chessfeels: conversations about chess, psychology & mental health

Julia and JJ continue their conversation about how anxiety can impact your chess. They talk about how to notice when your thoughts turn from 'observational' to more 'reactive' or 'evaluative,' and how annotating your own (slow) chess games can be a great way to practice these observational skills.

JJ mentions the chess dojo training program which is really good
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The Miami Temple Israel would like to remind listeners that they did not condone the message of Drake's music in his 're-bar-mitzvah' music video. 

Julia explains what anxiety really is, and JJ talks about how they see this manifest in several of their students' annotations of their own slow games. You can learn how to, like, do anything about it next week.

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Julia and JJ are joined by Chris Callahan, the community organizer for LiChess.org. They discuss what LiChess does, and could do, about the addictiveness of blitz, how to be more accessible, and, about all sorts of cool stuff LiChess already does.

Follow Chris on twitter and lichess
Join the lichess discord server
Chris mentions the outrageous variants on pychess and visualization training on listudy
See this page for the full list of extensions 

People are still loving our Free Hans shirts
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Julia and JJ talk about The Cheating Scandal, against their better judgment, breaking down the philosophical questions and psychological implications of The Scandal and make lots of jokes about anal beads in the process. Why does it matter that Magnus did not explicitly accuse Hans of cheating? What counts as evidence of cheating? Would the scandal be a scandal if You People didn't tweet so much?

Free Hans shirt
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I Think Hans Cheated shirt
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What should we do when our love of chess and our exhaustion with competition come into conflict? Julia and JJ tackle the question of why competitive and amateur chess players alike make such a big deal out of quitting. What does it mean to 'quit chess' if it's still a part of your life? What could 'recreational chess play' look like? Where does the desire to quit, rather than merely take a break, from playing competitive chess come from? Why do people think the options are 'keep improving' or 'quit playing'? Why are we like this? 

Check out our recommended courses on chessable
Buy our really good merch
Tell us you love us by following us on twitter
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Book lessons with JJ

After a week where chess twitter imploded under the weight of its users debating the value of giving unsolicited advice to other chess players, Julia and JJ decided to unsolicitedly tell everyone why they're using twitter wrong. They're joined by the legend Omar for a heartfelt discussion about how hard it is to hear the hard truth sometimes (stop playing bl*tz).

While we take a break to get ready for season 2 of chessfeels (#2chess2feels), you can
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Julia and JJ run a victory lap on a successful first season of podcasting by thanking their listeners (not you), giving candidates predictions (not Ding), and opening a to-be-continued discussion on neurodivergent learning styles. The pair talk about their experiences in chess and life as two individuals living with ADHD and talk a bit about what neurodivergency is and why it matters from a psychological perspective for all chess players (yes you this time).

While we take a break to get ready for season 2 of chessfeels (#2chess2feels), you can
rep our merch
study our fave chessable courses
book lessons with JJ
donate to the pod fund

JJ and Julia are joined by Julia's "name twin" @omgjulia, a podcaster, poet, narrator, writer, and, most importantly, non-chess player who has been mistakenly tagged in twitter posts intended for "Dr. Cool Chess Julia." Hilarity ensues as JJ and DCCJ attempt to talk to somebody who doesn't play chess for what sounds like the first time in either of their lives. Get these secret sneak peak into the bizarre and confounding perception of non-chess players on chess. The trio also dives into how perceptions of nerd culture, as well as nerd culture's attitude towards gender and queerness, have evolved over time. Then, JJ and DCCJ make omgjulia define chess concepts for their amusement. 

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Follow more Julias Rios here: https://twitter.com/omgjulia
Listen to This Is Why We're Like This: https://www.juliarios.com/this-is-why-were-like-this/
And the OMG Julia pod: https://www.juliarios.com/omg-julia-podcast/
Check out our chessable launch page: https://go.chessable.com/chessfeels/
And prep for JJ's white repertoire by purchasing @chessexplained's Keep It Simple 1 d4 https://www.chessable.com/keep-it-simple-1-d4/course/23396/ 

You may know him as the guy with the picture of the horse. You may know him as the organizer of the prestigious Mr Dodgy invitational. You may not know he works for Chessable. But you know him! But do you really know him? You will now. Julia and JJ interview the Alireza of twitter trolls: Mr Dodgy. They discuss different types of trolling, and how to be a clown on the internet without getting sucked into the fray or going off the deep-end. He is here to talk about how he uses and misuses the internet for his, and our, amusement. 

Follow Dodgy on twitter: https://twitter.com/ChessProblem
Subscribe to his stack: https://mrdodgy.substack.com/
JJ's queue is up to 6,439 moves on chessable. see what they're procrastinating on here: https://go.chessable.com/chessfeels/

In just one episode, Julia and JJ reveals the world's funniest time jokes and solve the problem of time trouble in chess. They pontificate on the phenomenon of time pressure: how stressful it is, how to avoid it, and whether it is possible to avoid being stressed out by it. JJ suggests that 'playing too fast' is an underrated cause of time trouble. Julia talks about how to do work away from the board that can help handle panic and pressure in low-time situations. 

