Chess and vanity

To be, or not to be, THAT is the question...

Competitive games teach us many things that help us succeed in life in general, and were invented as an alternative to killing each other in order to feel that satisfying feeling of victory.

You long winded types would throw in 3 or 4 paragraphs of why not dying is better than dying....here:

<3 ur inputs forky  .

plz give us....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJGrIyt-X8&list=RDCZVUzho-nok&index=18

No. If you knew me well at all, then you would know that I am not that type of person. Philosophy is just something that interests me. In fact, I am currently going for a major in psychology and a minor in philosophy. Does it then make sense that I merely want to respectfully give this post the proper care it deserves? @Talekhine93 had a good forum post and you should address this yourself to remain on topic. If you are going to distract the topic to me, then at the very least: do not do so in this forum. 

 Hello @VeganPizza26 

You probably post a short, comical post to balance this forum which has otherwise been mentally tasking. I believe that often times some humor really is needed to mentally get past some of the boring parts before the interesting stuff comes up xD

Thank you for your concise (and incisive) keystrokes.

Saves us lots (and lots) of reading.      

Ah, sorry for remaining unclear in my phrasing despite everything... I meant a coefficient which is calculated by dividing the value of someone's playing strength by the value of their vanity. The greater the playing strength and the lesser the vanity, the larger the coefficient. xD In other words, who is the best yet least vain chess player?

It might not be the easiest task to gauge this, but therein potentially lies the fun, wouldn't you agree? At the very least, we can judge this based on the things we know certain chess players have said and/or done. Their immediate post-loss reactions should be very telling (e. g. storming out of the tournament hall, saying stuff like "Gegen diesen Idioten muss ich verlieren!" etc.), as should stuff they've said about themselves and others in their books and such (bonus points for "being the book", if you know what I'm referring to). And while their boasts might be justified by their results, that's still prideful, and I cannot separate it from vanity, nor do I intend to; there'd be no use in something like that, not when I wanna discuss unconditional humility.

Oh, and also, I appreciate the wacky spin on the deserved seriousness of this topic, even though I'm not gonna encourage it in place of actual philosochessing.

I'm old enough to remember that low point in music history

You should throw GUILT into the equation.  Best chess/least vain is only part of the equation. 

What about players who cry after winning?  Extra points?  How about those who flog themselves after winning?  Surely that is much more noble than simply not being vain.  

You seek a state where there is no joy in winning, but that is only half of the spectrum.  Let us continue to self loathing for winning.  

Thanks for clarification. Probably GM Arthur Bisguier would be on the list of strong best players who were least vain. 

Flogging is especially vain, dude... or, if you wanna be more exact, it's extremely prideful. Punishment by active self-harm is disrespectful towards one's bodily health, which is also given like anything else that's material. While the body shouldn't be pampered so much that it inhabits one's will to do good, it shouldn't be whipped into submission either, much less by itself! There's no moderation in that, it's a person trying to take control of the suffering instead of humbly letting it happen if it absolutely must, not to mention all the endorphins the body releases as a reaction to self-harm. That's not being properly responsible; it's just another chemical warfare against oneself, instead of proper medicine.

Guilt can be a part of one's vanity, too. If you feel guilty for losing a chess game, it could translate to "I could've and should've played better, because I (let's say) never made mistakes like that before, so I'm better than the mistakes I made! I did not play my peak game!" Well, your peak game is whatever you exhibit at the current moment, no use in refusing to be yourself just because you used to be a version of yourself that played better. Again, this is sort of why I think it's impossible to truly let go of all vanity in a meaningfully competitive setting. Anything centered around oneself can be vain. While this does make it so that it's hard to judge whether bursting into salt happened because of: a) a genuine fear and sadness of the loss preventing you from being able to feed your family off of dat tournament moolah, b) an ego wound, or c) both?!, assuming the worst is probably the safest, especially in the absence of concrete evidence to the contrary.

Also, I can tell you're making a borderline mockery out of the discussion, but imagine if they took you seriously, just like they take me seriously? Nice name, by the way!

So far, we've got Bisguier at the forefront of the race, because there were no other suggestions. xD Anyone else who could toe that line? I'm thinking maybe GM Svetozar Gligorić, but it might be a biased proposition just because he was a Yugoslav like myself.

Another suggestion might be Vassily Smyslov, because of his reported content immediately after Botvinnik took the World Champion title back from him, as well as the sentence about playing forty good moves.

Here's a new hot take on the original topic, though: do you think that having faster insight into a position could help do away with a player's vanity? I'm asking this because I've noticed that vanity comes from thinking, so a player who spends less time thinking about their own moves is potentially less self-absorbed and more content to play "just" good moves instead of great ones, because they're safer... right? Thinking more leads to more effort being put into winning, which is why losses due to timeout and/or time trouble blunders get even more painful. Also, I'm analysing the situation primarily from the rapid or quicker time control standpoint, where it pays dearly to dawdle.