English Chess Forum

I recently watched this video on the importance of being in the right frame of mind when playing, and read this blog post in part about the difficulty of achieving it.

It is something I know is important to my own results, but find difficult to influence. So I was prompted to wonder if there was anything a chess player could take from sports psychology about mental preparation. There is a little bit on mental attitude in How to Think in Chess by Przewoznik and Soszynski, but generally the chess psychology books concentrate on how errors occur, rather than maximising a players performance (Rowson, Benko, et al)

Can anyone recommend any reading?

Paul Cooksey wrote:Can anyone recommend any reading?

There are some books and other advice in these two threads:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2848 (How to improve? - March 2011)
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2962 (The psychology of choking - April 2011)

For the first thread, read from around the bottom of page 7 onwards.

Thanks Christopher

I found this link looking for reviews of the ones I haven't read: My Chess Psychology Bookshelf

That said, I am fairly familiar with most of the chess literature on the subject, I was hoping to expand my horizons outside chess into generalist sports psychology, if anyone has any expertise.

There's a chapter at the end of Aagaard's Excelling at Chess that talks about this sort of thing.

If you read The Inner Game of Tennis, by W. Timothy Gallwey, that may help you with this

The best idea on chess and sports psychology is from this chap.

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcN6QUe5 ... ata_player


 

I think the basic philosophy of mind sports including chess and poker is to refuse to allow emotion to overcome logic. A poor mindset can turn a winning position into a perceived loss. It must also be important not to allow perceived views about opponents to colour judgement.
louise