How to deal with chess and anger

Full disclosure: I’m not a therapist, I’m just a dude who loves chess. If you are struggling with anger you should definitely look for help with a qualified professional.

Hello! I would like to write a little bit on how I manage Chess and anger. I see that this is a topic that pops up from time to time. I struggle with anger when I lose in chess and other games for a loooong time (I would say for at least 20 years) and that made me give up chess at least 2 times already. To be honest, whenever I looked up for help online most of the advice was bad and didn’t help at all. So now, after doing therapy for a few years and experimenting a bit, I came up with a few steps to work on anger management that might be useful for other people, so I want to share it. This will be a long post, so I’ll split it into a few parts and you can skip to whatever you want.

Here are the topics that I’ll cover

1. Symptoms of anger that I had/have when playing chess
2. Examples of bad (and some good) advice online and their shortcomings
3. The method that I’m using to deal with it
4. Tips, best practices, and comments

Let’s go.

1. What anger does to me

If you are going to try this method, this part is important because maybe anger manifests itself for different reasons in you and maybe this is not the best way to deal with it. So see if what I describe here rings a bell to you before deciding what to do.

Normally I get angry when I lose (of course). When that happens, I lose control of myself completely. I tend to get very aggressive and this aggression comes towards myself, not others. I hit myself in the head, scream, punch the table or wall. I have already hurt my hand multiple times because I couldn’t control myself during an anger crisis.

Internally, my thoughts are something like this: “you are such a dumb, stupid person”, “you are never going to be a good chess player”, “you are worthless”, “you’re a failure”, “you will never going to learn anything”, etc.

I’m sad to say that those anger explosions sometimes happen when other people are around. It happened a few times when my wife was around, and she gets very scared when it happens. That’s why currently I try to play chess only when I’m alone. I never channel my aggressiveness to other people (at least not physically), but I know that this happens to some people, which can be dangerous.

I would definitely say that I have anger issues in other parts of my life, not only chess. It happens especially when I get frustrated and particularly with intellectual, problem-solving stuff. I came to the conclusion that I’m mostly afraid of being stupid, which is very irrational, but I’m fairly confident that that’s what it is, so the steps that I’m taking are intended to challenge this irrational view of myself. Maybe if your anger comes from a different source these steps will not help you so much.

One of the most frustrating things is that anger ruins a game that I love. But, more importantly, I feel like if I’m able to manage anger in chess, I'll probably build the skills to manage anger in life in general, which can be a great benefit.

2. Why most of the comments online on how to deal with chess and anger are bad

At times when I was feeling completely lost in what to do about my anger, feeling that I should quit entirely and not knowing what to do, I tried to search online for some guidance on how to deal with this problem. Unfortunately most of the comments that I saw really didn’t help at all.

Sure, there were a couple of very good replies, so I want to shout out to those first:

1. Advice to read reliable sources on psychology and look for professional help. This, I think, is the best advice one can give
2. Explaining that it’s a good thing that you acknowledge your problem and advice to look for counseling, helplines, etc.

Now, I’m going to show some examples to explain why these comments are bad, but it’s not my intention to point fingers, since I do believe people in general are trying to help, but they simply don’t know how. So I’ll just link to the places I found and I’m going to summarize the most common types of advice that I see and explain why they don’t help.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-to-not-get-so-mad

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/anger-is-ruining-my-chess-please-help 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrgkVvC9J0c 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0ZV8eVSK0o

Here are the advices that I see:

• Stop playing chess: this seems rational, but since anger issues are not caused by chess, but manifest itself in the game, to stop playing the game won’t solve the problem. Moreover, if you love the game of chess, giving up on it will just add to the frustration you already are feeling.
• Get your ego out of the game / Remember that this is just a game: if I could do this, I would. The problem is how. How do I remove my ego from the game? How do I treat it as “just a game”? It’s like saying to an addict: “Just stop taking drugs”. It does nothing.
• Anger is your friend. It can help you: Maybe for some people that’s true, but when it is ruining the game for me, when it makes me literally hurt myself, hit myself in the head, hit my hand in the wall, etc. I seriously doubt I can channel this anger in a positive way like that. Even if I could, how can I do that?
• Experienced players have lost a lot of games / use your loss as a learning tool: That’s great, but it doesn’t help me get rid of my anger. On the contrary: the lack of anger control prevents me from learning with the games I lose.
• Don’t waste your time feeling bad with things you can’t change (like the fact that you lost a game): I would do that if I could control my feelings, but in general you can’t control when and what you feel. Besides, feeling bad for a loss, I think, can be healthy as well.

3. Steps to deal with anger in chess

Most online chess platforms (like chess.com) offer the option to review your game with a computer. That means you can compare your inner thoughts with the concrete reality of what happened in the game and adjust your feeling accordingly. So, here is what I have been doing:

1. Play a game of chess of at least 10min
2. If you feel angry after the game: exercise (I normally do some push ups, but whatever makes me tired works) and do some controlled breathing
3. After calmed down, write down the following:
   1. What move you think was the worst one (the one that made me angry)
   2. What you imagined your opponent thought when you made that move
   3. What you thought about yourself when you realized you made a mistake
4. Now, review the game with a computer and check:
   1. Was the move you thought the worst one really the worst?
   2. Did your opponent also make mistakes? Where?
   3. Did you make good moves? Does that challenge the self-image you wrote down before?

