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I love chess but stopped playing around the age of 20. I played a lot in school and was captain of my school team. I played in league and cup matches for 2 ye

I love chess but stopped playing around the age of 20. I played a lot in school and was captain of my school team. I played in league and cup matches for 2 years and every day I practised on fellow students in the sixth form prefects room. There was nothing quite as nerve wracking as sitting opposite your opponent in an important match and shaking hands and the first moves. On the other hand there was the excitment of knowing when you had beaten your opponent and just had to finish him off. I remember going to a tight end game with a top table opponent and had just Queened a pawn with another one 2 moves away. The referee gave me the Queen and said "Shall I leave another Queen here?" I replied "no thanks I just need the one" and grinned at my opponent. It's been said chess is more brutal than war. I had to give it up as I began obsessing about the game. It was driving me slowly mad. I was having nightmares about being chased around a large chess board by the pieces. I haven't played a game since.

mholt 11y ago
> "Shall I leave another Queen here?" I realize it was probably obvious in your case, but I would have been bothered by the ref making a comment or question like that during the game for fear of tipping off my opponent.
- nathancahill 11y ago
  I'm sure his opponent knew.
tbomb 11y ago
>"There was nothing quite as nerve wracking as sitting opposite your opponent in an important match and shaking hands and the first moves." This has been true with most sports or competition based activities that I have done too. There's nothing quite like the nerves you get just before a match starts
- briane80 11y ago
  Yes it's true. Though with Chess it felt different. I guess with sports you are pitting physical or athletic ability against an opponent but with Chess it's your mind and intellect which seems to draw the ego out more. Winning is euphoric but losing is a crushing psychological blow to the essence of what makes you... your mind.
  - atsaloli 11y ago
    And with chess boxing, it's both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing (Yes, chess boxing is a thing.)
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    Were you ever as competitive (that is, skilled and practiced) in any particular physical sport as you were in chess? I suspect that if you'd put as much of yourself into, say, tennis or soccer, that you'd have felt similarly. EDIT: I've been pondering this a bit more, and I want to share my thoughts. I was thinking about how some of my friends react to losses in mental sports/games versus physical sports/games and their particular histories, as well as my own. Playing a bit to the idea of dualism of mind and body, some people focus more of their energy on the mind and some on the body. This affects their notion of self. For you, your focus was on chess and the mind, consequently a loss in that game or evidence of your mind not being as honed as your opponents strikes your ego more than a loss on the tennis court might. I have teammates on a rec soccer league who take it very seriously. They spent their youths practicing soccer or another sport at least as much as you spent on chess. A loss on the field, or a near loss, hits them hard because their sense of self is so tied to their physical capabilities. Anything demonstrating that they aren't as good as an opponent hits them harder than it would me. I'm a tad bit more like you (though never seriously competitive in mental games/sports), my particular focus in those years was on acquisition of knowledge and understanding. This is not a directly competitive thing (outside of trivia games like Jeopardy!), but meeting someone who understands a field, that I've studied, far better than I do is both inspiring and a blow to the ego. "I've spent X hours, days, months studying this, and still I'm nowhere near this person's level of understanding and capability." All this is not meant to say that your view is wrong, but that what each person experiences as a hit to their ego is going to be different, and largely determined by what they put their energy into. Outrun a former sprinter and they'll feel the effects of their age and it'll weigh on their mind. Beat an old and unpracticed chess champion and it'll be the same. But beat the sprinter at chess and they won't care, and the chess champion might even laugh at the suggestion of a footrace assuming they'd lost before it began.
albinofrenchy 11y ago
I played somewhat seriously as a teenager, and ended up quitting for pretty much the same reason. I'd have unnerving stress dreams where I was trying to solve some position but the position kept changing subtly.
gsam 11y ago
>I had to give it up as I began obsessing about the game. When I started dreaming about playing tetris, I realized I should probably take it easy.

mholt 11y ago

> "Shall I leave another Queen here?" I realize it was probably obvious in your case, but I would have been bothered by the ref making a comment or question like that during the game for fear of tipping off my opponent.

nathancahill 11y ago
I'm sure his opponent knew.

tbomb 11y ago

>"There was nothing quite as nerve wracking as sitting opposite your opponent in an important match and shaking hands and the first moves." This has been true with most sports or competition based activities that I have done too. There's nothing quite like the nerves you get just before a match starts

briane80 11y ago
Yes it's true. Though with Chess it felt different. I guess with sports you are pitting physical or athletic ability against an opponent but with Chess it's your mind and intellect which seems to draw the ego out more. Winning is euphoric but losing is a crushing psychological blow to the essence of what makes you... your mind.
- atsaloli 11y ago
  And with chess boxing, it's both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing (Yes, chess boxing is a thing.)
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Were you ever as competitive (that is, skilled and practiced) in any particular physical sport as you were in chess? I suspect that if you'd put as much of yourself into, say, tennis or soccer, that you'd have felt similarly. EDIT: I've been pondering this a bit more, and I want to share my thoughts. I was thinking about how some of my friends react to losses in mental sports/games versus physical sports/games and their particular histories, as well as my own. Playing a bit to the idea of dualism of mind and body, some people focus more of their energy on the mind and some on the body. This affects their notion of self. For you, your focus was on chess and the mind, consequently a loss in that game or evidence of your mind not being as honed as your opponents strikes your ego more than a loss on the tennis court might. I have teammates on a rec soccer league who take it very seriously. They spent their youths practicing soccer or another sport at least as much as you spent on chess. A loss on the field, or a near loss, hits them hard because their sense of self is so tied to their physical capabilities. Anything demonstrating that they aren't as good as an opponent hits them harder than it would me. I'm a tad bit more like you (though never seriously competitive in mental games/sports), my particular focus in those years was on acquisition of knowledge and understanding. This is not a directly competitive thing (outside of trivia games like Jeopardy!), but meeting someone who understands a field, that I've studied, far better than I do is both inspiring and a blow to the ego. "I've spent X hours, days, months studying this, and still I'm nowhere near this person's level of understanding and capability." All this is not meant to say that your view is wrong, but that what each person experiences as a hit to their ego is going to be different, and largely determined by what they put their energy into. Outrun a former sprinter and they'll feel the effects of their age and it'll weigh on their mind. Beat an old and unpracticed chess champion and it'll be the same. But beat the sprinter at chess and they won't care, and the chess champion might even laugh at the suggestion of a footrace assuming they'd lost before it began.

albinofrenchy 11y ago

I played somewhat seriously as a teenager, and ended up quitting for pretty much the same reason. I'd have unnerving stress dreams where I was trying to solve some position but the position kept changing subtly.

gsam 11y ago

>I had to give it up as I began obsessing about the game. When I started dreaming about playing tetris, I realized I should probably take it easy.