Mindful Chess

Chess is a game I have played on and off for many years. I've found endless enjoyment in this ancient board game, even more so than any video game. I learned it in elementary school from a grandmaster named Goran Milicevic in Toronto.

I found it fairly easy to learn all the moves and enjoyed playing with my friends and my mom. She would let me win sometimes, which I later took offense to when she told me. I felt she was stifling my potential ability and sparing my feelings to prevent me from becoming a sore loser. Looking back, I'm grateful that she let me win a few games because I may have become discouraged if I had lost too many games in a row when I was just learning the game.

Goran helped push us towards friendly competition and good sportsmanship. We were soon playing against him and each other and experiencing the ups and downs of winning and losing, some of us being better sports about it than others. He helped us learn from our mistakes and gave us the space to learn this complex and fascinating game. I noticed that I immediately became caught up in trying to win against my classmates rather than focus on the intricacies of the game itself. The desire to win and keep winning would overshadow my ability to learn from my mistakes and become a better play over all. It wasn't until I learned mindfulness and meditation that I was able to make any significant improvements and let go of the preoccupation with the outcome of the game and just focus on what move to make here and now.

I soon became pretty obsessed with chess and looked for every opportunity to play a game with someone. My best friend at the time was quite a bit better at it and other board games than I was, and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to get the best of him, at least once in a while. His father was quite a good player and ended up coaching a chess team at our school. This gave me the opportunity to play against more people from different schools and helped get me out of my comfort zone. Looking back I noticed how difficult it was for me to find the best moves, and I would oscillate between making impulse decisions and staring endlessly at the board caught up in doubt.

Sometimes I would start really thinking myself into a corner, so to speak. My intuition would tell me a good move, and I'd almost immediately start looking for other possibilities using my analytical mind. I'd end up wasting a lot of clock time and then come back to the original move that my intuition told me in the first place. The mindfulness practice allows me to observe all of this objectively which has made it more likely that I'll follow my intuitive guidance more quickly and more often.

Seeing how this process of doubt works enables me to start building trust with myself to just make the move in the moment rather than go down the rabbit hole of analysis over and over again. This saves a lot of clock time and can kind of shock the opponent into going into an analytical rabbit hole themselves. "Why did he make that move so fast? What am I missing..." Ironically, I've noticed how my thinking mind can be the biggest obstacle to playing a good game of chess, if I don't temper it with a deeper aspect of intelligence.

The classic mindfulness practice of staying with the breath during ordinary activities is very helpful in games like chess. The tendency for the focus to go up in the head can create a lot of tension in the body, and the breath gets very choppy and shallow. Shallow breathing begets shallow thinking. Deepening the breath even in the midst of a complex position allows a clearer discernment of good moves, and can facilitate that deeper intuition to arise beyond the ordinary thinking mind.

Mistakes are inevitable, it is what I do with them that really matters. When I know I've made a mistake, I take a deep breath and recentre myself. Sometimes my opponent doesn't even catch it, but if I flinch or express frustration it is like the chess equivalent of losing my poker face. I observe the frustration and the mental commentary of, "that was f-n stupid..." and just let it pass and focus on the next best move. My habit in the past was to overly focus on the mistake, which destabilized me and created the likelihood of a cascade effect of further mistakes and a quick loss of the game.

As a young child I developed a "wishful thinking" attitude while playing chess and other games: "If my opponent does this or doesn't see that good move, It should be an easy win!" I would mentally hope the other person would make mistakes and plan my moves around that hope rather than the actual condition of the game. Of course, more often than not my opponents would make better moves than I wanted them to.

Nowadays I put myself into the eyes of my opponent and focus on their most likely best moves. I imagine that I am playing through them when it is their turn, and understand that they are trying to win just as much as I am. This can actually create a form of empathy and compassion even amidst what seems like a raging mental battle.

Seeing my opponent as a fellow divine being can be difficult at first when locked into a competitive game with an investment in outcome. One mindfulness practice I've cultivated is sending lovingkindness to everyone unconditionally without restriction. Practicing this during a game of chess can be quite difficult at first, but it has been very rewarding and has actually helped me think more clearly and become less reactive. It facilitates a harmony in a situation that would conventionally be seen as oppositional. By blessing my opponents it turns the game into a coopetition, since we are both spiritual beings having a human experience that happens to be manifesting itself as an in-person or online chess game.

The idea of asking God for help came from my background in 12 Step recovery. The notion that this could extend to something like a chess game seemed a bit far-fetched at first. When I found myself in a complicated board position I tried closing my eyes for a second and asking for a good move. I was surprised to see a move "light up" almost immediately, as though God was illuminating the next right step on my path to victory. The only struggle is trusting this process instead of allowing my ego to feed me doubts and hesitation: "It can't really be this simple!" Maybe it can, and it is.

Mindfulness in general has thankfully exploded into mainstream Western culture. I have yet to find any situation or circumstance where it is not beneficial. Simply starting with the awareness of the breath no matter what we are doing is a great place to start. In addition, the practice of loving ourselves and others as much as possible has had exponential benefits in my life, including the divine game of chess.