A Thought-Provoking Article: Tremendous Risks and the Psychological Aspect of Chess

What do many people do after a chess game on chess.com? If you said that they automatically click the "New Game" button, you are correct! But think. What else? If you said that they do a game review or analysis, that is what we are looking for! But have you ever considered that a move may be so much more than what Stockfish thinks? Stockfish is a robot. Because of this, Stockfish does not play based on human thought or conditions away from the board. It plays based on strategy. But sometimes, you have to think about your position as a human.

Let's say that you check with your undefended queen, but the undefended enemy queen can capture you. If they capture, the position is basically lost. But if they don't, you win a queen. It 's like a gamble. Win big, or lose disastrously. There are questions you need to ask yourself. Will your opponent see the capture? What conditions will could affect their decision?   I once found myself in this very dilemma.

 My opponent and I both had queens and it was the endgame. My opponent still had a chance. I took the risk. In any normal environment I would've likely lost my queen. But there was one huge factor in my favor. My opponent had less than one minute on the clock.  I figured he'd be panicked and rush his decisions, so he wouldn't notice how to use his queen that was almost on the other end of the board. I figured right. I won the queen.

However, this is one of the myriad of positions you could find yourself in. Maybe you need to choose if you should attack with your queen or castle your king to safety, or in a more extreme case, win a queen at the expense of a potential forced mate.

In the above position, white can launch a dangerous kingside attack but black does have a powerful queen and knight pair aimed at White's undefended king.

  Chess players should evaluate their opponent's position and put themselves in their shoes to make educated but dangerous risks. It is all based on the question of "Will they see it?". You can decrease their chances of this by making intimidating and aggressive but mostly meaningless moves, such as making a knight move close to their king. The takeaway of this post is that not all decisions should be made based off of position and logic, but in some cases guesswork and possibility. So, what do you think? Should chess players take such risks?