Psychology & Your Chess Performance - Insights from Philadelphia International

Psychology is everything when it comes to performing consistently well in chess tournaments. I don't mean using some "mind tricks" to defeat your thin-skinned opponent (but check out a Karpov interview on the Karpov-Korchnoi controversy regarding an alleged "parapsychologist" working on Korchnoi's behalf). I mean fully understanding your own mental inclinations -- what in your psyche is working for and against you -- and proactively altering your psyche to achieve consistent success.

Finding a decision making process and mindset that works for you is essential. Only you can truly get to the very bottom of your strengths and weaknesses; self-awareness, objectivity, and journaling are essential in my view. However, a good coach, mentor, or friend may help to challenge your play and thinking (decision making) process to help you get to the bottom of what's going on.

In this video I detail my own insights regarding my psychology in the Philadelphia International earlier this week, and what changes I applied to score 4/4 at a local tournament yesterday. Vindication is sweet, but it takes blood and sweat to get there!

To summarize the video, the mindset I realized I needed from the recent Philly setback tournament was to balance solidity with activity/initiative seeking, which I utilized to achieve my comeback in a Herndon, VA, action yesterday. This is what worked for me based on my own rigorous introspection.

My hope is that by following this method you can arrive at similar insights that you can apply in your own chess game. It's trial-and-error; in a way, chess is your own science experiment. Consistent over-the-board play is necessary to stay sharp and psychologically calibrated as you constantly test your hypotheses, fine-tuning the machine we call brain for optimum performance.

How have you applied psychology in your chess? What has worked and what hasn't?