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Chess Players 'Are Paranoid Thrillseekers'
Tardigrade submitted a brief little article that claims that chess players are paranoid thrillseekers. It's a fairly amusing little piece and definitely
makes me wish that my high-school chess club would have got into epic
battles with the groups that were capable of stretching us into pretzel
shapes, if only for the thrill. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
Personally, I suck at chess, and even I know what an absorbing game chess is. It is a battle, and one does not forget that, especially if you consider yourself an intelligent person. It's a war of mind vs. mind, may the most intelligent (and least easily distracted) being win.
While it lacks the immediacy of video games, and the brutality of (mock?) physical combat, chess is a war waged in miniature, where one must consider logistics and the strength and position of both your forces and your opponent's in order to come to a victory. Even when your forces are decimated it is possible to achieve victory by the use of clever tactics.
But what really makes this not news is that any game can have this sense of immediacy. While realtime games have a little bit more of it, they work in generalities, where chess works in absolutes: You know exactly how the field will act, you know exactly what each piece is capable of. It's like fighting a war on a perfectly ordered (and symmetrical) battlefield with identical forces and perfect intelligence, a situation no one will ever be in, within the confines of reality. But if you focus, any game can become your reality - For a while.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
chess is all about testosterone, arousal, paranoia, excitement, danger and domination.
This is Morphy's famous "Night at the Opera" game. I love this game because it illustrates many tactical themes as well as the process of attack. Paul Morphy was known as a master of attack and I study his games when I need inspiration for my attacking game! 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 Diagram
This is Philidor's Defense. Black tries to create a strongpoint at e5.3.d4 Attacking Black's center. 3...Bg4 Pinning the knight. This prevents the knight from taking on e5 after dxe5 dxe5 and now the knight can't take on e5 lest the checkmate on d1. 4.dxe5 Bxf3 [ Preventing 4...dxe5?! 5.Qxd8+ Kxd8 preventing the king from castling. In this opening, this is often an advantage because now the king is stuck in the center, open to attack. 6.Nxe5] 5.Qxf3 dxe5 6.Bc4 Diagram
Threatening mate on f7.6...Nf6?! Blocking the mate. However, it allows White to take advantage of weaknesses in Black's structure. [ 6...Qd7 is necessary here.; or 6...Qe7 ] 7.Qb3 With a double attack on both b7 and f7. This is a common maneuver in king-pawn openings. Always look for weak points in the enemy's structure, and when there is more than one, try to attack both at the same time. Many times, the opponent won't be able to defend both in time. 7...Qe7 8.Nc3 As Grandmaster Larry Evans said in his comments to this game, "Development before Material!" I probably would have taken the pawn on b7, but Morphy, knowing he was much stronger than his opponent, wanted to demonstrate his attacking ability. 8...c6 Allowing the queen to protect the pawn at b7. However, Black is way behind in development. 9.Bg5 Diagram
Pinning the knight. Notice that White's back rank is empty besides the king and rooks. Now White can castle either way. Black still needs to move a piece to get the king to safety. Unfortunately, Morphy probably won't give him the chance.9...b5 Attacking the bishop. 10.Nxb5! Sacrificing the piece. White doesn't want to give up his superior development (by moving the bishop off the strong diagonal, White would let Black use another move to get his pieces out). When attacking, you must open lines, even if you must give up a little material. 10...cxb5 11.Bxb5+ Nbd7 12.0-0-0! Attacking the knight, which is protected only by queen and king (note that the f6 knight is pinned. 12...Rd8 Adding another defender. 13.Rxd7! Brilliant! For me and many other beginners, moves like this are hard to make, because we don't see the end result. Studying games like this should give us courage in our own games! 13...Rxd7 14.Rd1 Attacking the pinned piece. 14...Qe6 A futile attempt to get some breathing room. Now the knight is free to protect the rook, because it is not pinned. 15.Bxd7+ Nxd7 Diagram
Do you see Morphy's winning move?16.Qb8+!! Giving up yet another piece, however, it leads to immediate reward. 16...Nxb8 17.Rd8# Diagram
White mates Black's king with his final two pieces. Note the helpless queen standing by. Also remember this pattern of checkmating the king with bishop and rook, it is fairly common. For me, this game illustrates the importance of development and how to attack someone who has neglected development. 1-0 exhale sharply. oh yeah!!!
That's the basis of every competitive behavior and interaction between people all over the world.
