Recently, as I was flipping through some psychology book, I came across the following sentence: ‘’We live and we die according to our ability to cope with stress.’’ Something to do with the deceptive simplicity and the enormous implication of this declaration caused me to pause for a moment.

I found myself wondering if the meaning would change very much if the ‘and’ were changed to an ‘or’, as in ‘’We live or we die according to our ability to cope with stress.’’ The new wording seems to imply a type of choice that we can make. But thinking about it, it suddenly dawned on me: since we can not escape from stress in our daily life, there can never be an ‘and/or’ situation. Stress is a natural part of life! There is no choice in the whole matter.

Some psychologists consider that life can be viewed as a very long series of adaptations and mal-adaptations to the stresses of the world around us. We, as humans, go through changes as we age. Each change involves biochemical, physical or emotional alterations. Often combinations of all three. Who (and what!?) we were when we were 20 years old is often very different from who we were either ten years before or ten years later. And the pace of these changes accelerates as time passes. Just as we are trying to get comfortable with our ‘new selves’ (ie adapt) we find that we must also wrestle with a world that refuses to sit still for even a short moment: there are technological changes that continually threaten our professional status and force us to constantly re-define our role in the work place; there are cultural changes that make us question our identity and place in society; and then there are economic and political changes that set the direction and pace of even broader re-definitions.

If that is not enough already, then let us not forget that the people around us are changing also: our family, our friends, our co-workers and our neighbours are simultaneously going through their own ‘adaptations’. And last, but not least, there are always the problems of disease, divorce, death...

I read on the ‘net’ some statistics about stress in the U.S. :

Clearly, we are not dealing with something that only affects some of us. Stress and the human condition are permanently linked.

That the whole question of stress is really one of coping and adaptation has been known for a while. Most of the stresses we encounter are relatively straight forward to manage, in as much as we have learned how to cope and adapt to them on a day to day basis. Nevertheless, even if we could ignore that the cumulative effect of many minor stresses creates yet other adaptation problems, there are still many stresses that resist our ordinary attempts to cope and adapt.

Uncontrolled stress can translate itself into powerful physiological and psychological forces. Since each individual has his own unique stress tolerance level, straying from one’s comfort zone can have negative ramifications. The failure to adapt properly to these stresses can cause diseases that undermine both the quality and the length of our life.

Studies have proven that some people are more vulnerable to certain types of stress than others. Many of us who die ‘prematurely’ can blame stress. Heart disease, for example. High blood pressure. Stroke. The secondary effects of alcohol and substance abuse. Suicide. The list is long...It is also believed that stress increases one’s chances of getting cancer.

Those who are luckier than this still have to deal with the other effects of stress: chronic health problems, emotional and psychological disorders, high rates of divorce and other interpersonal problems, etc.

Much of our behaviour and many of our individual tastes and preferences can be explained in terms of our natural response to stress. We can understand ourselves better by studying how we relate to our comfort zone. Some of us steadfastly try to avoid unnecessary stress by staying within our comfort zone at all times ,while others are curious about what happens when we push the envelope of our comfort zone forward just a bit.

For example, one person might avoid ‘loud’ and ‘pushy’ people as he finds them too stressful. Another might make it a point to seek this type of people for friendship because he considers them ‘fun’. One might like classical music because he finds it relaxing and allows him to escape the harshness of the world for a brief moment. Another might prefer noisy rock and roll. One might enjoy peaceful walks in a nature park. Another might love the thrill and rush encountered when he rides a scary and dangerous-looking roller coaster.

And what about the books we like to read, the films we love to watch, our favourite foods, even our favourite colours? Who is to say to just what extent stress has something to do with these decisions?

While we chess players can brag (and we love to!) that our noble little game is governed by a higher and more just set of laws than the world we live in, we have to coldly admit that competitive chess is no sanctuary from the reality of stress. Competitive chess has very powerful pressures and stresses associated with it. Many people, unconnected with the chess world, may find this surprising. But it is not uncommon during a game of chess to experience any of the following :

We tournament chess players are only too familiar with them. Stress has two basic types of symptoms: physiological and psychological. In the list given above, for example, increased heart rate is a physiological symptom and a growing sense of helplessness is a psychological symptom. Any given stress stimulus can evoke either type of symptom or both types simultaneously.

