Do Introverts Play Chess

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Chess, probably the most popular board game of all time has been popular for centuries. It’s been a popular past time enjoyed by pretty much everyone from kings to peasants.

It’s common to believe that those who are strong chess players are not only smart but also introverted by nature, but is this really the case?

In this article we are going to try and get to the bottom of this, are most chess players really introverts? Or does personality type have nothing to do with how much we play? Keep reading to find out more!

A quick word on Introversion vs Shyness

Before we continue talking about chess and personality, I think we better define what introversion really is. It’s too common nowadays for people to confuse shyness or even social anxiety with being an introverted person.

Introversion and shyness are two different concepts. Introversion is a personality trait that is characterized by a focus on one’s inner thoughts and feelings, and a preference for spending time alone or with a small group of people. Shyness, on the other hand, is a feeling of apprehension or discomfort in social situations. Shy people may be introverted or extroverted, but they often feel anxious or uncomfortable in social situations so they avoid them.

The key difference is that while both shy and introverted people avoid social situations and spend more time alone, the reason for this is different.

Shy people avoid social situations for a variety of reasons but all of them are related to distress, social situations cause them distress. On the other hand, introverted people don’t necessarily feel distress while in social situations, they might feel drained or tired after but they can easily go to a party or a concert if they really want to.

This difference is even more pronounced when we compare introversion with social anxiety. While introverted people just dislike spending time with other people all the time, socially anxious people often can’t even force themselves to do anything social at all for months at a time.

Introversion	Shyness	Social Anxiety
Personality Trait	Personality Trait	Mental Illness
Preference for low-stimulation settings	Fear of negative social judgement	Overwhelming fear of humiliation
Limited social energy	Lacks confidence, specially with strangers	Social situations cause high stress
Prefers individuals or small groups	More comfortable with familiar people	Fear, anxiety may trigger avoidance

Are most chess players introverts

The short answer is yes, introverts are indeed more likely to play chess than extroverts so they make a big part of the chess playing population.

This is because introverts are more likely to be drawn to activities that require deep thought and concentration, such as chess. They are also more likely to be comfortable with the quiet, solitary nature of the game, which is something that extroverts may find difficult.

For introverts chess is also a great way to spend their time with their friends, it’s almost tailor made for them because introverts often value one on one interactions more than socializing in big groups. This is in direct contrast with extroverts who love spending time with large groups and enjoying a broad range of different activities.

Most if not all the professional players that make a living playing chess could be considered introverted. Players like Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave are all stereotypical introverts. And even those who you might think are extroverted like Hikaru Nakamura or Magnus Carlsen are probably closer to “ambiverts” than true extroverts.

Do extroverts play chess

Yes, there are many extroverts who play chess. There are some players like Mikhail Tal who are clearly extroverted but they still love the game and they play as good as anyone. But in general, most extroverts will eventually get bored of the game, they don’t like sitting in the same spot for hours on end playing the same game over and over again, they will get bored and move on to other games.

This makes most extroverts much weaker players than their introverted counterparts on average, and if you are not good at something you will probably not do it as much, so there are way less extroverts that play chess on a regular basis.

You can see where the issue lies, it’s not that extroverts are not capable of playing chess, it’s that they don’t want to do it for long periods of time.

This is where the stereotype came from but that doesn’t mean that extroverts don’t play the game.

What about chess Streamers or YouTubers

This is a common misconception, while most players and commentators on YouTube or Twitch will appear to be extroverts the reality is that most of them are actually introverts.

To be successful on YouTube or Twitch, you need to create engaging content that appeals to your target audience, optimize your videos for search engines, build a community around your channel, collaborate with other creators, and so on. It might appear impossible for an introvert to do all of this but its not.

This takes us back to our first point: being introverted is not the same as being shy, just because these people create engaging content and spend a lot of their day interacting with people online doesn’t make them extroverts.

If you don’t believe me then let’s try this, do you think Keanu Reeves is an extrovert? What about Kristen Stewart?

I didn’t think so, while both of those actors need to constantly interact and perform for an audience, they are clearly natural introverts. But they are so good at their job that if you are watching a movie they can easily pass as a natural extrovert in film.

It’s the same for these guys, they’re so good at what they do that you can’t really tell unless you know them in real life or watch an interview where they are not “performing”.

Studies about personality and chess

While there are a lot of studies about chess ability and IQ, there are barely any studies about chess and personality type. There are multiple reasons for that.

It is much easier and consistent to work with data when using variables like, ELO rating, age, IQ and so on. Meanwhile “personality type” has a lot more factors that go into it. For example somebody might be considered an extrovert in Japan but that same person would most likely be considered and introvert in the USA for example.

You can see where we’re going with this, it’s not that easy dividing people based on their personality type when all we have to go on is subjective self evaluation and stereotypes.

Besides the previous point there is another problem with personality types and chess. Many studies done in the past use the controversial MBTI (Myers–Briggs Type Indicator) model. Which is controversial to say the least.

I found a recent study that used Eysenck’s PEN model for personality and guess what the PEN model is also not that great of a way to divide people into different personality types. Still the results of that study aren’t anything groundbreaking.

Some of the results show that introverted people play chess more than extroverted people, and that people who can control their emotions better are stronger players on average.

As you can see relying on these kind of studies to reach a conclusion is not going to work for this particular topic.

Conclusion

Taking everything into account, chess is definitely one of the top things that come to mind when we think “introvert”, most of the amateur and professional players are definitely introverts.

But we can’t fall into the trap of thinking that only introverts can enjoy or excel at chess, as we covered previously introversion merely increases the chances that the person likes the game by virtue of the way the like to spend time. There are plenty of extroverted people who like to play chess casually and there also plenty of introverts that don’t care much for the game.

You could argue that every chess streamer, is an extrovert in some way, but I don’t think that paints an accurate picture. Being a streamer (or a YouTuber, etc…) doesn’t really tell us much about the person. Everyone can act a certain way with enough practice, it’s what they do on their free time when nobody is looking what defines their true personality.

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