How personality shapes your chess game

Chess rewards mental training, not just talent

Whatever brings someone to the board, winning consistently in competitive games takes mental training. Part of that training is understanding yourself. The other part, the one most players skip, is understanding the person across from you.

Watching how an opponent acquires pieces and how they build toward checkmate tells you something no opening book will. Each sign has different strategies, and being aware of the physical and psychological actions and reactions that come with them is an advantage you can use immediately.

The key is simple to say and hard to do. Make your opponent play your game rather than playing theirs.

Where the patterns came from

The profiles in AstroChess came out of analyzing past games on ChessCube and other chess platforms, looking for patterns in which pieces players reached for and how they built their attacks. What came back was consistent enough to write down.

The terms used throughout the book

Four terms come up in every chapter, and they are worth knowing before you start.

Chess life is a person’s most active chess years. Every profile gives a typical span, and the differences are wider than you would expect. Sagittarians tend to start around thirteen. Capricorns often start around twenty and set it down after a decade. Aquarians run about thirty years, the longest in the book.

Postal chess is played through the mail. Some signs take to it and some never touch it, and which is which turns out to be a useful thing to know about an opponent.

Straight chess is the standard game, using accepted opening patterns and conventional piece use. Gimmick chess is the other thing: traps, tricks, and moves designed to make you misread the position. Aquarius and Pisces reach for it. Virgo mostly does not, and Scorpio keeps it in reserve.

Develop the dormant pieces

The other aim of the book is getting readers to develop the pieces they habitually leave alone. Most players have a piece they trust and a piece they forget. Knowing which is which, for yourself and for the person across from you, is worth more than another opening line.

Start with your own sign

Each of the twelve has a page here covering how they play, their chess life, the pieces they favor and fear, and how to play against them. Read all twelve, or go straight to the sign you keep losing to.