Competition is stupid

People who know me, but don't know me well, are probably surprised to find out that I'm a competitive person. I prefer activities that allow a group to work together. I game so that we're ALL the good guys (or, as the case may be, the bad guys). I don't like playing against people, I don't do online gaming; for the most part, the only kind of direct competition I like is chess. I like playing chess.

But it's all a lie. It's not that I don't like competition. I love it. I thrive on it. But what I don't like is playing by the rules. I don't like being the one you see coming. And maybe, just maybe, there's a little bit of not respecting other people as opponents. If you're not smart enough to give me a challenge, why should I even play? I wouldn't expect a professional basketball player to want to go one on one with me. Not that I'd win - there's about zero chance of that. They wouldn't want to play because I don't represent a challenge. I'm barely harder to beat than no one at all, and possibly easier (since competition tends to make people perform better).

Mostly, though, it's the desire to play outside the rules. Not breaking them. Just playing around them, playing with them. Using them to find the loop holes, to do the things no one has considered doing before. I don't want to slyly take one of your pieces off the board in a chess game. But I don't mind doing things like telling you which square your king will be on when I checkmate you - before the game starts. Can I do that? Well, sometimes. I have to be REALLY ahead to do it. But it's usually intimidating as hell to have someone tell you that. I want to play you, your mind, your paranoia, and not just the pieces you're moving around the board.

Of course, I won't TELL you that. I'll tell you that I am only interested in playing myself. All I really care about is feeling like I played a good game. Winning and losing isn't really relevant. Quality of play is all that matters.

Bullshit.

It's what I wish was true. If I weren't such a moron, it might be true. But at the end of the day, I want to win. I want to win everything. I just don't want you to know that I want to win. And I don't want you to know how important it was that I DID win.

It isn't that I'm not competitive.

It's that I don't want my enemies to know that I am.