With the IHSA state chess meet taking place last Friday and Saturday, the few of you who were interested and followed the chess team’s progress may have felt moments of excitement and disappointment like I did, but how many of you actually know what the world of competitive chess is like? Though this is my first year of being on the chess team, I think I’ve gotten the hang of how chess meets and tournaments work and what effects they have on the players.

Instead of explaining theory or going over strategies which you probably won't understand, I will explain the psychological aspects of chess. Right now you may be asking, "What kind of psychology could accompany chess?" Well, like many sports that involve a certain type of mindset like cross country, basketball, or baseball, chess also requires a competitive state of mind and attitude. Hopefully after reading this, you will have a better understanding of chess competition as a whole and what chess players must go through on a regular basis.

First, I must clear up a common misconception about chess. When many people think about the most ancient of all games, they think of geniuses with thousands of moves memorized in their enormous superhuman brains who also possess the ability to look 20 moves ahead once they make a single move.

While some really good players are able to calculate many moves after the one they played, the real secret to chess is processed thought, a system of thinking and looking for an overall plan and then going move by move to fit that plan. If you make a solid move that is suitable for the position you are in, you will usually find later on that a piece is perfectly placed for an attack, even when you didn’t intend for that to be so when you made the move. That is just how chess works sometimes.

Now that you understand what chess really is, you must understand what chess competition is. In my opinion, the competitiveness of chess varies on many levels. For example, when you are playing with a friend in order to improve your game, you are not playing against your friend so much as the chess board itself. On the other hand, if you are playing an obviously inferior player from a different school who beat you the last time you met (this was once the case for me), you will want to destroy your adversary with dazzling tactics and ferocious attacks. People can be just as much involved in chess as in any other type of competition.

Focusing on the type of competition more geared toward beating your opponent, a chess player will do anything to gain an edge on and off the chessboard. While he has no control of what happens on the chessboard, there are many things that can be done to intimidate or distract his opponent.

One of the oldest tricks and my favorite was proposed by a Spanish priest, Ruy Lopez, who pioneered a particular opening line of play (aptly named the "Ruy Lopez"). He said that a player should position the board such that the light of the sun reflects directly into the opponent's eyes. Sadly, I have never tried this because Uni's chess boards do not reflect well, but this is a great example of how far a person is willing to go to win.

Usually, the more annoyed a player is, the worse he will play. This has led many people to do things such as making not-so-subtle attempts at conversation during a game and making many obnoxious noises or distracting gestures. I once found myself to be the accidental catalyst of annoyances during the Chicago tournament Uni went to last December. In the last round, we were playing top-seeded Niles North. I was tired, so I blew into my hands to express my discomfort. My opponent quickly gave me an annoyed glance, and I, seeing that this annoyed him, continued to blow into my hands.

There are also many subtler things a person can do to gain a psychological edge. When a person places a piece down with force, often making a thudding sound on the table, it usually means that he is certain that his move was a brilliant one and that you will have a hard time countering it. Some people will do this when they make a questionable move, to make you think that they are assured and "psych you out."

Chess also affects a player physically. This branches off from the psychological aspect. When you are playing chess, you tense up in anticipation of your opponent's move, hoping that he doesn't find something that will result in your defeat. After almost two hours of flexing or twitching a body part (in my case it's the legs), you will most likely be rather fatigued. Tournaments also have a rule that you must stand behind your teammates — no sitting beside them — when you are done to observe their games. After an hour and a half of twitching and 40 minutes of standing, anybody would be tired. In tournaments, a player has to go through that four times in a day.

Now you see that chess is much more than a game; it is a battle. With its psychological aspects in mind, I hope that you will have a better understanding and appreciation of chess as a competitive activity.