Chess Players and Objectivity...

Have you ever played a game of Chess, against yourself...

or

Do you know anyone who does, that is, play both black and white...

In your opinion, are people who play both sites more objective in life than people who do not?

Chess skills are very specific to chess itself -- you can't hardly think of carrying over to another skill set much less someone's "whole life"

The way a person lives their life and plays chess can be different and depends very much on the person themself.  Masters can make poor life choices the same way a 20 board blindfold exhibitionist can forget an every day thing.

@ Orangehonda

I agree with you on one count, masters can make poor life choices and amateurs can come up with brilliant career choices...

However, the question is, is a person who can analyze the game from both sides not more objective? His/Her decisions might depend on the depth of knowledge and number of insights and strength of reason, but their approach is likely to be more objective... 

In a real game that's basically what you do, you come up with your best move, then try to find your opponent's best response -- it's nearly impossible to play one side of the board in a real game.  I know you mean play a game against yourself, although I'm pointing out it's pretty similar.

I've played a game of chess against myself, it's a lot like analysis except you can't take back moves :).  It's it's own skill, and chess is it's own skill, so again I don't think someone who has played, is willing to play, or has practiced this kind of solitaire chess is necessarily more objective, wiser, or deeper thinking than another person.

So you think playing both colors does not in any way make the player a more objective person...

My experience shows that such people generally have a better win rate with both colors and can look at the grey shades in life better than those who only look at things as being black or white...

I've tried that many times- playing chess by myself. I don't know how you get past a few moves? I'm not good at the game, so maybe I'm missing something. But how does one stay objective when playing alone, and make it past just a few moves?

I usually end up drawing, but I'm good at all, so that may just be me.

You asked, you got an opinion different from the one you were fishing for and you disagreed with no real evidence, just "your experience". Why even ask?

Playing both sides does not indicate objectivity, but subjectivity, in that the player has no real interest in the outcome, like a disinterested observer.

Playing both sides is futile, and so is playing an opponent; in the former there can be no winner or loser since there is only one player, in the latter only ego can win, which in no way benefits the player.

So say the masters.

@trysts - My reasoning is that a two sided player is likely to be objective because he/she looks at both sides of the game with a view to win, as against wanting to win with one color...

@wbbaxterbones - Interesting, do you play each move with a win in mind or a truce in mind...

@Loomis - I asked because though I had an opinion, I am also open to other points of view, which might be more logical and substantiated by 'real evidence' than my own, which is purely based on my limited sample points...

There's no such thing as looking at only one side of the game. "Playing against yourself from both colours" is in practice not any different than simply analyzing a position. There seems to be a misconception in your question.

Agree with philidor

@Szozz - A very philosophical and interesting reply. Which master are you referring to in the last line...

@Philidor_position - The slight difference between the two is that while playing against an opponent, you are inherently betting on prospect of him/her making a mistake and your ability to capitalize on it, however when you are playing both sides you do not have the luxury of benefiting from the mistakes your opponent commits...

@Egarcia - Have you ever tried it, I mean playing both sides, it can be very draining... 

I don't really think there is a correlation between chess and objectivity, because in fact even at the board, although we should be, most of us aren't totally objective looking at the board, we're usually at least slightly biased towards ourselves, more likely to overlook something the opponent has than something we have.

And even if one was objective in chess, although it may be more likely that they're objective in life, it isn't necessarily the case.

Heh, this reminds me of when I asked a titled player how he went over annotated games.  He said he always went though them and tried to disprove any annotations because he said the annotator was always bias in some way, that it can't be helped.  So he'd try to improve any existing analysis.  Neat idea, intensive study too, I thought it was interesting.

That is very funny, and probably a good thing to do. However for most people this is probably very unnatural.

I notice when I go over annotated games by a very strong GM, their analysis has so many variations I just mindlessly play them over and I really don't get anything out of the game unless I tried to see what I would do and compare that to GM analysis. It takes quite a bit of work, but that's by far the best way to do it. You need to be actively involved in looking at the game to get a lot out of it. I know if I could do that for all the 70+ games in my Kasparov book, I'd probably be a master lol. Seriously, understanding that many rediculously complicated games?

Yeah, for sure unnatural -- his answer and reasoning definitely surprised me.  I also feel like I'm doing well just to go over every variation without getting a glaze over my eyes, it takes a lot of effort to get a lot out of it.

His big thing was improving your evaluations though.  You have to find exactly when and why the evaluation changes every time or you're not doing it right.  Too often we justify a move, then 2-3 moves later say now I'm worse or now I don't like white with the unspoken "even though my moves were justified."  If the moves were correct then your evaluation isn't.  If you feel white really is worse now, take back those moves until you find out exactly where he/you went wrong.  After a year or two go over that game again using what you've learned since then.  Almost always you get back to a move you were sure of, and decide it wasn't as good as you thought... then sometimes you even decide it was bad.  An amazing way to turn your proud moves into losers but at the same time you're learning so it's not so bad

Interesting, but I don't understand what kind of bias he was talking about. Like, bias, OK, but towards what? Or was he referring to annotations of one's own games?

Yes, or even of another person's games.  He said no one's a machine, and even if they try not to, the lines they look at or the alternative moves they consider will be bias by their style/knowledge/mood at the time.  Obviously a GMs analysis is going to be pretty solid.  So it's not like he'd try to refute everything in that case, he would just look for that one line, or that one ignored candidate move that was better than what was already given.

I just found it interesting because it was almost opposite of what I do -- which is to take the annotations as 100% truth, and then try to justify why they're completely right in my mind.  Of course even a bias GM's annotations are going to be good, and teach me things -- I guess his approach was just more... rigorous.

I got it now, I believe it would be expecting too much from myself to even try that. If I had the time for analyzing annotated GM games, I would first try to make a move myself before looking at the annotation and the score sheet, then look at the score sheet and understand (annotate, to myself) why the GM made his/her move (most probably a different move then mine), and then finally check out the annotation and try to understand it.

This is why I don't have time for such training.

But I really, really want to go through the 100 games of Botvinnik, then Kramnik's my life etc and from london to elista this way. I, like Elubas, believe if I do this the way I explained above (which would take months of training), I'd bank a few hundred elos.