Hi all. I Found this Dunning-Kruger effect idea very interesting... Basically it means the less you know and understand the more confident and happier about your knowledge you are. Now this is some phylosophical deep xxxx which was known for ages. Just like some super smart guys over ages really suffered consequences of questionning many deep things and goes deeper and deeper, most of them just goes insane and the line between genius and idiot  especially to a "standart"" everyday guy  seems thinner and thinner... 

And this perfeclly relates to the game of chess i reckon. Now im talking about really good players which devoted most of their lives to a game of chess. First of all everyone once was amazed to see wonderfull games of chess geniusses like Morphy and others, then started to play and understood a game a bit more and they just felt happy abbout all this. And then they goes deeper and deeper into this mindboggling game. and I think suffers more and more. Suffers over the fact that they dont understand that much as they thought after all, suffers more over losses (ratings), missed wins, etc...starts to seek for something all their entire life which cannot be found. And afterall its just a game. Isnt it crazy?  Now who would get into all this never ending circle with no destination point and start ther sisyphus work if they knew that this amazing, charming and fun game would take most of their lives and would lead to such suffering? and again its just a game meant to be fun and make you feel happy and smart afterall at first right? when they were clueless beginners were they simply was tricked into all this mess?  What do ya guys think about all this?

p.s sorry for broken engrish 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

very interesting article about this

Why losers have delusions of grandeur

http://nypost.com/2010/05/23/why-losers-have-delusions-of-grandeur/

i don't get it, as long as you can see ratings there should be no such effect

unless you think other people are cheating

I have noticed that dumb remarks about masters always come from very low players. I have seen MANY such dumb remarks on these discussion threads. E.g. Lasker was overrated, Euwe was a weakling, Fischer could have given Karpov knight odds, Nakamura could beat Caruana or So blindfold, etc. ad nauseum. Next time you see such a stupid opinion look up the person's rating and you will always find it low.

quote from the article 

Ratings are public knowledge and are printed next to each player’s name on tournament scoreboards. Ratings are valued so highly that chess players often remember their opponents better by their ratings than by their names or faces. “I beat a 1600” or “I lost to a 2100” are not uncommon things to hear in the hallway outside the playing room.

Armed with knowledge of their own ratings, players ought to be exquisitely aware of how competent they are. But what do they actually think about their own abilities? Some years ago, in a study we conducted with our colleague Daniel Benjamin, we asked a group of chess players at major tournaments two simple questions: “What is your most recent official chess rating?” and “What do you think your rating should be to reflect your true current strength?”

As expected, all of the players knew their actual ratings. Yet 75% of them thought that their rating underestimated their true playing ability. The magnitude of their overconfidence was stunning: On average, these competitive chess players estimated that they would win a match against another player with the exact same rating as their own by a two-to-one margin — a crushing victory. Of course, the most likely outcome of such a match would be a tie.

This tendency for the least skilled among us to overestimate their abilities the most has more serious consequences than an inflated sense of humor or chess ability. 

also it says:

Everyone has encountered obliviously incompetent managers who make life miserable for their underlings because they suffer from the illusion of confidence. 

but are they really suffering or feeling happier?? 

ignorance is bliss

agreed 

ye and nowdays in bigges events like WCC some sees engine evaluation and starts to talk s**t  about world champions and their "terrible" moves all the time, let alone todays "mere masters" and the greats of the past

Isn't it natural and healthy to think ourselves a slightly better player than recent results suggest we are, in order to use this to play harder, to actualise the vision of our "true strength" ? We might fail, but if we approach a nominally higher graded player with the thought we are going to get our arse kicked - it will be !

interesting idea Ziggy. It seems that quite a bit  negative thing this kruger effect is at first but on the other hand isnt this really essential for us to start anything at all and keep going an dig deeper? and achieve something greater, something really big? 

The boy does not have a clue about chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession  (Michail Botvinik about one of his young pupils)

However the kid did not gave up and believed in himself. And his name Anatoly Karpov

Just read the article. The thought occurs to me about a prematch boxing conference. :"Yeah the other guy's better than me and I'll probably lose..." We never hear this - for good reason !

• Every chess master was once a beginner. - Chernev
• Chess is life - Bobby Fischer
• Chess is like life - Boris Spassky
• Chess is everything - art, science, and sport. - Karpov
• Chess is mental torture. - Kasparov
• Chess is ruthless: you've got to be prepared to kill people. - Nigel Short
• Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe - Indian proverb
• Chess is as much a mystery as women - Purdy

some great quotes...

I agree with ziggy
lately i lost a game against a much lower rated player. i made some stupid moves in the beginning and got in troubles, then i gave up in my mind and played on till i lost.

in my analysis i found out, that i could have solved troubles, the really bad moves i made after my mind was blocked, i could have saved the game...

So it is really important, always to believe in winning.

I like Fischer's "You just gotta love the game ..." in order to get better at chess.

yeah there must be a reason otherwise it would not exist... interesting

Ratings don't mean anything

That's the spirit !