Elon Musk:
Lose at chess -> ”Chess is too easy for my big brain. No tech trees. No fog of war. I don’t want to waste time on such simple activities.”
“Oh yeah, it would just be so easy to master if I put my mind to it, you know…”
proceeds to never put his mind to it
Path to exile or whatever :
Nah I gotta get smurfed.
Proceeds to lose anyway
Win at chess > “I just got lucky” > no feel good hormones
“they messed up, I didn’t earn it”
Honestly, that’s my thought process in every game that involves other players.
But you see, they DID mess up. No one plays a perfect game. You won because you messed up less than they did.
Lose at chess --> “I lost on purpose” --> anti-depression
“I lost on purpose” - Denial
“Fuck chess anyways” - Anger
“I bet I’d have won if I opened differently” - Bargaining
“Damn, I actually just suck at chess” - Depression & Acceptance
This is what I tell myself the first game against a new opponent.
Also, I tend to just play dumb the first time against someone I’ve never played before.
The one time I played against a real ranked player, I played against him twice.
The first time, I did a crazy, stupid, unpredictable gambit and punched my queen through his front lines while he was still setting up his complicated, by-the-book opening, arranging his pawns just so … and somehow turned that into checkmate very early in the game.
The second time, he was being more careful and took it more seriously and the game was dragging on and on. He did eventually win, but I take pride in this: at one point, he told me “checkmate in four moves”, and I was like “lol, nope! Time to be unpredictable!” I then made a crazy sacrifice play trading one piece for another (one of my last remaining major pieces, but I took out one of his as well) … I still eventually lost, but it took more like 20 turns, not 4.
The guy was really good at chess, but the ‘well-studied’ kind of good, which seemed to leave him blind to out-of-the-box thinking that other ‘real’ chess players would never do.
In the 1800s, announcing mate in x moves and not proving it counted as a forfeit
I do the same thing when I know the person is going to be way better than me. If you play too safe, they’ll have that worked out already, but if you turn up the heat, you might trick them.
Or “damn, I suck and that’s funny” > no depression.
Chess is a memorisation game for dummies. Go is more fun and has deeper strategy.
Ok, go memorize every chess position
