What psychological trick do you use when playing OTB?

Share your tricks! I will probably never have an opportunity to play against you in real life so no worries about revealing some secrets. :)

I didn't use "tricks" at the time I played otb.

but Josh wrote about that some of his opponents used psychological tricks. such as tapping a chess piece against the table silently.

you cannot hear it because your brain registers it as extremely annoying.

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the only "trick" is rotating a queen in the hand if you are about to promote.

I dont use tricks

You know those guys who dont release a piece, they screw it int the square?

I just say j'adoube, and unscrew them again.

I played against quite a few who "screw" pieces never knew why they did that. I just found it funny.

I don't believe in psychology, I believe in good moves. - Bobby Fischer

I heard Garry Kasparov would screw pieces into a square. Rooperi, I like the idea of unscrewing them. I think I'll do that!

I also played some players who contantly placed the pieces on the edge of the squares nearly on another square.

or players who kept notating his moves before moving.

I like to use Jedi Mind Tricks.

How about this for a psychological trick? There's a well known master here in Charlotte that I've played 5 times in classic time control otb tournament games. I'm 1 win, 2 losses, 2 draws against him if you're wondering. We've never played blitz or even analysed other than our tournament games. We actually get along very well but the very first game we played he noticed that I was meticulous about placing my pieces right in the center of their squares. Well, as you might have guessed he just said "adjust" & moved one of my knights over to the edge of it's square, so far over that it barely was across to the next square. He figured it might bother me. I went on to win the game. He hasn't touched my pieces like that since! But he does know how I like my pieces so now when we play I believe he's deliberately placing his pieces so that they aren't at the center of their squares. Hahaha. I will win my next game against him, with neatly places pieces & all! Mark my words. 

Cordially, Damon Smith

Ha! I have done the same thing.

I pretend I know what I'm doing.

I come up in a state of absolute drunkeness.

Hey, good one! I'll try it next time!

one showed up to a game in his hand he had a bottle of vodka and he kept taking a sip of the bottle. the opponent thought he was way past drunk and couldn't take the game seriously and lost. the content of the bottle was water and he just acted drunk.

Well done!