Improve Your Life by Playing a Game

The process of acquiring chess skills and gaining deep insight into the thinking of chess masters has always been an exciting subject. What are the special skills, talents and habits that distinguish great chess players from club players has been the subject of intense debate for a long time. Little scientific work has been devoted to this question and there are virtually no books that combine knowledge of psychology and the development of strategic thinking skills into a textbook of high educational value. The biggest obstacle was that most psychologists who dealt with this issue were not strong chess players and therefore had no direct access to the mental processes of chess at the master level. On the other hand, it's also hard to find first-rate cognitive psychologists among chess players. The Dr. Jana Krivec is a unique exception to this rule: a great chess player, a great teacher with extensive experience in competitive chess and a university professor in the field of cognitive psychology, who devoted most of her research to understanding cognitive processes in the minds of chess players.

The book "Improve Your Life by Playing a Game" takes us on an exciting journey through a wide range of topics in psychology and explains these topics by putting the reader in the role of a tournament chess player. Getting a deeper understanding of a chess player's mind during training, playing and analyzing chess games suddenly takes on a different dimension when explained through the lens of modern psychology. Even non-chess players can now deeply understand the famous quote that chess is life in miniature. Throughout the life of the book, chess and cognitive psychology are so intimately connected that the reader receives much thinking material and valuable life lessons.

All of this makes this book surprisingly interesting for a very diverse audience that includes:

• Students of cognitive psychology who wish to deepen their knowledge through case studies of
• real life
• Students of business administration and economics who want to develop and strengthen their strategic thinking skills
• Coaches and coaches of various sports (including chess, of course), who are aware that psychology plays a decisive role in all competitions
• Chess players who want to improve their game by better understanding the role of psychology on their path to mastery.

~ Dr. Matej Guid (university teacher and FIDE master)

The full scientific monograph "Improve your life by playing a game" by Dr. Jana Krivec brings new insights into the connection between psychological concepts and chess. She focuses in detail on various aspects of chess and significantly combines them with various aspects of an individual's psychological functioning in daily life. It covers cognitive and non-cognitive areas of human functioning. It combines the cognitive aspect of chess with an individual's ability to identify a problem and analyzes ways and methods of seeking and evaluating solutions. In doing so, it illuminates the concept of decision making and the issue of facing wrong choices. The author originally relates the rules and skills required in chess to the non-cognitive characteristics of the individual. Proper handling of emotions when solving problems and possibly making wrong decisions is just one of the personality traits she considers extremely important for (chess) success in life. The author adds that a successful person (and chess player) is certainly characterized by a high degree of self-reflection, perseverance in overcoming obstacles and achieving his goals. However, the latter are not only set up in the form of learned techniques and strategies, but hide in themselves a curious individual who is always looking for the meaning of his work. In this scientific monograph Dr. Jana Krivec, psychologist and women's chess grandmaster, clarifies new knowledge and presents it in a new way for the psychological field. The monograph therefore represents an important milestone for several applied aspects of psychological knowledge (e.g. pedagogy, clinical psychology) and provides new perspectives for the professional and non-specialist public.

What. Sonja Čotar Konrad (professor of psychology at the university).