It can be argued that competitive chess is more stressful than many other similar activities and sports. If only by reason of the innate nature and design of the game itself: the inordinate amount of time it takes to complete a game; the constant worry about the clock; the doubts and uncertainties of our plans, ideas, and moves; the difficulty in predicting the outcome of the game; the never ending barrage of threats from our opponent (whether real or imagined ); the psychological implications and consequences of competition; how much our self-esteem is on the line; the spectators... All these can give life to strong fears and numerous anxieties.

Contrary to what happens in most sports, chess has no obvious outlet for releasing the build up of stresses and pressures that accumulate during the course of the game. In tennis, for example, the player can release (externalize) this buildup in the form of a controlled physical ‘explosion’ or outburst: he can hit the ball as hard as he wants or run back and forth as much as he likes. His level of arousal can thus be decreased. He can therefore control stress more easily than a competitive chess player—who is essentially confined to sitting for the duration of the game--because he has a mechanism that serves as an escape valve for excess stress and pressure. In chess it is the internalization and the resulting accumulation of stress that sets it apart from other sports. This creates unique problems for the competitive chess player.

Another important differentiation is linked to this: in tennis, football, basketball, baseball, or virtually any other of the more popular sports, the final result is but a routine process of accumulating points scored during the game. A simple mathematical addition. This has a lot of advantages, for example :the athlete can get a clear idea of how he is doing and in what direction the game is heading by simply looking at the score at any point during the game. And this information can serve as a useful type of feedback for dealing with stress: should he intensify his efforts or slack off a little and relax?

The athlete has a useful point of reference, and the opportunity to do this during the game provides one more method the athlete can use to control stress levels.

The situation in competitive chess is completely different from this. In the typical game of chess there can be incredible tension. Suspense, uncertainty, climaxes and anti-climaxes are a big part of the game! Games can last four, five,or more hours before there is even an indication of which direction the game is heading. Sometimes (often!) the flow of the game seems to go back and forth: at one point we may be defending and at the next point we have the initiative. Chess scoring has nothing to do with the accumulation of points made during the game. There is only one point to be won, and that is awarded at the very end of the game. Not before! The final result is most often dependent on who makes the last mistake. Who is the one who ‘cracks’ first? One can play a truly brilliant game, completely outplaying the adversary, and still lose (!) because of a small but significant error at the very end of the game.

This definitely makes chess exciting, but the negative side is that stress levels tend to increase as the game gets towards the end.

Then let us not forget that competitive chess is a ‘sub-culture’: a chess player can only be really understood by another chess player! Nobody understands what a chess player endures more than another player. There is a whole box of social stresses associated with chess. For example, how does one rationally explain (while trying not to appear to be a masochist) to your family and friends that you want to spend the last weekend of your vacation playing in some chess tournament in some dingy church basement , instead of going to a nice, sunny beach? And how does one explain (without looking like a complete incompetent), that inspite of playing chess for several decades and having read hundreds of chess books and having spent thousands of hours in monk-like study you still can lose to some kid who has been playing for only a small fraction of that time?

Applied sport psychology places much emphasis on fear and anxiety for being the key components of the stress problem in competitive situations. Anxiety and fear are not really the same thing even though most of the time we use either term interchangeably. Psychologists agree that they are distinct, natural human emotions. Not all. And some psychiatrists prefer to define anxiety as a ‘chronic form of fear’.

Fear is associated with concrete, easily identifiable stimuli that signal an immediate threat. It is often looked upon as our most basic survival instinct. Fear triggers an immediate biochemical response, the purpose of which is to either remove oneself from the threatening situation or to challenge the threat. This is the ‘fight or flight’ response. ( In a later chapter I intend to go into more detail about this. )

For example, a fire will immediately create fear. Or if you get hit by a car while crossing the street there is every reason for you to be fearful when crossing streets for some time afterward.

It is worth emphasizing that fear is intrinsic to competitive sports—even though there may be no real physical risk involved. Anything that threatens our sense of well-being can serve as a trigger. For example, an athlete who feels threatened by the potential loss of social status associated with the poor outcome of a competition will very likely experience a fight or flight response. Further examples could be threats to our ego, to our strongly held beliefs, or to our desire to control things.

