How do you classify chess players? And how would you reply if someone asked you what your chess personality is? 

One simple classification revolves around the elements at which the chess players excel:

Positional players tend to like closed positions where they can create plans, maneuver pieces around, make favorable trades, employ prophylactics, exploit weaknesses and gradually grind the opponent down in the endgame. Example: Magnus Carlsen. 

Tactical players have an excellent combinational vision. They usually go all out, aiming for the opponent king's throat. Tacticians enjoy having active pieces and an advantage in development and are quite good at sacrificing material for the initiative and handling material imbalances. Example: Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. 

Calculators are similar to tactical players, but they are more concerned about tricks that allow one to win material and/or set traps. The name speaks for itself: they are unstoppable in murky positions where a single miscalculation can be fatal. Also, they usually have somewhat less chess intuition than positional and tactical players, but they are good at crunching the lines, similar to what a chess engine does. As a result, one some occasions, they can make weird-looking moves, but in other cases, they will discover possibilities that other players won't spot. Example: Ian Nepomniachtchi. 

Of course, the higher-rated the players are, the more likely they are to be universal, feeling comfortable in any type of chess struggle. Still, even for the very best GMs, you can make an argument for putting them into one of the categories above. 

Yuri Averbakh was the only GM in chess history to reach the 100th anniversary.

Coming up next is an alternative classification, even if it is less widely used. According to GM Yuri Averbakh, there are six main types of chess players depending on how they approach the game. Below I will offer an interpretation of each type.

Killers – these people take the result of the game personally and use chess as a means of “breaking a man’s ego”. Notable examples of this type offered by GM Averbakh are Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Botvinnik, and Viktor Korchnoi.

Fighters – they enjoy the process of struggling with the opponent and don’t lose heart even if their position is inferior because they can potentially reverse the tide. Some of the best examples that come to my mind are Arkadij Naiditsch and Valentina Gunina.

Athletes – according to GM Averbakh, for those chess is a sport, just like tennis or soccer. They do their best to win but don’t take the results personally and act like normal humans after the game is over. Yuri believes that Jose Raul Capablanca and Boris Spassky are fine examples of such an attitude.

Gamblers – they love taking risks and competing with others at everything. In a way, this category resembles athletes, if you ask me. Anatoly Karpov is a supreme example: he is a very adventurous and competitive person everywhere – in chess, politics, other board games, and in business. The same goes for Magnus Carlsen. 

According to Averbakh, all the world chess champions belong to one of the above-mentioned categories.

Artists – for them, creating a masterpiece or making a fantastic move on the board is more important than the actual outcome of the game. Arguing with Averbakh's claim cited above, I would place Vladimir Kramnik in this category. Coming from an artistic family, he also seems to value the act of creating a masterpiece above the outcome of the game. 

Researchers – chess is fuel for thought for them. They enjoy studying endgames, openings, and philosophical issues of chess and normally like correspondence chess more than head-to-head matchups. They are searching for “truth”, i.e., optimal play in every position. GM Yuri Averbakh places himself into this group. The same goes for me.

Now, what category do you belong to? Are you happy about it, or do you feel like changing your approach toward the game?

This blog post is brought to you by the Magnus Chess Academy Team. Make sure to sign up to enjoy the app as soon as it gets released!

P.S. Is there a way to test yourself and find out what your chess personality is? I appreciate Chess.com's idea of creating a special site that allows you to answer a series of questions and find out who your chess role model is. However, I am not a big fan of the implementation, namely, of how the questions are formulated and of some of the tasks presented. IMO, it is more of an entertaining experience than a real "scientific" test. 

In this video, you can see GM Hikaru Nakamura taking the chess personality test. Spoiler alert: he didn't get himself as the role model! 😁

How would you describe yourself as a chess player in one word? 

Let’s say you have enough time on the clock while the opponent is down to a few minutes or even seconds. What are the best ways to take advantage of this situation?

Rule 1: don’t play for cheap traps. Typically, people are fully focused when they are low on time. Therefore, they are unlikely to miss a straightforward one or two-move trick unless it’s deeply hidden in a maze of alternative variations that also require calculation. 