When I play chess with my friends, I don't feel that much adrenaline rolling. What I mean is that the "Paranoic Thrillseeking" feeling is not related at all with chess. It's the enviroment that causes this. It's competition, risks of loss, the chance that what you have studied and fought might crumble.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
When I was a kid, strategic encounters of all sorts were likened to chess matches, so it seemed to me that getting good at chess would just make me a more savvy competitor in all sorts of situations.
;-)
After a while, I began to understand that the way to win in chess was to become "fluent" in the patterns of chess itself, and that those patterns didn't really have any important analog elsewhere.
Once it appeared that putting a lot of effort into mastery of chess wasn't doing anything for me besides making me better at chess, I gave it up.
Shortly thereafter I replaced it with programming. Talk about "out of the frying pan, into the fire...."
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I definately agree with this article, atleast in the sense of the physiological effect. I have a friend with whom I am evenly matched, and our games always ended up with atleast one or more crescendo moments where the entire game changes for better or for worse... and in the precedeing and following moments, I have noticed on several occasions an increased heart rate and alertness.
What I dont agree with is the paranoid part... the article just seems to throw that in.
"More competitive chess players have been shown to score highly for unconventional thinking and paranoia, both of which have been shown to relate to sensation-seeking."
Unconventional thinking? what the hell is conventional thinking?
Also: this article seems to be about male players... what about female players...
Anyway its interesting that the same thing that enhances my sense during a rollercoaster (adrenaline+testosterone) also is probable released when I play chess.. I wonder when else this happens:
Sales deals
FPS Games (ever lead the document grab in RTCW theres some adrenaline for ya?
television perhaps too...
my point... this aint new news
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
Hmmm. Possibly this is true for North America, however, the best players in the world are from the former Soviet Union and as far as I remember the game was highly valued even by the worst hooligans on the streets. Is that weird to you?
You can't handle the truth.
they could have just said, "studies have shown testosterone levels increase in a man winning a chess game." as i'm sure happens just as much if not more in trivial pursuit, connect-4 and well, paper-scissors-rock. this is friggin' obvious. but no, scientists need to sensationalize their pointless studies so as to get more grant money.
Surely this is the same for anyone who's any good at nearly anything? For example, re-writing as:
...makes exactly the same amount of sense. Aren't they just saying that to be good in most things you need to have a mind? Why should Chess be unique in this?
More competitive F1 drivers have been shown to score highly for unconventianal thinking and paranoia
Cheers,
Ian
As witnissed by "A Beautiful Mind," (and previously by the wonderful movie "Pi") there seems to be a significant number of mathematicians (talking about people who spend their lives doing math research) who have mental problems.
One book to read would be Paul Hoffman's _The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos_. Erdos was a nomadic mathematician, wondering from university to university (and from math professor house to math professor house), working on mathematics. On average, he spent about 19 hours a day working just on math. The story is rather humorous, and a good read for math people and non-math people alike. Erdos survived until very late in his life, and commented that many of his fellow mathematicians had died or were going crazy.
I also read a short book on the life of Godel. Godel was such an example of a mathematician going crazy. He became so paranoid that he refused to eat, and ended up dying of starvation.
Sylvia Nasar's _A Beautiful Mind_, the biography of John Forbes Nash Jr. on which the movie is, apparently, very loosely based, is another such example. Nash was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia later in life.
One of the authors comments that it is possible that mathematicians are more likely to go crazy than other scientists is that, in math, there are no definite absolutes. Sure you can say that two parallel lines never meet, and prove things off of that, but then you can wonder "What happens if they do, eventually, meet?"
By Godel's second incompleteness theorem, we can't know that mathematics is consistent. Godel's theorem shows that there can't be any complete and consistent theories in mathematics. Imagine basing your view of the world on a system that you know cannot be complete or consistent.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Hey, Im a high school senior who plays football... And guess what? I love chess, so do half the other players... We waste time in the locker room playing chess. Its actually very similiar to football, its all about planning and strategy and knwoing how/when to strike your opponent
Grass-roots web hosting.We are poor colleg
Gee, two chess threads in one week, I'm thrilled. But then as a chessplayer I love thrills, apparently.
It is eternally amusing to me to see Americans immediately start several chessplayers=geek threads the first thing the game is mentioned. I generalize, but they inevitably turn out to be Americans since it is about the only place in the world where such a view prevails. Even so it is a remarkable contradiction since in no other culture is chess so consistently used as a positive metaphor. Dozens of commercials use chess and chess imagery to symbolize intelligence and strategic planning. Every Hollywood movie and TV show that wants to not-so-subtly demonstrate that a character is brilliant and cultured slaps a chessboard - usually set up wrong - in his den or has him playing.