After doing that for a while I have noticed a few things:

• I imagine my opponent thinking that I’m a stupid person, laughing at me, etc.
• The kinds of thought that come to my head are: “you are a failure”, “you’ll never learn chess”, “you will never improve”, “you are a stupid person”, “everyone realizes how stupid you are”.
• Normally I make a mistake one to three moves before the move I thought I actually made the mistake. That means that concretely if I were to be angry, I should have done it way before I actually did.
• There were many mistakes that went unnoticed. Sometimes the mistake that made me angry wasn’t even the worst one. That means that getting angry about that particular mistake makes no sense compared to the major mistake.
• I also make a lot of decent and good moves. If I were to get angry at bad moves, in principle I should also commemorate those good moves.
• My opponent makes more or less the same number of mistakes that I do (supposing I’m playing someone more or less at the same rating). That means that probably my opponent also felt nervous or angry (if they think as I do) and it’s irrational to think they are mocking me (they might, I don’t know, but it’s irrational to do it).

As you can see, these steps help adjust the kinds of thoughts that I have with reality.

4. Tips, best practices and comments

I’ve been doing this for a while now, so I want also to share some comments on my experience so far:

• You should play at most 1 game per day or even less if you feel too nervous before playing. I actually went from playing every day to playing only on weekends so my mind can handle the stress. Putting myself over too much stress to do this process actually slows down progress.
• Your priority right now should be to manage your anger, not improving in chess. Before you can make chess a good experience, you probably won’t have enough bandwidth to play to improve anyway. You can, of course, study, practice puzzles, etc. In my case I feel no stress or anger whatsoever in studying, but that’s just me.
• Have patience. I have been doing this for at least 6 months (maybe more) and I just noticed a major improvement in my anger management very very recently. Even so, there are times when I relapse, and that, I suppose, is to be expected.
• On the other hand, I felt minor improvements immediately. Just the fact that I challenged my destructive thoughts already changed me internally somehow. Also, I would say that I developed the skill to quickly recover from an anger explosion before the skill to actually prevent the loss of control. The time to recover is much lower now.
• Try to find what gives you pleasure in chess, what makes you excited. If chess is just pain and suffering, it will never help you. But if you do play chess, that’s probably because something in it is attractive to you. Try to find out what it is, and I believe this whole experience will be more bearable and you’ll see more progress.
• Play with a friend that you trust, if possible. That way you can actually ask them what they thought when you were playing. The pressure is lower and you can have a fun activity together.

Hope that helps! Please let me know your thoughts.

Hi ,im Laiqa 

I personally do not have any struggle with managing anger                                                              However i do admire ur journey/story                                                                                                I do hope this post reaches alot of people ,it would truly help many                                                   And again ,i must say i do really admire you sharing this and the good intention behind the post 

how good are u at chess ?

i would like to verse you

Ya know, sometimes when you lose a game of chess, the best thing to do is just flip over the chess board & charge at your opponent, throwing wild punches.

Great post, thanks for sharing

Great post!

Get better at chess = less anger

"I would do that if I could control my feelings, but in general you can’t control when and what you feel."

 best sentence of the whole thing. This really resonated with me. Thank you for that.

Thanks for sharing!

Excellent post!  Thank you for sharing.

This is a false statement here, you'll win more games if you get better at Chess, but it doesn't address the issue the OP is talking about, and that's anger, I know..........all too well. 

Buddha taught that until we learn to control our emotions, we can only control how we react to them. Self-observation is the best way to prevent a reaction; notice your emotion, think about why you feel that way, and decide for yourself if that is a valid reason. Self-observation helps remove the 'you' from your feelings of anger, which is one of the reasons that 'destroying the ego' is so important in Buddhism. Your self-observation will lead to the realization that there truly is no need to be angry. If you practice this method frequently enough, this emotion will eventually cease to cross your mind completely.

Do people get angry because they lose or because they make mistakes which they find silly and dumb? For me the latter is true, not the former, I don't get angry when I lose a game of chess where I didn't do anything which I know is stupid and my opponent played well and beat me.

I think that's part of it, the other part is nobody wants to look bad or silly, if that happens, often at times people make fun of you/tease you and may say something to hurt your feelings which will then invoke feelings of anger.  I know, I come from the "FGC" for those of you who don't know, that stands for "Fighting Game Community" and boy that community can be very very toxic. 

When I get angry or upset after losing a game, I remind myself of something I read in a different topic on this forum. The original poster complained bitterly, and at length, about having lost to a cheater, and someone replied: "And yet, somehow, the universe didn't end." I find it helps keep things in perspective.

Great post indeed, thank you for reviving this forum

If it costs you your inner peace, you're paying too high a price for it.

Back in the 1970s, I was playing in the Canadian Junior (under-20) Championship with eight or nine other qualifiers... I was representing the Atlantic Provinces... when one of the other players blundered away his Queen and totally lost control of his temper.

He rage-quit and smashed all the pieces off the board. Most of them bounced around the room, knocking other players' games apart. One White Rook went out the open window.

We were seven stories up. I hope it didn't kill anybody walking by down below.

And then there was the infamous Groin Gambit Attack in the 1974 Canadian Open, which I was on hand to witness in person...

Weird scenes at the Canadian Open - Chess Forums - Chess.com

One of the best things ever posted here, IMO. It's so easy to fall into the trap that skill level translates to value as a person.

Those are excellent suggestions and I'll put them into practice. My own solution to the self-worth issue is to focus on big data, i.e. messing around with PGN databases in ChessBase, Scid, HIARCS Explorer, etc. You can really lean into being a scholar, and it never relies on your own skill level. Just your ability to decipher something like a theory table, or your patience in turning it into a PGN.

To be honest, I've never seen much hope in escaping anger, but I've always seen great value in acknowledging it. Especially in owning it.