During press conferences for the FIDE World Championship 2024, Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju discussed the pressures they felt. Even in smaller-stakes tournaments, chess players put pressure on themselves to win or, at least, to draw.
During a game, a chess player may daydream about what a good result will bring. Ironically, daydreaming takes them away from that good result. Here are two New Year’s Resolutions to deal with pressures felt during chess games.
Manage Your Mind
In weekly sessions over six months before the FIDE World Championship 2024, mental coach Paddy Upton advised Gukesh Dommaraju on how to manage his mind. One piece of Upton’s advice, which an article on Chess.com mentioned, was to treat the match as Gukesh would any other chess games. He should trust his skills rather than try something completely different. Upton shared six other practical lessons on his LinkedIn.
Focus on the Process
Noël Studer wrote about a 2017 tournament’s last-round game, which he needed to at least draw to earn his last grandmaster norm. He was paired against GM Aleksandar Indjic. (If Indjic’s name seems familiar, it’s because he recently won the European Individual Chess Championship.) Studer had scored 6 points in the first 8 rounds of the 2017 Grenke Chess Open. In round 9, he had White against Indjic.
During the first part of the game, Studer took too much time and doubted his decisions. Rather than thinking about the best moves, he thought about “how much it would suck to mess my GM title up and lose this game.” After he obtained a worse position, he began playing actively, as he had in earlier, successful rounds. Since that game, he has evaluated where he and other chess players could improve. Two of his tips are to focus on your moves (not on the game’s result) and to strive for improvement (not titles).
Draw or win?
Because Studer drew with Indjic, securing his final GM norm, he became a GM. Studer repeated moves in the diagrammed position, making a draw. An understandable decision, given the norm situation.
But White could aim for more with a different move.
