Early on I wrote enthusiastically in this blog about the many chess podcasts that are available. Chess podcasts perform multiple functions. They give you a way to be in contact with chess when you don’t feel like playing. Or when you want to play, but can’t because you’re driving or exercising, which are excellent times to listen to a podcast. Most important, studying chess can be lonely, especially during this pandemic, and listening to a podcast can ease that loneliness.
Recently I discovered a new chess podcast called Chessfeels, which quickly made it to the top of my list. There are so many reasons to love this one. The insightful way in which the co-hosts–clinical psychologist Julia Rios and chess teacher JJ Lang–identify themselves during the opening gives you a good idea of what they are trying to do and what makes this pod unique. JJ calls himself “a chess teacher and amateur feelings-haver,” while Julia is “a clinical psychologist and amateur checkmate finder.” The opening tells you more when Julia calls chess “the game we know and love,” and JJ pipes up, “and hate.” That really caught my attention, because I sometimes feel that the flip side of my love for chess is a kind of hate–hate that it is so hard and that terrible things can happen while I am playing, like blundering. But of course it is I rather than the game that has blundered, so hatred of the game readily metamorphoses into self-hate. Few chess books or podcasts delve into such feelings, however, misleading one to conclude that no one else shares them. Thanks to Chessfeels, we learn that someone clearly does. JJ and Julia are always trying to gain a deeper understanding of something related to the psychology of chess, and they lighten the difficult aspects of their discussions with lots of clever repartee, which is always amusing and often laugh-out-loud funny.
Take, for example, the podcast’s second episode, in which they tackle the subject of JJ’s “addiction to Blitz.” Blitz is a very fast form of chess in which each player is given three to five minutes to play. As in the case of its cousin, Bullet, in which each player is given less than three minutes to play, the popularity of Blitz increased a lot during the pandemic as online chess playing grew. Watching these rapid-fire versions of chess has also become a popular pastime: on Twitch, many famous and not-famous players who broadcast themselves playing Blitz and Bullet for hours have garnered thousands of followers and a great deal of money in subscription fees.
JJ’s addiction is to playing, not watching, Blitz. Julia is careful to preface her remarks by saying that they are not a substitute for professional advice (as she is legally required to do), but we and JJ benefit greatly from the psychological information she imparts. In this episode, she walks JJ through the entire inventory of questions used to help diagnose addiction, and we learn that addiction grows as the stimulus and reward grow closer together in time. That is why Blitz and Bullet can be addicting in a way that classical chess (which has time controls exceeding 30 minutes per person) cannot. Other issues that the pair tackles include obsession with ratings (episode 6), burnout (episode 7), and practical techniques that you can use to counter anxiety during a game (episode 3). All are worth a listen or even two.
This is not to say that other chess podcasts don’t discuss feelings. Some do, but such discussions aren’t their reason for being. On Perpetual Chess, Ben Johnson and Han Schut interviewed a person who said he did not want to be a chess improver, just a “sustainer,” which led to a fascinating discussion about whether that was really true, and if so, why. Podcaster Dr. Keven Scull (Chess Journeys) endeared himself to me from the beginning with frequent references to his frustration and bewilderment about his difficulty in improving. Fittingly, it was his interview of Julia that brought Chessfeels to my attention.
Recommendation of the Week: It is all too easy for the novice chess player to be attracted to and bewildered by the huge number of books about chess, a great many of which, because they are above her level, are not a good use of her time. Recently I found one that is just right, A Guide to Chess Improvement: The Best of Novice Nook, by Dan Heisman. The contents originated as chess newsletter columns, but they have been edited to work seamlessly in book form, and the chapters cover all of the topics crucial for beginners, such as “Thought Process,” “Time Management,” “Skills and Psychology,” and “Tactics and Safety.”
