How do you deal with being a beginner (the emotional side)

@wornaki you make your point well (and have been gracously restrained towards impatient replies including my first message). I think those following the thread will understand the point you are making by now but for many people it may simply not be something they can identify with. If I understand correctly, you are seeking a cathartic or consoling discussion rather than advice?

Maybe a cathartic one. In any case, I truly welcome opinions that dissent with mine. That's why I wanted to discuss this. Because I think it's quite likely that I'm not the only beginner at chess that has similar feelings. There's many threads about how to improve, and I like reading those too. Heck, I may even follow the advice there. However, when it's about advice on how to manage your mindset, this thread has had some that's very interesting too 

A long time ago I "discovered" that the main reason why most people don't get emotionally past beginner stages is because they would love to see themselves produce relatively beautiful games/shots/tricks/works of art/etc. without much effort (the way naturals do).

Chess is not a forgiving activity in that regard, not unlike music and painting. In all 3 of them you have to face your games, your recordings and your paintings and see how much of a "patzer" you are for you to get better. It would be much easier if one could pick up any of the above activities from scratch and produce a relatively beautiful game/recording of a song/painting just by sheer talent.

Given that not many people are naturally gifted at chess, my quest these days is to find ways to mimic the feeling of satisfaction accorded to those naturally gifted, by shielding off the ugliness of badly played games. Also I want to find ways to study as little as possible (decreased amount of effort) and get right into intermediate stage. The main goal is those ways is to appease my mentality and get to see myself as capable of producing great chess games just like a natural talent would.

@MarkGrubb You're right. However, if OP were willing to out in a little effort for a month with what I and many other people suggested they might be able to alleviate some of their frustrations. OP is frustrated/disappointed that they don't have any natural talent for chess. There's nothing they can do about that, you either have it or you don't. Therefore, there's four options: 

1) Put in the effort to improve, which in turn will move OP past the beginner stage and, while their game won't be perfect, will help with the frustrations of being a beginner.

2) Don't do anything, stay as you are playing a game you hate being bad at, and continue to feel frustrated.

3) Stop playing chess - which OP doesn't want to do.

4) Change your mindset.

Number 4 is of course the best option, and the one I'd recommend, but is also the one that will require the most work of all. In any case, @wornaki, while we can always help to discuss your thoughts and feelings on the matter, you're not going to find anyone or anything that can help you alter your mindset on the forums, which is, as you call it, "destructive". Maybe you could try to research ways on altering that. 

 Since you mention Number 4... have you got any chess specific ways to do that you can share? I'm all eyes. I don't mind clever work in this area at all... in fact I'd be very grateful for any advice.

I think one interesting "trick" (so much for the tricky nature of it) is to develop intuition. I think the ugliness comes mainly from lack of properly developed intuition. No, I don't mind calculation, i don't mean learning opening principles, I don't mean middlegame study or pawn structures or checkmate patterns. I mean to be able to see a position and know what's behind it rather quickly. I've noticed this is far easier when you're playing against someone much much better, but also when you replay games by masters (provided they are committed classicists).

Strong players have good intuition. However, I think it's not so much the case that they got strong from having a good intuition, but that they got a good intuition from being strong. I don't believe in shortcuts towards good intuition. Replaying many master games -as you mentioned- could help somewhat, if they're properly commented all the better. This won't help you avoid blunders though, which is really all you need to get past the beginner stage. For this it's more helpful trying to avoid the stuff you already know to be horrible, rather than trying to emulate high level beauty. You hardly need to understand positions at all to do that.

The kind of intuition you need to develop to move past the beginner stage is one for hanging pieces, two move combinations and basic checkmates.

So that's one chess related change of mindset that might help: to aim for this simple kind of intuition rather than for a deeper understanding of what's behind the position.

i think that if you can get good intuition when you start, you get to avoid a lot of the frustrations of being a beginner, without a need to study or put in a lot of effort. Nothing in that statement is meant to convey that the stronger you are the deeper and better your intuition or that the more you study the easier it becomes to have clear intuitions.

