[BrianWall-ChessList] Fear of Chess

[Brian Wall]

Tim Brennan

Wow - that is an interesting subject.

I have read that humans are born with only three inate fears - fear of heights,
fear of snakes, and fear of loud noises.  All other fears are learned.

One good book that I listened to on audio book is Susan Jeffer's "Feel the Fear
and Do it Anyway".  This is an outstanding book that can be applied to all
sorts of issues that people have.  I would recommend this book highly.

One thing that might help with your fear is to "reframe" the outcome.  One of my
favorite expressions is "There is no failure - only feedback".  I was listening
to Donald Trump on "The Big Idea" last night, and he was talking about this. 
How success is sometimes a horrible teacher, and through setbacks and failure
people sometimes really learn and improve.  The people who are really
successful have failed many times, but kept going towards their goal until they
reached it.

So when playing chess - if you want to get GOOD - you are going to have to have
a lot of "failure" - i.e. losses.  But each of these losses is not really a
failure - it is feedback about areas in which you have to improve (like tactics
for example).

The other thing that helps me is doing mental rehearsal.  Doing something in
your mind is almost the same as doing it in real life, because your subconcious
brain doesn't really know the difference.  So if you are nervous about playing
chess, first play it in your mind.  Envision sitting down at the board,
playing, and even winning.  Athletes do this a lot - like practicing making
free throws in their head.

You are right that there is very little "luck" involved with chess.  But that is
what makes it so great.  I love knowing that if I lose it is because of
something I did, and not because my opponent got "lucky".  You can reframe that
into a positive as well.  That you can control your own destiny over the board,
and it is a "perfect information" game.  And losing is not a big deal.  Really
nobody even cares except for you, and the importance that you placed on the
outcome.

The other thing that has helped me is doing desensitation type trainings.  If
you play chess over the board a lot then eventually it just becomes "no big
deal", simply because you have done it so many times.

Best of luck!

Cheers,
Tim



-----Original Message-----
From: BrianWallChess3 at Taom.com
To: BrianWallChess at Yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 9:21 AM
Subject: [BrianWallChess] Fear of Chess




----- Forwarded message from Eric De Mund <ead_chess_improvement at ixian.com>
-----
Date: 14 Mar 2007 02:28:53 -0700
From: Eric De Mund <ead_chess_improvement at ixian.com>
Reply-To: Chess_Improvement at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Chess Improvement] Re: Fear of Chess
To: Chess_Improvement at yahoogroups.com

Patrick,

] I've loved games with a passion all my life. But it's the strangest
] thing: when it comes to chess (or checkers, or most any other such
] mentally demanding game), fear drives me away.

I've got a touch of this syndrome, myself, so I'll take a stab at your
questions/musings.

] Years ago, I went parachuting a couple times. To me it was a test of
] courage. I wanted to see if I could face a fear and overcome it. I
] hoped that if I succeeded once, the fear wouldn't be there next time,
] or ever again. It didn't work out that way, though. The second time I
] jumped, I had to conquer the fear all over again. And to this day, I
] still have a fear of heights.

I've never jumped, but I've read somewhere and have had it confirmed by
some friends who have jumped that it's the second jump and not the first
that's the most frightening. Because you know what's going to happen.

] Yet when I do finally make myself play chess, it's just fine. As long
] as I play at a level I can handle, I enjoy the game. In fact, it's one
] of the best games in the world.
]
] I suppose it's just an illusory shifting of responsibility. When I
] lose a game of chance, like rummy or backgammon, I can always blame it
] on a run of bad luck. But there's no evading responsibility for my
] defeat at chess or checkers. The most I can do is conclude that the
] game is too hard for me, and give up. But in that case, fear of chess
] will linger; next time I consider playing, I'll freeze again.

In my case, my winning is very much tied up with my sense of self-worth,
my sense of my own intelligence, so this is what I'm having to battle. I
know intellectually, having gotten back into chess in the fall of 2005
after having laid off the game since 1982, and having only played some
30 rated games since then, that I've just not played anywhere near
enough to work out the rust. I'm still not, in my heart of hearts, able
to let go and listen to my head, which is able to tell me that what I
really want, over the long haul, is to achieve a certain level of play.
What this requires is two changes, among others: I need to play more,
and I need to, in driving instruction parlance, look further down the
road. In my heart of hearts, I'm still too attached to not losing this
next particular game, instead of more fluidly "wanting to play a rea-
sonable game".

One of the things I loved reading, and I can't recall where I read it,
was that Korchnoi is very much driven by finding chess truth. This is
what's kept him going so long. He loves to win, of course, but if he
finds out that an idea that he'd held the previous year, say, about a
particular opening, or a particular type of plan, which he'd told all
the world about, turns out, in his new, greater understanding, to be
unsound (or less sound, or what have you), he's perfectly willing to run
down his old idea and do so publicly. He's interested in truth, after
all, and if he has to push aside the old Korchnoi to do it, so be it.

Fischer, on the other hand, in my reading, was driven by winning. Well,
that can drive one for a long, long time. But it can also be an impedi-
ment. I believe that that's what's stopped Fischer, himself, from play-
ing all these years, post-1972, and I believe that it stops a lot of us
lesser players, as well.

One motivator, one driving force, is ever-sustainable, while one is not.
Sustainability is very important to me.

This, above, is all food for my head. Some of it does trickle down to my
heart, from time to time, but it seems to take its sweet time. In prac-
tice, one thing I do to help me play more chess is to take lessons from
my ultimate frisbee play. In ultimate frisbee, just as in soccer or bas-
ketball, games are not decided 1-0. Games are decided 11-8 or 72-60 or
what have you. There are many chances for good plays and many chances
for bad plays, and after each bad play one don't run oneself down as
badly as in chess because it's not the sole play that decides the game.

Chess is brutal like that. In these other sports where many plays and
points take place, one is more easily able to let go of one's very tight
grip on needing to win, and one is clearly able to see "the process".
One can more clearly and fluidly see the process of the play itself, one
can more clearly--and with greater forgiveness--see one's shortcomings,
and one can more clearly see one's progress, over time.

The other thing that's brutal about rated chess is that one *is* rated.
In these other sports, one simply plays for the beauty of it, for the
comraderie, for the joy of scoring, for the joy of winning, or what have
you, but not to improve one's rating. The tyranny of ratings just isn't
there.

I hope these thoughts help, and if you come up with other strategies
that get you playing more, do please pass them along.

Regards,
Eric
--
Eric De Mund | ....................... | Y!M: ead0002; ICQ: 811788
ead at ixian.com | 650 Castro St, #120-210 | Chess in the SF Bay Area:
ixian.com/ead/ | Mountain View, CA 94041 | ixian.com/ead/chess/ba-chess.html



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