Julia and JJ solicit controversial opinions from their listeners on twitter, and proceed to debate the merits of these ideas. Does playing the Fried Liver make you a bad person? Would chess be a better game if there were no draws? Is Chessable overrated? Julia and JJ discuss their listener's worst opinions. Brought to you by Chessable.

Julia and JJ talk about what short and long term goals can look like. They expose the types of mistakes most of us make when setting goals or making plans towards achieving them. They also announce their new partnership with Chessable, but neglect to talk about whether using chessable can help with goal-setting. They pressure each other into sharing their own personal chess goals on the air.

Links:
Levy Rozman's tweet on ceilings vs floors
100 endgames you must know course
Geller - Bolbochan 1962, discussed after 13...Qb7 and 20. Rxd5 as examples of planning

Sam joins JJ and Julia to discuss her journey back into chess obsession and improvement after coming out as trans and finding a newfound desire to put her all into life. Julia provides feedback on Sam's tendency to collapse in endgames against higher-rated opponents and in high-pressure games. JJ discusses the importance of perspective and reflection when determining whether a tournament was a success, and how this can impact choosing which section to compete in.
 
tw: discussion of suicide
Follow Sam on twitter
Upvote Sam's photo so she overtakes Levy and Hikaru on reddit again
Sam Shankland's Classical Sicilian LTR on Chessable, which Sam describes as "pretty life-changing" 

JJ and Julia are joined by opening researcher and blitz badass NM Gopal Menon to dispel the myth that your opening preferences can tell us anything about your style of play or your personality more generally. Once this is out of the way, they turn to the more important question of which openings correspond to what sorts of sexual kinks and proclivities. Don't worry, we obviously address the most important question for anybody building an opening repertoire: which openings fuck? This one is particularly NSFW. 

JJ and Julia are not feeling it this week. They address questions they've gotten from listeners about the phenomenon of "tilt," and after discussing various strategies for getting over or working through a tilted episode by finding ways to reignite your passion for chess, switch to the more general question of what to do when that passion just doesn't seem to be there at the moment. They discuss the pressure of feeling like being a chess obsessive means the fire 'should' always be there, and why episodes of disillusion can be defense mechanisms against fears of bad play. This one's kind of a bummer. We'll be happier next week, we promise. 

Why do so many chess players obsess over their ratings? What does this obsession look like, why is it often an impediment to progress, and what can we do to get over ourselves? Fresh off an almost-good tournament, JJ recounts their experience of getting fixated on the possibility of a large rating gain, and how hard it was to re-focus on their chess once this happened. Julia expands on the pernicious effects of ratings-fixation. JJ suggests less results-orients ways to refocus measuring chess improvement and progress, and Julia provides advice for how to navigate ill-timed intrusive thoughts about rating-panic. 

Julia and JJ question whether there is a connection between an aggressive style of play over the board and aggressively alienating personalities off the board. And, even worse, could aggression still improve your chess even if there is? JJ laments that many of their students describe clarifying, forcing, but ultimately simplifying moves as "aggressive." Julia explains how different conceptualizations and types of aggression can map onto chess in different ways. They then dunk on GM Reuben Fine's psychobabble from the 1950s about chess and psychology, and close on a conversation about how misconceptions of aggression within a game of chess can alienate marginalized groups of people within the chess space more generally. 

Jon Mackenzie of The Chess Pit podcast (and Tifo football analytics?) joins JJ and Julia to discuss what he describes as his own ambivalence towards the game of chess. Why is it that chess differs from other sports fandoms in terms of its focus on improvement? What is it about chess that can inspire such unique emotional pitfalls? Could JJ and Julia beat the Chess Pit guys in a fight? 

What would therapy for a tournament chess player look like? During a "therapy" session, Julia helps JJ unpack a number of questions that plagued them throughout a frustrating tournament where JJ kept running into familiar problems. Why do we sometimes get fixated on a single, unnecessary variation that costs us precious time on the clock? Is there anything we can do at the board to reset our nervous system when panic sets in? Sit in and listen to our trusty duo as they attempt to get to the root causes of the psychological blocks JJ encounters within and beyond the 64 squares.

We're all obsessed with blitz, but could it actually be addictive?  Our resident clinical psychologist explains why playing online chess might actually be addicting and assesses whether JJ's blitz behavior meets criteria for an addiction. Follow along and see if you do, too,  just in time to learn more about possible interventions for your blitz-addicted loved ones. JJ and Julia question what mechanisms chess websites use to promote addictive behavior and explore how we could use blitz in a way that fosters chess, and life, improvement.

JJ convinces Julia to start a podcast about chess and psychology.  Julia explains what people mean when they say they're interested in "the psychology of chess," and what they're missing. They explore more fruitful ways to reframe discussions about emotions and psychology in chess. Then, we learn how JJ and Julia first met, how they each got into chess, and why Julia does not have imposter syndrome. Finally, our hosts introduce future themes such as addiction, impulse control, and the "adult disprover."