People can play chess for all sorts of reasons. Some will tell you that they enjoy it. Others will tell you they find it challenging. Still others will tell you it is the greatest sport in the world! Many will even tell you that it is an irreplaceable part of their life.

These are good reasons—no doubt— but they are probably only part truth and part rationalization. After all, if competitive chess could be any of the above then why aren’t there more people showing up for Mark Dutton’s chess tournaments? Why does the Canadian Chess Federation only have about 3000 members?

While not wanting to dismiss any of the above four reasons (they are all sensible), I prefer to argue that for probably not less than 99.9% of all competitive chess players the following scenario better explains why they participate in tournaments:

Sport psychologists refer to this as ego involvement.

Not wanting to get into the details of the various theories that talk of ego involvement in sport, I would like to draw to the readers attention two very relevant conclusions of these theories:

1)When ego involvement exists, we automatically experience increased stress whenever we participate. This stress does affect performance levels when it goes beyond the threshold of our natural stress tolerance.

2)When ego involvement exists, our self perceptions of our ability (competence) become much more fragile. In extreme cases, as (for example) when a player loses too often , he will withdraw from competition to protect his ego.

This second point is worth extending a bit further. Our perception of reality and what that reality actually is are not always in agreement. A certain chess player might actually be out-performing a group of other chess players under the same stress conditions, but this first chess player might begin to believe that his competence level is slipping or that his ability to cope with the stress is inadequate. This can result in his performance level starting to drop. If his perception of his competence does not change, then a slide can begin from which it will be very difficult to escape, and the group will begin to out perform him!

Putting these two conclusions ( 1 and 2 above) together, let us take a look at two regular tournament chess players, Bill and Harry.

Bill’s motivation for participating in competitive chess is all about ego involvement. He is constantly comparing his own skills to others in his rating category. He is always trying to win a prize. This is important to him. Because of this, he experiences much more stress than Harry—whose reasons for participating have nothing to do with ego involvement. His blood pressure often increases when he sits down and plays. This always affects his performance. On top of this, his perception of his ability is very fragile. If he has a bad tournament then he can go through a real personal crisis. He might even talk of giving up tournament chess if he can’t get out of the crisis. ‘’I can’t allow this to continue.’’ He can’t stand the idea that the others are passing by him in chess. It often happens that Bill’s performance will vary as much as 300 rating points from his expected performance (Invariably always lower). Bill views each game not just as an opportunity to win, but as an opportunity to make up lost ground. From Bill’s perspective, his self-esteem is on the line in each game.

Harry has no ego involvement in his game. His motivation for participating in competitive chess is different from Bill’s. When he plays in tournaments his primary concern is self-improvement. He is not concerned about trying to compete with other players. For Harry, what counts is the personal challenge involved. (This is referred to as task involvement.) He experiences the normal stresses that exist for anyone competing in a tournament environment. His perceptions of his ability are realistic; Bill might even describe them as modest. He knows that he is a relatively ‘weak’ player and will rarely win a prize. If he can slowly improve his rating then he is satisfied. Sometimes it happens that Harry has a bad tournament. He shrugs it off. ‘’That is life.’’ Rarely does Harry’s performance vary more than 50 rating points from his expected performance, even on ‘bad’ days