisses me off. Yet the only reason I do it is in the hopes of learning something new.

Some seem to enjoy puzzles just to solve a puzzle. Solving puzzles I do not find enjoyable at all. It just pisses me off out of frustration.

In summarry..

There is the puzzle silver
There is the person who strives to understand
There is the bully who wants to prove superiority

What are others?

Geek.
Nerd.
Dork.
Me 😒

@patzering said
Geek.
Nerd.
Dork.
Me 😒

Lots of geeks and nerds do not like chess.

I'm the type who tries to understand and improve.
1800 otb was my goal and I will achieve it.

@Patzering

My goal was to have a good enough understanding of the game to be able to beat people who only knew how the pieces moved.

Now I have no real goal, just ambiguous get better. Maybe one day I will play in a tournament.

Should have looked at your hidden first lol.

I do chess tempo to learn patterns, as well as try to visualize how the board would change.

One thing I am learning is to not do something stupidly offensive without having calculating it through.

Hey that might work is not a good way to play chess.

Get there firstest with the moistest.

I suppose this observation fits well enough here.

Whatever you do in one game you should expect to be done to you. The converse of that is true if you are wise enough to learn instead of simply getting upset and wonder how you could be so stupid.

@Eladar

Oh yes, there are definitely personalities which are played out OTB. Spielmann, Capablanca , Lasker, Tal, Petrosian, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, etc. Here too at RHP.

@moonbus said
@Eladar

Oh yes, there are definitely personalities which are played out OTB. Spielmann, Capablanca , Lasker, Tal, Petrosian, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, etc. Here too at RHP.

Any of those a variation of I am going to prove myself better/smarter than you because I can beat you at chess?

@eladar said
Any of those a variation of I am going to prove myself better/smarter than you because I can beat you at chess?

Some people may use chess to stoke a need for ego validation. That is a fool’s game.


If there is any of that here at RHP, just ignore it. A player’s rating here has no relation to anything outside RHP and no bearing on forum discussions either. Some of the most astute debaters here have modest ratings.

Remember Tartakower’s wise words, “chess is a struggle against one’s own errors.” This means that your opponents seldom beat you; you let them beat you by your own errors.

How about the Artists? These are folks who are captivated by the beauty of the game, and who strive for excellence in appreciation of what the game can be.

🙂

@eladar said

There is the bully who wants to prove superiority

I hope you don't mind if I ask, but how do you know this?

Are the "bullies" making derisive comments during the game, or is this a matter of "mind-reading" regarding someone else's mindset who might just be making better moves from more experience?

I understand most of us have mirror neurons and often can't help but have ideas about what the other might be thinking, albeit distorted by our own filters and perhaps also by their petty psych-warfare ruses, but if it's just two people making moves on a board, why not just play the board instead of the person?

If someone really is a bully who wants to prove his superiority, maybe there's more going on in his iceberg than we can ever know.