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Hot Topic (More than 10 Replies) Are Chess Players "Right Handed" or "Left Handed"? (Read 12152 times)
gwnn
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Re: Are Chess Players "Right Handed" or "Left Handed"?
Reply #1 - 07/03/12 at 13:48:53
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I usually move with my left hand if I'm white, unless the move is somewhere on the g or h files. With black I move with my right. I think my results are much better with white than black (even adjusted for the a priori ~55% bias), this might be one of the reasons! Smiley
  
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WSS
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Are Chess Players "Right Handed" or "Left Handed"?
07/03/12 at 13:24:47
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I was reading the most recent issue of "Psychology Today" and happened upon a short article about how a person's physical interaction with the world affects their perception.  An example they used was a study that showed that right handed interviewers tended to have more favorable perceptions of applicants who appeared on their right side than applicants on their left side.  My chess mind made the connection to how I (as a right handed player) tended to optimistically favor attacks on the right hand (kingside) especially early in my career.  Of course I can think of lots of reasons why that might be true beyond this psychological factor (not the least of which is that fact that your opponent's king is most frequently on the right side after castling kingside), but it is interesting to consider how this subtle factor could influence our perception.  Clearly our goal as chess players is finding "truth" in a given position and being aware of (and dealing with) subconscious bias in our evaluation of positions is a worthy goal.

A practical consideration (also mentioned in the article) is that this biased perception is not fixed.  The article suggested that using your left hand to pick up your pen (or move your chess pieces) would tend to counteract your initial right hand bias (and vice versa.)  A useful implication might be that we should all strive to become "ambidextrous" chess players as we develop and mature our skills!   Wink

Bill
  
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