When I was
six years old my grandpa taught me how to play chess. At the time I was still
living in Romania and there weren’t any real competitions or tournaments for my
age group where I could test my skills. Instead I would usually go to parks
near my house with my grandpa and play chess against retired people. It was
something I enjoyed doing and had fun whenever I would actually win. Even
though later I would realize that the chess that I learned to play in the parks
was very unconventional and not recommended for a beginner I came to realize
that the eccentrics of it helped me see things different and from a different
point of view when I learned how to play more professionally. When I came to
America my parents quickly found some local chess tournaments and they took me
to see how I would do. I played unconventional openings without much strategy
that many kids my age had. Nonetheless I finished third in that tournament and
won myself my first trophy. At the time my English wasn’t very good so playing
chess was an easy way for me to interact with other kids without having to
speak much. Pretty soon after I started participating in chess tournaments on a
weekly basis and so my reputation started to increase amongst other players and
the parents that were involved. The better I got the more I moved up to the
point I would play against opponents that were on average five years older than
me.
After a
couple of years of playing chess professionally, filling my room up with
trophies and medals and getting trained by an actual chess grandmaster I
started to become confident and cocky knowing that most often I was better than
anyone from my area. That year was also the first time I participated in a
state tournament for all of the players from Illinois. The first couple of
games from that tournament I quickly found out that for one I wasn’t as good as
I thought I was and second I made a lot of critical errors because I didn’t
focus enough and went into the games too confident and cocky. I did terrible
that tournament and quickly became discouraged when I saw how many games I lost
and that most of the games that I lost were to people younger than me. After
that tournament I felt that my reputation degraded and my friends started to
make fun of me because I lost to a seven-year-old kid at the state tournament. After
that tournament I actually quit playing chess for a couple of months because I
was too embarrassed at how badly I did at the state tournament and I felt like
everything that I worked hard for crumbled down on me. I felt like none would
see me as a real threat anymore and they wouldn’t be scared to play against me
because they knew that if a seven-year-old could beat me then so could they.
I was disappointed
in myself because I let my reputation be in control of me and make me lose my
focus when I needed it most. After a couple of months of being absent from any
chess competitions I finally decided I wanted to go back to playing but now for
a different reason. Instead of me trying to rebuild my reputation within the
chess community in my town I opted to just go and play for fun, play the same
unconventional style of play that I was raised up to and had a lot of fun with.
I no longer had an instructor to teach me different openings and strategies and
I no longer wanted to get to the point I was at before because I realized just
how stressful it was to stay at a high level.
Consequently,
me starting to play for fun and becoming humbler made me realize that there was
more to life and to this game than reputation and the more fun I had playing
the better I did in games and inadvertently my reputation increased again. The national
chess tournament was happening that year also and my mom persuaded me to give
it a try since I have been doing so well in my recent local tournaments. This
was when I was in eight grade and I was getting ready to go to high school and
I no longer wanted to pursue a chess career instead I wanted to try to move
away from chess for a while and try new things in high school so going to nationals
that year was an end to my competitive chess career for a while. Going in to
that tournament without any expectations and without being cocky made me get
the 67th place nationwide for my age group out of 900 players. Even
though I didn’t win first place I ended up making a name for myself throughout my
friend group at school and outside of school. The lessons that I learned about
how to handle reputation is an invaluable tool for me and it taught me how
important it is to not let the confidence and cockiness that comes with
reputation get to your head if you actually strive to maintain it at a high
level. For me in the present day I prefer being an underdog and not let
something that I did in the past influence the people around me, instead I want
my actions in the present to build my reputation.
Interesting story. I never got past being a patzer, thought I did play a fair amount in high school and college. After my senior year in college there was the famous match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Chess got a lot of attention then, more than now.
ReplyDeleteThere is a movie called Searching for Bobby Fischer, where the kid who is a good chess player learned to play in the parks making non-standard moves, just like you. So if you haven't seen that picture, you might enjoy it.
Some of what you described, the cocky part, may have been a mask for performance anxiety. If nobody knows you how you do doesn't matter, but if you do well others start to expect it and you might too. But then it gets harder. In writing it is called writer's block. In golf it is called the yips. The ego rewards can take all the fun out of the activity. It's an interesting question how to block them out.
But tying that issue to our course, one argument against pay for performance is that it makes the ego rewards quite prominent. Perhaps for some people it doesn't matter, but for other it is a distraction that can be debilitating.
I've never got the chance to watch that movie but I recently watched a movie called Pawn Sacrifice which is also about Bobby Fischer and his life story it is definitely inspirational to watch movies like this.
DeleteI agree I think that my cockiness during the games was a way for me to deal with the pressure and it also played mind games on my opponents because they would see me be so confident when I did my moves that they would feel pressured that I saw something they didn't so a lot of my wins were because opponents would run out of time and make mistakes in the last stretch. So while I feel that was a major key to my success early on I eventually lost control of it and let it make mistakes that I would normally avoid.
I think that even though I never made it to the point where I was playing in tournaments for money I made it as far as accumulating a lot of points and raise my rank up to 1500 points which was 400 points of being considered a master. That pressure and in a way pay for performance incentive definitely made me lose the fun I once had for the game.
The situation that you describe is something very interesting for this prompt, but also just in life. I think that oftentimes everyone can point out a moment in their life where they were a bit cocky and had a reality check. What I find unique is how early on in your life you were able to have this experience and realization. I wonder if this experience at a young age, before high school, impacted different reputations of yours beyond the one you created for yourself in chess.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, I think that your experience would be a valuable one for other young people who might be focusing on the "winning" side of sports, when really at such a young age a sport is about exercise, interacting with other and forming friendships with others your age. I know our generation is portrayed as one that needs a trophy for simply participating, and while I think that participation trophies are silly, I also don't think that winning should be stressed to children as such an early age as something so pivotal to a being. I think that by allowing yourself to step back from the game and go back to it with a more open mindset and simply doing it for fun is something many children could benefit from in their future, much like I'm sure it did you.
I was also a fan of chess growing up, I was on the chess team for tow years in high school. I remember looking at some of my opponents and judging them, but at the end of the match they would beat me. It's like in mean girls when she judges the girl during the math competition, it wasn't going to help her win that competition so she had to just focus on the question instead.
ReplyDeleteIn life we can't judge people at first glance, just because they are younger or look worse then us it doesn't mean they actually are. We should have focused on our own moves rather and making sure they are the best they can be.