The Draw Mentality

 You sit down across someone 300 ratings points lower than you.  What are you thinking?  Probably, "I'm going to win this game."  Now switch that person with an IM.  What are you thinking?  For a lot of people, it's something like, "I hope I can get a draw."

Is that really your goal?  Are you really satisfied with a draw?  Is that your ideal outcome?

Woohoo, I didn't win!

During my youth, I went to a lot of karate tournaments.  This often meant driving 2-3hrs, both ways.  You don't do that any say, "Gee, third place might be achievable."  No, I tried my damnedest to win.  I pulled out all the stops.  I trained hard for the last three months, I'm in the best shape I've ever been, and if someone is going to beat me, then they will have to freakin' earn it.

I didn't win a lot ... but sometimes I did.  And then it happened more often.  By the end of highschool, it was almost constant.  I set the bar high and I met it.  And let me tell you, karate is much more intimidating than a board game.  Oh no, I lost a pawn ... versus oh no, I got punched in the face.

If you sit down to play chess and aren't playing for a win, why are you playing chess? I mean that literally. I don't know why anyone would intentionally play for a draw.

Am I Psychic? Predicting Moves Based on Psychology

If I had to name the thing I like most about chess ... it would probably be winning.  Winning feels really good.  A close second would be the joy of figuring out a hard problem.  There's something magical about working on a puzzle and then finding the key move that snaps everything into place.  That also feels really good.

That said, I can win at any game, and there are loads of intellectual puzzles to keep me busy.  Chess offers something else I find fascinating: a glimpse into the psychology of our opponents.  I can look at my opponent's moves and, frequently, predict what sort of player he is, what he wants to do, what his preferences and weaknesses are.  I can then use this prediction to inform my own strategies.

It doesn't work all the time, but anecdotally, it seems to work more often than not.  Winning is nice, but winning while figuring out the psychological make-up of your opponent, that is next level.  It reminds me of that old Bobby Fischer quote.

Today, I want to share one such game where, very early on, I predicted my opponent's psychology and then used it against him.  It's a nice game, I won in 18 moves, but more importantly, I felt like I won the mental battle long before he resigned.

You Are Not Your Rating

In chess, we frequently say, "I am a 1500 player," or whatever your rating is.  When meeting another player, it's one of the first questions we ask.  When we ask questions online, we invariable include our rating.  We celebrate when it goes up and mourn when it goes down.  We place great weight on this number, to the point it often becomes the defining feature of us as a chess player.  "I am a 1500 player."  The very words we use show how we identify with our rating... though everyone also thinks they are underrated.  I may be 1500, but I deserve to be 1800, that sort of thing.

I want to push against this.  Telling me your rating tells me almost nothing about you, to the point that "I am a 1500 player" becomes empty and almost meaningless.

Yes, this is a hot take, and yes, I am exaggerating for effect ... for only slightly exaggerating.  Our ratings certainly tell us far less than we might think, though, and I want to give a gentle reminder that the number next to our name is not the be-all and end-all.  I've written on this topic before, but it deserves a deeper dive.  Let's go.

The Trap of Consumpton: I Own Too Much Stuff

I own a lot of chess stuff.  I could just list it, but a picture is worth a thousand words:

Unfortunately, that's not all of it.  I likely have more books strewn around, and I've given away a good chunk.  Don't forget my hardrive, packed full of digital content, not to mention digital books on Kindle and Forward Chess, random products from random sites, and then my most recent money pit, Chessable.

I recently went through my library and counted the stuff I wanted to study but haven't gotten around to yet.  I hit 81.  That's 81 books, courses or products that I bought, eager to dive in ... and then never did more than an hour, and certainly never after the first week.  And this is only the stuff I want to study; there's a large pile, probably equal in size, which I've accepted are a lost cause. 

Today will be a quick post.  In my chess education materials, I focus on how find the best move, on the right way of thinking.  Well, I will share how I made the wrong moves when it came to buying stuff.  Learn from my mistakes so that you, too, don't end up with a backlog you have little hope of clearing.