Interestingly enough (or maybe not), chess intuition and its link to the psychological aspects of learning are hardly ever decently explored in chess books for beginners. I think this is because most writers focus on the knowledge you need to acquire. That's why you have dozens and dozens of books on how to play 1.e4 e5 and dozens and dozens of videos on openings and middlegames and dozens and dozens of articles on endgames. That's why you're told to do tactical training over and over and over. Granted, that works for many, but i doubt it works for people with my mindset (or a similar one).

In the last couple of months I began to think that a very special type of coaching would be the way to fly past beginner stages by naturally and quickly developing intuition. But said coaching would have to be individually tailored (that's expensive and personally I can't afford it), focused not on knowledge, but on feelings/sensations (game related, but also with some leeway about other feelings when playing chess). The main idea would be to as little work on acquiring chess knowledge as humanly possible and yet, move past beginner stages into intermediate stages in which your games are of decent quality. I would like to find a a way to get that type of thing set up, but right now it's a dream.

I don't think it's possible to avoid hanging pieces without calculation, just based on emotions. The intuition comes after that, when it has become second nature to you.

I don't believe it's possible to sense that there is something in a position if you are not at least theoretically able to do standard calculations of variations.

I think of intuition as something that comes with skill, but not so much as a means to arrive at being skilled in the first place. Great intuition is a hallmark of people who are very skilled at something, but it's not the explanation of why they became so good in the first place.

But maybe that's wrong, who knows. Good luck on your future path.

What @svensp says is good advice. The thing with intuition is that it's mainly built from experience, but that doesn't just mean blitzing out games (pardon the pun) without thinking. Rather, you need to understand why certain moves are good, but also WHEN those same moves are bad. They say "practice makes perfect", but in reality it's "perfect practice makes perfect", which goes back to the previous points about time controls and blunder checking. The longer time controls give you that little bit extra time to make sure you're not blundering a piece and the more you do this the quicker it becomes until you can instantly see why a move is bad. If you constantly play short time controls you'll be in an endless loop I'm afraid.

I think the best advice I can give is, if you don't already have one, to build a basic repertoire of openings you like, stick to the openings, and get LOTS of experience in them. I don't mean learning line after line of theory, but just enough to get you into the basic position and play it by ear from there. For example, I'm currently going through a phase where I'm playing the King's Indian Defense against anything other than 1.e4 (whether this is good is a good idea is another question entirely) and despite not learning a lick of theory I've got to a point where I've won the last 8/10 games I've played in the opening against people at my level (which isn't a great deal higher than you) purely because I'm experienced in the positions that arise from the opening so I can often intuitively know when to push a pawn or start a kingside attack. Of course sometimes I'm wrong, but that's happening less and less.

Other than that, studying games from the past greats is a good idea. More experienced players a can probably give you extra (see: better) advice. Finally, there are some good articles you can read by just googling "chess intuition" that may provide you with some ideas. As I said, it's not going to be easy, but you should be able to progress past the beginner stage with relatively little effort.  

Interesting thread.  As an old guy (71) who played a little chess in my teens and is now re-learning for both enjoyment and brain maintenance, I understand.  I was mostly good at things I tried in the geek arena I suppose because as a kid, our household encouraged puzzles, but my personality has been one of 'jack of all trades, master of none'.  I've pretty much accepted that.

When I took up guitar a couple years ago, my instructor said to me, "I tell older students who've been successful in industry and expect to progress fast to just enjoy the journey."  For me, that was excellent advice.  If you've heard of the so-called 10,000 hour rule to mastery (the book is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell), the message is sort of obvious.  Whether you believe that number or not, the Beatles, Bill Gates, Bobby Fischer etc spend a 'lot' of time honing their craft.

