Feb

8

During my chess career I learned a lot about the dark side of psychology. One thing that I didn't put into 'Chess for Scoundrels' was how to talk a tournament leader into self destruction.

It goes like this. Let's say that a particular player is leading a tournament and is really 'in the zone'. The way to ruin him is to congratulate him on his magnificent play and then innocently ask what exactly is he doing right? This works in 2 ways, the first part (the flattery) being to cultivate vanity (more preening, less vigilance) and the second (requesting the explanation) fosters the kind of self-consciousness which takes them well and truly out of the zone.

Now I don't use this myself, but I've seen it done many times by, let's say, 'well meaning' fans. They flatter and beg advice, thus unknowingly sowing the seeds of self-destruction in their hero. And of course they promptly move onto a new hero when that one happens to fall.

This is why it's better to only flatter your enemies. And run like the wind when you're the lucky recipient.

Pitt T. Maner III adds:

Gamesmenship is practiced in many sports. And Stephen Potter was one of the masters in a good-hearted way:

All this failure is important, for it never would have occurred to a successful man to devise the four strange books that were the making of Potter's reputation as a comic artist. The idea for these books first arose while Potter was playing tennis with the philosopher C.E.M. Joad as his partner, against two younger and better players. After hitting a ball that was obviously well out of court, Joad called, "Kindly say clearly, please, whether the ball was in or out." By suggesting a slight lapse in etiquette on the part of the younger players, good sportsmen both, it threw them off stride, a stride they never regained, and Potter and Joad went on to win the match. "For me," writes Potter, "it was the birth of gamesmanship." "Gamesmanship" is devoted to "the art of winning games without actually cheating." Actually is the key word here. In tennis, golf, chess, poker, cricket, bridge, hunting and other games, Potter suggests delicate ways of breaking the flow of concentration in your opponent so that he stumbles and falls off his game. A gamesman does what he can to make sure that the best man does not win.

article

George Parkanyi comments:

This would suggest a corollary that insults and criticism would only just strengthen the already confident, i.e. the rise to the challenge gets the creative/competitive juices flowing.

It reminds of a recent football game — I think it was the Super Bowl. For some unknown reason, this huge Pittsburgh player went after this much smaller Cardinal player tossing him around like a rag after the whistle had blown. I remember commenting at the time — "What did he say to that guy?" It certainly was something.

Paolo Pezzutti writes in:

It happened to me after a long streak of winning games during a tennis match. For some reason I was in the game, focused and ready to exploit any weakness of my opponent. But when I would start to rationalize what was happening and why it was happening and building scenarios for the final victory I was finished, and eventually I would lose at least the set. Maybe it's because you take bigger risks: you think you can do even better and change something in your tactics. This makes you out of sync with your physical and mental condition which builds an advantage to your adversary. Similarly in the markets, after a long winning streak, when I try to analyze the what and whys, I end up changing the way I have been trading up to that moment and things get worse.

Nigel Davies adds:

Empty sycophants can be bad news for any teacher, especially teachers who are active participants in their activity and need to maintain great focus and self discipline. I've found in my own mentoring work that the best students can be very difficult, but they can actually help you raise your own game.


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5 Comments so far

  1. Ken Drees on February 8, 2009 10:44 am

    This psychological trick or tactic, a simple verbal probe into the mind of an opponent is underhanded. This reminds me of a successful tactic I employed numerous times in money games of pool — think college/yuppie bar scene.

    On a high pressure shot to close out a money game, as my opponent would be carefully sizing up his shot, I would casually walk over to the cue rack and put my cue-stick into the rack, maybe grab my coat or grab the hand of my date showing the opponent in not so many words that his shot was in the bag.

    Depending on the skill of the opponent, this tactic worked on many occasions. You could feel the pressure building and the more time the person would take for the shot, the worse the self inflicted pressure became. The other result would be a quick shot by the opponent — just as bad. The strong opponent with mental toughness would just drain the shot and pick up the money.

    But the tactic itself is underhanded. It shows that I was relying on a trick to save my game. It also says volumes about why I was not the one taking the final shot — I was being beat. I wonder if such tactics in chess or other higher games of skill would somehow subconsciously undermine the person performing them. If that person is concentrating on tricking and tearing down the opponent through psychological flattery, then one is not concentrating on your own game and reducing your own strength.

    Lets assume I plant these destructive seeds in my opponent prior to my match with him, I would have to believe that I would be thinking about this during the game. Thereby, I would be weakening myself. Maybe it would be best to try this dark psychological probe on the leader when he is about to play his final match against someone else — and you would be playing another, free to concentrate fully on the game and not the trick.

  2. admin on February 8, 2009 11:35 pm

    From Mr. Ben Robson:

    Does this mean that Roger Federer’s new form of gamesmanship is to cry publicly when he loses and to only regain composure and make his speech during Nadal’s crowning moment?

  3. vic niederhoffer on February 9, 2009 8:30 am

    Mr. Drees's thoughtful review and apologetica is interesting and profound. All that is missing are the applications to markets, which would seem poignant, and for one's own self improvement, some numbers to test the implications. vic

  4. Ken Drees on February 9, 2009 11:01 am

    To add to my comment post and to respond to Victor's call for more "market application" focus, I thought long about who my opponent would be in the markets in regards to dark psychological flattery. No outside person tries to infect my mind with this underhanded trick.

    It is obviously myself: my own mind, my own thoughts, my own vanities. How could I psychologically trick myself through flattery when I am doing well in trading? For me the self inflicted psychological probe starts after a nice win streak, usually on a monthly score card review (The chess player having a great tournament). I notice that after a "good" month I start to get a slight swagger to my thoughts, after a nice roll — two months or so of fine results with only small losses incurred, and taken quickly — like a "pro", I start to verbalize these thoughts.

    This cumulates in a big wave of talking about the markets to my wife. I notice that after one or two of these "Honey, I really am doing well" dinners, always with plenty of wine, things start to turn down for me in the markets. I start to hit bumps in the trading road. Patterns change, loss frequency increases, etc. What had been working well is now not yielding the same results.

    Ongoing I want to start tracking these "swagger" thoughts more closely and see if I can quantify them and get a count or a log going where I can more thoroughly understand where I am in terms of the probe. It happens to me over longer periods of time — months. If I have an up month and then a flat month — the build up doesn't happen. One day big wins never get me too excited since I always consider them as flukes. It seems that my own self inflicted flattery is insidious, building up slowly and then manifesting itself in an attack — an attack that actually feels natural and good.

  5. Nigel Davies on February 9, 2009 3:06 pm

    Ken,

    I was once advised to be especially careful in the next few games after winning a tournament. It’s one of the best lessons I ever received.

    These days I find I have a kind of contrarian trigger which makes me become especially vigilant when things are going well. The victories can sometimes continue into the egomaniac phase, but when the reversal comes it can be very difficult to recover. It needs two stages, first recovering objectivity and then getting over the shattering blow to one’s self-confidence.

    Nigel

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