CHESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

I once tried to explain to one of my erstwhile Republican friends why the Russians are always much better at Psych-Ops than their Western counterparts (which of course is a fact): They are better at chess, and the game of chess gives the better player an edge over his opponent in all psychological games, not limited to the sixty-four squares.

There are three different aspects of chess, and also three different essential and “interactive” qualities that the chess player must possess. The three aspects of chess are art, science, and sport. To measure up to the art aspect, the player must possess an imagination and intuition well above the normal cut, and also have a creative streak in him, making him capable of building up on his fantasies. To measure up to the science aspect, the player must possess a scientific, mathematical mind, being capable of abstraction and endless calculation. They say that of these two aspects a good player really needs one, but such “paucity” may get our player reach a middle level of playing, whereas in order to reach up into the top echelon, he will need both at the same time. The third aspect is being competitive. Chess is a game, which always includes “the other side.” Unless you are capable of badly wanting to win and, even more importantly, of seeing the other side lose, you cannot become a superior chess player. No mercy for the enemy!-- is the key element of chess players’ attitude. The great Soviet World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik had made it a part of his preparation for all decisive matches to learn how to demonize his opponent, so that the resulting hatred of the “evil one” would provide his game with an extra edge of aggression.

There are also three essential ‘interactive’ qualities, as I call them, which any chess player must necessarily possess. He ought to have a brilliant memory, for which effort, playing “blind chess” is a must. This quality is interactive, because the more you exercise your memory in general, the better it serves you in chess. All basic learning must include remembering hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of opening variations of every game that you may potentially face over the chess board. No talent will help you much, if you are playing a game that you have never seen or analyzed played by someone before, while your opponent possesses that knowledge and has come to the game with what is known in chess as adequate preparation.

Chess talent is also a clear must. This talent includes a love for the game, a feeling of ease and comfort in playing the game, the ability to appropriate the game, that is, to play it as your personal game, to which the other player is a stranger, an unwelcome party-crasher, who must be expelled before he ransacks the place and ruins your party. In other words, the other side must be perceived as your side too, in the sense that it is controlled by you, while the person sitting opposite you is nothing but a spoiler, who does not belong there at all. The “interactive” property of such an attitude is that “the other side” starts cooperating with you, and you begin to get the impression that the person playing against you across the table is, in fact, the odd man out.

And finally, the third quality is the psychological element. You need to analyze your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, like a psychoanalyst analyzes a patient. You must understand how he thinks, what makes him tick, what excites him and what puts him down. You must learn more about your opponent than what he knows about himself. The “interactive” delights of this element are particularly interesting. Whatever you have learned about your opponent from his personal psychological profile will help you in the chess game. And conversely, whatever you have learned about your opponent from his chess game will help you to get a pretty accurate measure of him as a person, a professional, a businessman, an enemy, and a friend.

Incidentally, there are a couple of interesting points in the September 2005 interview, given by the former World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov (either to RIAN, Russian Information Agency Novosti, or to some international chess magazine, reprinted by RIAN), while Karpov was in Argentina, in connection with the upcoming world chess championship. First, he says, there are two different types of chess players, one, like himself, who plays the game against the opposite chess pieces, rather than against his human opponent… Others, however, the likes of Botvinnik and Korchnoi, play against the opponent, and so they need to hate their opponent pretty bad, in order to play at full strength. Botvinnik, before major matches, especially for world championship, of which he had so many, used to hang the picture of his opponent in his study, and kept staring at it, often using it for target practice until he was well prepared to hate the poor devil…

Psychology!… I am somehow doubtful however that Karpov’s impersonal chess works that well, to enable players like himself to reach the heights of competitive chess. I suspect that the difference between Karpov and Botvinnik is, perhaps, in the intensity of their aggression, but to altogether deny himself that personal angle is slightly disingenuous on Karpov’s part. But, on the other hand, there is something to be said about the psychological attitude of playing against the opposite chess pieces, thus marginalizing the human opponent. This attitude does not erase the Botvinnik hatred of the opponent, but merely substitutes it by disdain. I see it in a way as an inferior, albeit marginally acceptable alternative, as long as it is of a limited duration, starting with the first move of the game, and ending with the last one. Mind you, both these attitudes should allow you to appropriate the game, according to the overarching principle of taking personal control, which I described earlier in this entry. I kind of suspect that what Karpov means to say, describing his attitude to a given game, is the general principle of controlling the game, confused here for an attitude toward the opponent… Indeed, one does not become a Weltmeister by exclusively concentrating on the wooden chess pieces, while completely ignoring the individuality of the person sitting on the other side of the board.

The other point of interest is Karpov’s attitude to Fischer’s RandomChess (spelled exactly like that, in one word). RandomChess is different from Normal Chess (the latter spelled in two words) in that the positions of the pieces on the first row (a1 to h1) are randomly jumbled (with certain limitations applied, for which the interested reader ought to see the RandomChess rules), after which the black pieces on the last row (a8 to h8) are also reset, to face their corresponding opposite white numbers.

In this age of computers, Karpov says, the attractiveness of RandomChess is not only in the freshness and novelty of the positions on the board, but also in the counterstrike against cheating by the players who may often be sorely tempted, in the privacy of the public toilet, during a tournament game, to consult a friendly little computer which they would bring along, as to what they may be doing next. Well, come to think of it, these computers do bring a certain unwelcome novelty into the new world, and there is very little anybody can do about it. So, maybe, they will just have to be factored in... somehow.

The woes of the genius of chess in the computer age are now becoming the subject of my next vignette, or entry, under the title Kaissa And The Beast: Man Against The Machine.