For me, it'd be the thrill that this might become the best game I ever played. Some games stick with me for a long time. There was one where I sacrificed my queen on h8 for a rook and a minor piece with the idea of pushing my pawn all the way to h8. And it worked. My opponent congratulated me on the plan afterwards.
Most games are, unfortunately, unremarkable. You always hope to play that one immortal game.
For me, it'd be the thrill that this might become the best game I ever played. Some games stick with me for a long time. There was one where I sacrificed my queen on h8 for a rook and a minor piece with the idea of pushing my pawn all the way to h8. And it worked. My opponent congratulated me on the plan afterwards.
Most games are, unfortunately, unremarkable. You always hope to play that one immortal game.
What are the major psychological effects of playing chess for you? For me, I principally notice three. First, the outside world quickly disappears as the game becomes more difficult, and even if I have deliberately made myself a cup of coffee and placed it beside the computer or board before starting to play, I completely fail to drink it. Second, I find my mind becomes suspended in the complexities of the game, as though I am being played by the network of dilemmas I have encountered on the board rather than that I am playing them. It is like listening to a symphony orchestra, where your attention to all the techniques being applied, the quality of the performance, the leitmotifs, the orchestration, the conducting, the tempo, etc., just paralyzes your mind while yet still keeping it attentive. Finally, after I stop playing, for the rest of the day all the frustrations big and small that I encounter spontaneously remind me of the difficulties in the game, so that, for example, a door that sticks immediately calls up before my mind's eye the well-posted enemy knight I couldn't dislodge. Sometimes that analogy between the game and life goes so far that I start to see everything as a chess problem, so that I find myself worrying that a line of text I'm reading is a row of pawns in need of some propping up.