Rule 2: avoid falling into the “flagging” mode. This sin is especially typical of people of the older generation who used to play without the Fischer increment. Remember that in modern chess, the games are usually played with a 30s/move increment, making it much harder to flag a person. The recommendation is to take your time and proceed as normal. After all, having more time is an advantage, and you should make use of it. 

Rule 3: give the opponent a choice. If possible, don’t force matters and avoid making obvious moves that are easy to anticipate. If the opponents have nothing prepared against your move and are forced to make a choice between different continuations, they are likely to go wrong, or a least burn a lot of precious time on finding the right path. 

Tip #4: if possible, keep the position complicated. Unless trades offer you a distinct advantage, keeping more pieces on the board is usually desired. Firstly, most captures can be made automatically, earning the person a 30s increment in classical chess and possibly helping reach the time control sooner. Secondly, with fewer pieces on the board, it is usually harder to blunder something. 

Tip #5: exploit the “knee-jerk” reactions. For example, in one of my games in the Chigorin Memorial against an experienced IM, I made a useful move h3 in his time trouble, basically inviting him to monkey my decision and to play h6. He went for it only to discover that this move turned out to be weakening in one of the lines that I was going to execute. By provoking him to fall for that stereotypical reply, I made the tactical operation even more beneficial for me. 

For the sake of accuracy, when I was analyzing the game with an engine after the end of the tournament, I discovered that there were better ways to convert my advantage, and my opponent could have defended better. Nevertheless, my decision proved smart in practical terms, allowing me to score a quick victory. 

Tip #6:  if your position is bad or lost, stir up complications. You have nothing to lose, while there is a chance that your opponent might not be able to calculate the variations correctly in time trouble. This recommendation is generally beneficial but even more so when your partner is in time trouble. 

Tip #7: in an objectively drawish position, you may try to repeat moves a couple of times to provoke your opponent into going all out to play for a win. This tip works exceptionally well in positions where playing for a win is the wrong strategy, and the opponent is tilted and higher-rated than yourself. Of course, this strategy may backfire if misused. Namely, opponents who are happy with a draw will be glad to repeat moves quickly, gaining some time thanks to increment and making you think about what to do next. Therefore, this method requires a lot of practical experience and having a read on the mindset of your opponent. 

In a recent online blitz game, I got this position as White. It is my move. How would you assess it?

Objectively speaking, it is a draw. Black can’t activate the king since I am threatening a rook check, promoting the a-pawn. Similarly, my king has to watch out for a breakthrough on the kingside by Black. I was very low on time, and the opponent started more or less shuffling the rook back and forth along the a-file. I played sanely for a while but then had a blackout that was caused by lack of time, desire to win and the fact that I believed my position was better at some point before. Losing objectivity and my mind, I went for 49.Kb5??, trying to run with the king to the a-pawn and promote it. How did Black punish me for this?

Black blitzed out 49…f4!, which is a natural breakthrough that takes some effort to miss. My king is too far to stop the black pawns, and I am nowhere in time to support my a-pawn. As a result, Black obtained a queen shortly and won comfortably. This was a painful loss and an instructive example from a psychological point of view. 

As you can see, my recommendations were more of a general type and didn’t mention any tricks you can pull off specifically in online blitz. These shenanigans probably deserve a separate article. Alternatively, you can find books on playing chess online, such as GM Hikaru Nakamura’s “Bullet Chess: One Minute to Mate”. Or, if you are interested in blitz tips from a legendary Soviet master and hustler, you may want to check out “Winning at Blitz: A Fun Guide to Blitz Chess” by Genrikh Chepukaitis. 

I wish you the best of luck in your games and hope that these tips will help you score some memorable victories and boost your rating!  

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What are the best ways to capitalize on an opponent’s time trouble? Let’s review a few must-know techniques that will boost your chess performance in such cases!  

To what extent is psychology important in chess? Opinions vary greatly.
On the one hand, Bobby Fischer famously stated: “I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves”. This quote reminds us that the outcome of any chess game is ultimately decided on the board.

On the other hand, in more recent times quite a few World Chess Champions have had psychologists on their teams. Most notably, during the Korchnoi vs. Karpov and Karpov vs. Kasparov rivalries hypnotizers and yogi were deeply involved in the matches, allegedly affecting the outcome of some of the pivotal games. Later Viktor Korchnoi went as far as to claim that Magnus Carlsen must posess some sort of hypnotizing stare since super Grandmasters tend to fall apart chess-wise when playing him, losing even “dead drawn” positions.