The 'chess is for geeks' model in the US is then most easily explained by envy and fear, much the way people who don't know anything about computers denigrate those who do. The old 'scribble scribble scribble' method of squeezing sour grapes. But in general most people I meet in the US are impressed and/or fascinated by the fact that I work for Garry Kasparov and am a master level player myself. No, I didn't get beat up in school for starting a chess club in my California high school. (At 1.95m that wasn't much of an issue.)
In Europe and South America chess and other 'brain games' receive both attention as sports and respect from the public. In the US - a country that has oxymoronic basketball scholarships - on the other hand, there is a tendency to want to believe that any sport worth the name must involve blood loss. (They conveniently ignore the various tubs of lard who play first base.)
The incredible level of concentration reached by Grandmasters is on par with that needed for any peak performer in any sport or art and the same goes for the amount of energy expended, although it is not as quantifiable in drops of sweat. Take a good look at a player before and after a week or two of professional chess and you'll see what I mean. Weight loss of ten kilos is not unusual and physical conditioning is critical for top performance. Most players begin to decline on the rating list by the time they pass 32 years of age, similar to professional sports like football. (There is only one player in the top 10 over that age and only one in the top 20 over 40 years old.)
As touched upon in the article that started the thread, chess is in many ways a thrilling and even violent game. Much like boxing, it is purely mano a mano; there are no teammates to blame, no wind that wasn't blowing your way, nothing but your ego on the line. Losing can be absolutely crushing, and to excel you must build up an ego on par with those possessed by other pro athletes. (Yes, they even refer to themselves in the third person sometimes.)
It can take months or even a lifetime to recover from a bad result. Even an amateur can have a missed chance or bad loss stick in their brain for years. You don't hear too many people going on about some pickup basketball game they lost 10 years ago, but this is common in chess. The psychological elements are extremely powerful, and the history of damaged individuals in chess do not only illustrate the attraction of chess for introverts and others with everything from quirks to acne to serious psychoses. These anecdotes also show the power of the game to affect people who were quite stable to begin with.
In short, chess ain't for sissies. Those who insult chessplayers are usually those who don't have suffient self-confidence to play it themselves. (Apart from people who just have no interest in it, of course.) In a culture that says chess is for smart people you have to come up with some sort of reason to explain why you aren't good at it. "It's for nerds," isn't a good one, but it appears to still be around.
I know lots of top chess players who wouldn't strike you as particularly intelligent otherwise. While chess employs many faculties that make up the amorphous term 'thinking,' there are also chessplayers who fail their math classes, don't like to read, and vote Republican.
Saludos, Mig
KasparovChess.com
At SICO (the "Snoot Internet Chess Orgy") they've got anonymous chess for the truly paranoid. Take turns playing a single move in all sorts of crazy variatons. It's pretty weird but also quite addictive...
I have been previously rated 2300 OTB. For non-chess players this is reasonably high. Possible Fide-Master if I worked harder. This is mostly natural talent, I haven't ever did any study which most top players do 6-8 hours a day of.
The relevance of this article to me personally is that it is absolutely correct.
Besides chess, I spent most of my early 20's seeking to do every dangerous sport/recreation I could afford. This included rock-climbing, skydiving, bungee-jumping, cliff jumping, surfing, and generally being reckless with my life. I have had major problems with excessive behaviours eating/drinking/exercising/sex/programming/chess.
Now on to the game of chess against humans. It's very hard to describe to a non-chess player the absolute rock solid intestinal fortitude that's required for long drawn out match play. After a 3 hour match, the pleasure of victory is palpable. I can understand why top players such as Kasparov cannot maintain a humble ego, it's incredibly tough to do so, and probably counter-productive. Let me explain: The more god-like and confident you feel, the more your opponent will feel like a small worthless peice of shit. I don't know if it's because of aggressive staring or pheremones or some other variable, but you can smell fear from a perceived weaker player in a serious match. Perceived because they may not be weaker, but they have already convinced themselves of that in their head.
I had a game once, in a small meaningless regional match. The game was tenser then usual, it was 3rd or 4th round. During the middlegame I sacrificied a rook for a single pawn and position. The guy I was playing against took this so badly that he started shaking and kept knocking his peices over until he resigned a few moves later. This happened because he didn't expect what I did, and it was the chessplayer equivalent of getting a sledgehammer in the face.
This type of thing probably happens in other sports but you probably feel it more in chess because you are sitting 2 feet away from the opponent and have alot more time to focus in on all the "hate" energy your opponent is directing at you.
For anyone who reads this and thinks "Geez, somebody needs to chill out", your right - it's only a game. But you will never play the game with any level of skill unless you treat each game like your life depends on it.