I joined chess.com maybe 6 weeks ago and have been getting regularly thrashed with the occasional victory.  I even beat a higher rated player once (I think he was drunk...).  And I have to fight the feeling of not wanting to play a live game because of the fear of being decimated.  Even when I do I learn something and I always analyze the game looking for inaccuracies and blunders.  I do puzzles every day and I read chess books and articles.  Strategy right now is very basic.  I stick with the E4 opening, try to control the center, castle early, develop my pieces and then rely on my tactics skills to survive.  I believe the rest will take care of itself and that the more time I put in, the better I will become.  I wanted to be as good as Clapton and I'd love to be as good as Nakamura but it just's not going to happen.  There isn't enough time left in my life and I don't want to be playing guitar or practicing chess for 12 hours a day which I'm sure those guys did.  I'm now content to do modest, daily practice and I get satisfaction from the little victories, a good 12 bar riff or a fork that takes my opponent's queen.  Nobody's born with these skills and if you want to excel you have to do through the apprentice stage.

Hope that helps. 

My view of intuition is that it is a form of automation in the brain. Analogous with athletic muscle memory. It is developed through study and experience. I''m also sceptical of the idea of intuition as a feeling or knowing that cannot be objectively analysed. Though I appreciate this is how it can appear. I see it more as a fast, visceral response. I would expect a good player to verify their intuition by calculating and evaluating a position.

This is what I think too. I remember reading somewhere that Magnus Carlsen said that he instinctively knows what move to play almost immediately and then spends any thinking time verifying this. Whether that's true of every single move is up for debate, but I suspect it is. 

Notice how much better and satisfactory the learning process can be if it's geared towards getting your intuition to that level and not geared towards calculation or pattern recognition.

I agree with the part about calculation as you'll rarely ever have to calculate more than two moves ahead as a beginner. However, there's no denying that pattern recognition plays a big part in intuition. The quicker you can recognise patterns the quicker a move will come to you without having to think too hard about it. Therefore, studying pattern recognition is a must eventually, but not straightaway.

For anyone interested (or who hasn't seen them), John Bartholomew has a series on his YouTube channel called "Chess Fundamentals". The first two videos in that series are quite long (up to 1 and a half hours), but are very instructional and can be applied to your game immediately. 

My opinion is that intuition is not a factor.  As noted above, study and playing just imbues you with the experience that tells you the best course of action.  I was watching a video by Jeremy Silman the other day where he also downplays the role of calculation, at least at the beginning and intermediate level. 

I think the main thing about intuition is that, while it can be "improved on", made stronger, deeper, it fundamentally is a natural born ability. In any case, I've yet to find a training/coaching system that emphasizes it over calculation, over application of opening principles, over opening theory knowledge, over how to make a move, over everything else. I honestly think intuition is what makes most "naturally born chess players" (a wild stretch, but taking it metaphorically) play more interesting, beautiful games that intermediate players would play from the get go.

This is a game with not one calculation and not one pattern recognition!

Pure positional understanding! for every move and a win! against a 1700 player on chess.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzrqYqwkUZM&t=168s

I'm afraid I have to disagree, at least to a certain extent. To use the example of athletic ability. That's something you're born with, which can't be said for chess intuition. No one is born knowing how to play chess. The top players didn't just walk up to the chess board and spot checkmate in 20 when they started playing. They had to learn the rules, how the pieces move, and the fundamentals of chess. It's also worth pointing out that these players almost always started out as children when it's much easier to learn new things, but they were also lucky in the regard that they received expert coaching early on. I'm of the viewpoint that while intuition is important, you don't become a strong player because you have good intuition, but instead your intuition is good because you're a strong player who is experienced. 

Morphy one of the best ever with Capablanca,they never learned any theory!

Bobby Fischer,admired Capablanca's "light touch" and ability to see the right move very quickly. 

Capablanca excelled in simple positions and endgames, and his positional judgment was outstanding.

Capablanca appeared more interested in baseball than in chess, which he described as "not a difficult game to learn and it is an enjoyable game to play.

Of course they did, just not in the way we think about learning theory today. They might not have explicitly studied it, but they of course knew that certain openings would be played in a certain move order. They will just have learnt this through playing a large number of games.