Today we will discuss a few psychological tips that will hopefully help you improve your results as a practical player.

Tip 1: Remain cool and confident no matter what happens

Staying confident and not tilting is obviously good for your decision-making process. Also, it deprives your opponents of mental energy by making them feel uncertain about themselves and provoking them into questioning their calculations.

Conversely, if you show signs of weakness (shaking your head, breathing heavily, keeping a crooked posture), your opponents will get a morale boost and start looking for a promising continuation even more ardently.

There are two important exceptions to this rule. The first one revolves around setting traps for your opponent. For example, some players, particularly in time trouble, may start shaking their heads or pinching their hair when there is a flawed tactical resource available for their partners. If the unwary prey walks into the trap, the hunter will get back to normal. Also, sometimes such behavior will be demonstrated unintentionally due to genuine miscalculation. Therefore, while it is important to keep an eye on the psychological state of your opponent, you should make the final decisions based on the position on the board.

The second one concerns vivid people who simply can’t keep a poker face. A notable modern day example is Hikaru Nakamura. You can fully expect him to make grimaces and give away other body language signs regardless of whether he thinks he blundered or you have just made a terrible mistake. Therefore, you either ignore these “tells” completely if you realize that your opponent is overemotional, or you study the person thorougly in order to be able to interpret the signs well enough based on intricate nuances that are not visible to the average spectator.

Tip 2: The “I got this messy position from someone else” technique

It is quite typical of chess players to start blaming themselves for forgetting opening preparation, missing a key tactical strike in the middlegame or ending in a gruesome endgame with no counterplay whatsoever. How do you shake off the tension and the frustration?

One of the ways of getting over the dark past is to take a short walk during your opponent’s move and, upon returning to the board, to smile and to tell yourself: “Wow, what a weird position I have been treated to by a friend of mine! I wonder if I can somehow turn the tables on my opponent?!”

In a nutshell, you assign all the blame on your imaginary friend. This way you are no longer overly concerned about losing since it’s your friend who is responsible for all the harm done. However, if you manage to come back from this mess, it is going to be a fantastic achievement on your behalf! Quite a few seemingly hopeless positions have been saved using this technique.

Tip 3: Conceal your area of interest on the chessboard

The less your opponent knows about your real game intentions, the better.
Some chess players (Vasyl Ivanchuk, Alexander Morozevich, et al.) have a habit of occasionally analyzing the current position blindfoldedly, ignoring the board and staring somewhere else in what we would call nowadays “Beth Harmon-style”. This way you can’t tell what’s really going on in their minds.

If you do look at the board, it is useful to send a fake narrative across, hoping to hinder the decision-making process of your partner. Don’t stay glued visually to the part of the board that you are most interested in. For example, if you are worried about the prospects of your opponent attacking you on the kingside, you may act as if you are more concerned about his minority attack on the queenside or your own threat of snatching a pawn on that flank. The opponents who are not self-confident enough may easily be swayed into letting go of their own ideas and switching to the narrative that you are trying to impose on them (“I should probably not go for the attack on his king since losing my pawn on the queenside is so scary!”).

Obviously, there are plenty of other interesting psychological tricks that one can employ in chess. We will continue exploring them in the subsequent episodes.

As you probably know, in the perfect world you are supposed to analyze every game you play, thinking what you could have done differently and coming up with improvements. Most players are well-familiar with this important advice, yet they do not follow it due to laziness, lack of time and other excuses that are not hard to come up with.

However, it is far less common to recommend analyzing all your chess games from the psychological point of view. After the game is over, replay it in your head, focusing specifically on what you and your opponent did right and wrong in terms of psychology.

If something worked out to your benefit, decide whether it is worth using this trick more often. Or, conversely, if your opponent was able to knock you out psychologically, try to come up with an efficient remedy against such behavior and see whether you should add this weapon to your own psychological arsenal.

To what extent is psychology important in chess? Opinions vary greatly. On the one hand, Bobby Fischer famously stated: “I don't believe in psychology. I believe 

What Is Your Chess Personality?

Playing in Your Opponent's Time Trouble

Psychological Tricks in Chess – Part I