Psychology in chess

Hello everyone. Welcome :-)

I wish to discuss the human character traits / feelings, and how they can help us in chess (even against higher-rated opponents - for their character isn’t necessarily any higher-rated than ours)

I’m sure that psychology is a very strong factor in chess, and that if we don't take it into account, then we’re missing a lot of our potential.

We have emotions, character traits , let's go over them:

Humility / pride.

Shyness / Gall.

Anger / the willingness to accept.

Confidence / Fear.

Enthusiasm / boredom.

Envy

Love / Hatred.

Revenge

Confusion

Mercifulness / Cruelty.

Happiness / Sadness.

Quickness / laziness

Generosity / Miserliness

Truthfulness / Falsehood

Example: My main weakness (I think), is boredom. If you play things which I find boring, I will play with no energy. (playing 1.e4 against the Caro Kann, Philidor), of course it may be double edged – it can be boring for Black as well, depends on his character.

As we can see, you don’t need to play the objectively best opening – only the best opening against your opponent.

This idea works even on computers – they’re not good in closed positions (today as well, if you give Stockfish a completely closed position, with White having huge material adv., it doesn’t understand that Black draws by shuffling around, (the pawns can’t move at all, and no sacrifices are possible)), same goes for fortresses. Here’s an example:

Kasparov wins against X3D Fritz:

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1269891

I think we can use these drawbacks of the opponent to win games (of course I don’t mean ‘trash talking’, like, if he has a tendecy to sadness... that’s just bad, and off the board).

You’re all most welcome to add (or to substact) if I missed something, was innaccurate, or if you’d like to share your experience as well...

Example:

I play with over confidence a lot, and it makes me miss the simplest attacks the opponent had on me. So fear isn’t negative (even though it’s unpleasant), it depends on the amount of it. (but confidence is correct if your king is very safe. The queen is, in a way, your most powerful pawn. But it’s no king).

I’m also too ‘generous’ – I can sacrifice everything, *hoping* for compansation (=mate), it's mostly bad probably.

I am 7 years old