It seems to me that to really enjpy playing chess you must have a specific personality.
Blank is the classic jerk who wants to prove his superiority by beating someone at chess.
I had a person's name in mind but left it blank.
Me, my interest in chess is to try to figure out the game. Winning feels good and losing pisses me off. Yet the only reason I do it is in the hopes of learning something new.
Some seem to enjoy puzzles just to solve a puzzle. Solving puzzles I do not find enjoyable at all. It just pisses me off out of frustration.
In summarry..
There is the puzzle silver
There is the person who strives to understand
There is the bully who wants to prove superiority
What are others?
@Patzering
My goal was to have a good enough understanding of the game to be able to beat people who only knew how the pieces moved.
Now I have no real goal, just ambiguous get better. Maybe one day I will play in a tournament.
And puzzles are good for you, they help you improve and find OTB
a move that you will miss. Trust me if you have never seen a particular
idea in a combo, trick or pitfall. You will not see it OTB.
I've played 1,000's of combo's. Not one has been original.
It is something I have seen before, maybe in a slightly different setting,
but without the bare bones of it I would have missed it.
Pattern recognition is a valuable part of a players make up.
Pattern recognition in action.
You can see instantly the Philidors Lagacy mate in 5
@eladar saidSome people may use chess to stoke a need for ego validation. That is a fool’s game.
Any of those a variation of I am going to prove myself better/smarter than you because I can beat you at chess?
If there is any of that here at RHP, just ignore it. A player’s rating here has no relation to anything outside RHP and no bearing on forum discussions either. Some of the most astute debaters here have modest ratings.
Remember Tartakower’s wise words, “chess is a struggle against one’s own errors.” This means that your opponents seldom beat you; you let them beat you by your own errors.
@eladar saidI hope you don't mind if I ask, but how do you know this?
There is the bully who wants to prove superiority
Are the "bullies" making derisive comments during the game, or is this a matter of "mind-reading" regarding someone else's mindset who might just be making better moves from more experience?
I understand most of us have mirror neurons and often can't help but have ideas about what the other might be thinking, albeit distorted by our own filters and perhaps also by their petty psych-warfare ruses, but if it's just two people making moves on a board, why not just play the board instead of the person?
If someone really is a bully who wants to prove his superiority, maybe there's more going on in his iceberg than we can ever know.