The Grandmaster’s Humility: Why We Must Never Make Someone Feel Small for Not Knowing a Chess Move (or Anything Else)
The scene is familiar to anyone who has played chess beyond the casual living room game. A position is on the board. Perhaps it's a complicated endgame, a sharp middlegame tactical puzzle, or maybe just an opening line that seems to defy common sense.
You know the answer. You've studied the specific line, memorized the engine's brutal evaluation, or seen the grandmaster game where this exact position was played 50 years ago.
Your opponent, or a friend watching, proposes a move. It's bad. Not just slightly inaccurate—it’s a blunder. It throws away the advantage, loses a pawn, or worse, walks right into a mate.
And in that moment, you have a choice.
The Power Dynamic on the 64 Squares
The phrase, "Never make someone feel small for not knowing something you know," is a mantra for intellectual kindness. In the world of chess, it’s a direct challenge to the ego that so easily swells when we feel superior.
Chess is inherently hierarchical. There are ratings, titles, and a vast gulf of knowledge separating a beginner from a master. It’s easy to look down on that blunder and think, "How could they possibly not see that?"
But to do so is to fundamentally misunderstand the learning process and the true spirit of the game.
The Hidden Cost of the “Well, obviously…” Attitude
When you react to a mistake with a dismissive sigh, an eye-roll, or the arrogant pronouncement of, “That’s a classic mistake, you should know the Lucena position!" you aren't teaching; you are shutting down learning.
It Eviscerates Confidence: A blunder already feels terrible. Piling on with scorn just associates the game—and the person offering the correction—with a feeling of inadequacy. The student stops asking questions.
It Creates an Insular Culture: The chess world, like any specialized field, can be intimidating. If we gatekeep knowledge with superiority, we scare away new players. Chess thrives when it welcomes the curious, not when it demands perfection.
It Ignores the ‘Why’: The goal isn't just to tell someone what the right move is; it's to help them understand why it's the right move. True knowledge transfer requires patience, empathy, and the willingness to trace the thinking process that led to the error.
The Grandmaster’s Humility
If you look at the greatest chess players and coaches, they rarely display contempt. Why? Because they understand a few things that the arrogant amateur misses:
Everyone Started at Zero: Even Magnus Carlsen once made elementary mistakes. The history of chess is the history of millions of errors.
Context is King: The person who missed the line might be a brilliant positional player who struggles with sharp tactics, or a beginner overwhelmed by time pressure, or simply someone who had a long day.
The Depth is Infinite: A Grandmaster knows that for everything they know, there are ten things they don't. A true master respects the vastness of the game and, by extension, the struggle of the learner.
The strongest move you can make off the board is not to point out a blunder with a sneer, but to explain the flaw with grace and encouragement.
Instead of: "You should have seen the fork, that's just basic!"
Try: "That was a really interesting idea, but let me show you one of the subtle traps Black had set up. Look, if you push the pawn, he has this surprising check that forces the King into the corner. It's a tricky one that I missed for years."
In that shift of tone, the blunder transforms from a source of shame into a stepping stone.
The 64 squares teach us focus, strategy, and patience. But our response to another person's ignorance—in chess, in life, in anything—teaches us about our own character. True mastery isn't just about what you know; it's about how you share it.
The most powerful piece on the board is not the Queen—it's Humility. Use it wisely.
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