The source of an anxiety, on the other hand, is not so apparent or specific. Anxiety is triggered by a situation which arises where an uncertainty of whether or not there is a chance for a threat to exist. Anxiety often is caused by anticipatory and imaginative processes. What is important is the perception of a threat. Situations of doubt are ripe for anxieties.

For example, writing exams can cause anxieties. (The danger/threat of failing.) Or whenever the telephone rings. (The danger/threat of receiving bad news.)

In competitive chess either fear or anxiety can pose more difficult problems and obstacles than our human opponent sitting opposite us. At times it seems that fear and anxiety are even inseparable parts of the game. This is not too surprising: we constantly worry about our opponent’s threats and we seek to anticipate future events at every move. Our entire approach to the game includes such natural methods. One of the game’s most useful axioms arises from our direct experience with competitive stress: ‘The threat is always stronger than the execution.’ And the great champion Emanuel Lasker was fond of quoting his favourite lines:

‘Besides this fear of danger

While we recognize that the imagination is an integral part of a player’s strength, there is also a downside that comes from relying too much on our imaginative processes. Or a chess player may train himself to respond logically at every instance, but how effective can logic be in the face of so much uncertainty?

Some individuals are more affected by anxiety than by fear. And vice versa. It appears that each person has a unique stress profile, and that there is some predictability in each person’s stress response. This has direct implications for the competitive tournament player. Faced with the identical chess position, two equally strong chess players may have completely different responses. One may be preoccupied about the opponent’s direct threats (fear) and the other may be more concerned about possible developments in his position a few moves away (anxiety). And both points of views may be equally valid from the purely ‘chess’ perspective.

If we were to repeat the above exercise with a hundred different examples then we would begin to notice that each player has his own distinct manner of interpreting chess positions.

It is a tribute to the enourmous complexity of the game of chess when very different interpretations of positions can lead to the same end result! An interesting question arises: is the style of a chess player the result of his stress profile? That is, does stress play a key role in determining whether a chess player will develop a style of play that puts more emphasis on tactics than on positional considerations? Can this explain the fundamental difference between a ‘tactician’ and a ‘positional player’?

For example, a youngster,when he is first exposed to the game of chess, has no point of reference which he can use to define what chess is. He must rely on his sensory impressions, on his emotions, and his intelligence. What exactly does this youngster feel when he is sitting down infront of the chessboard? By definition, our young player has no knowledge or understanding of the game other than knowing how each piece moves. Though of course he probably has heard that chess is a very complex game. Our young friend is in exactly the same situation as someone standing at land’s edge and seeing the ocean for the first time. He is overwhelmed by all types of emotions. That he experiences some stress goes without saying!

If his gestalt is the emotion fear, then it is very natural that our young chess player would seek to re-establish his equilibrium by confronting the direct threats by means of direct calculation. He would look at each move, and sequence of moves, searching for the reason for his fear. He would separate the real threat from the imagined threat. His next move would be designed to eliminate or deal with the real threat.

Such a player who bases his moves on direct calculation becomes what we refer to as a ‘tactician’.

But if his gestalt is the emotion anxiety, then the approach may be different. He has a need to anticipate future threats, both real and imaginary. He becomes driven by the need to predict what positions are safe (good) and what are bad (dangerous). To do this, he creates a reference library of positions in his memory. For instance, he might learn that with a knight on the strong point d5 his opponent would be restricted in his opportunities to attack. So he would store such positions in his mental library and use them to as a guide to building up his game, position by position, piece by piece.

Such a player who bases his moves on establishing sound schemes with his pieces and pawns becomes what we refer to as a ‘positional player’.

Of course, this is just a theory. Many questions remain to be answered.

Sport psychology has yet to do separate, distinct research into the sport of chess. And too few chess books have tried to bridge the gap. However, I am certain that many of the basic tenets of applied sport psychology apply to chess just as they do to tennis, golf, and any other popular sport. More than twenty years of professional chess playing has proven to me that this is possible.

I am just an amateur sport psychologist. In this article I attempt to look at how stress affects the typical tournament chess player, with an eye to helping the competitive player cope better.

Copyright 2000    Kevin Spraggett