In 8th and 9th grade, we were playing chess, occasionally and informally. (INo one at my school was in a chess club. In the early 1980s, we had no internet either).
In those days, we were all pretty bad at chess. But I recall strong emotions, bordering on irrational feelings, including hatred. There was this teacher and an adult refugee from Cambodia... Unexpectedly, I would get emotionally overwhelmed.
Not having spoken with anyone ifor many days, in a country where I don't understand the language, I've experienced a sense of "this is futile, let's stop and resign all games. Because I suck big time - what's the point?!?"
Not that it's about winning. But to pretend that I'm mature to seek learning from a never-ending string of defeats, would be an untruth.
Closing, the only experienced chess player, who was a member of the club in town, graciously adjusted his play to let me win twice, too And in my only tournament, ever, I let a 6-year old win.
Sorry for the long-winded rant. I would like to ask oif sudden emotional seissmic eruptions are not that uncommon? Seems that, psychologically, part of us remains a 4 year old, yearning to throw a proper tantrum ha ha
I can relate to the school part minus the hatred. My elementary school was really small and no chess club, but I learned the rules around that time and about 5 or 6 of us played fairly regularly. I was one of the best chess players there, but I didn't even know USCF or FIDE existed - chess was just another board game to us. As one of the better players in the school, looking back I'd guess my rating would have been around 600 xD.
Like I said, we all just learned the rules and played. If you knew about castling, then you were probably in the upper half of our group 
I didn't decide to get somewhat seriously into chess again until college (after elementary school I played maybe one or two games a year). I wanted to take up chess again because I knew that I was only good in my small school, but realized that an entire world out there was probably better - as a sort of challenge to myself, I thought I'd take up chess again. That same day was the day I created my chess.com account and ... the rest is history 
In 8th and 9th grade, we were playing chess, occasionally and informally. (INo one at my school was in a chess club. In the early 1980s, we had no internet either).
In those days, we were all pretty bad at chess. But I recall strong emotions, bordering on irrational feelings, including hatred. There was this teacher and an adult refugee from Cambodia... Unexpectedly, I would get emotionally overwhelmed.
Not having spoken with anyone ifor many days, in a country where I don't understand the language, I've experienced a sense of "this is futile, let's stop and resign all games. Because I suck big time - what's the point?!?"
Not that it's about winning. But to pretend that I'm mature to seek learning from a never-ending string of defeats, would be an untruth.
Closing, the only experienced chess player, who was a member of the club in town, graciously adjusted his play to let me win twice, too
And in my only tournament, ever, I let a 6-year old win.
Sorry for the long-winded rant. I would like to ask oif sudden emotional seissmic eruptions are not that uncommon? Seems that, psychologically, part of us remains a 4 year old, yearning to throw a proper tantrum ha ha