My Chess Mindset

At a local event with quick time controls, I got my first ever game against a National Master (albeit a National Master that has weakened since his peak).

After this tournament I remarked to a friend that I was disappointed, but it was mostly "whatever" because the games, especially those in time trouble, were basically just coin flips. My friend replied "Chess is almost never a coin flip, because it is a game perfect information, but sometimes it sure feels like that".

It seems that my friend is right. Of course Chess is not a coin flip. You always have the information at your disposal to make good moves, now whether or not you can harness that information is a different story.

I had a stint of tournaments on the latter half of 2021 in which I would lose round 1, being paired against the top players in the tournament because of the Swiss system. These losses would take a lot out of me, and would often make my next game much tougher as my mind was still with the previous loss.

Tournaments became emotionally difficult to deal with. So I began to do my best to move past my loss, in the moment chalking it up to luck. Since this mental change I noticed I haven't been getting as upset at losses as I used to.

A) If I missed a win/blundered a drawn ending I used to be furious, affecting my next round. Now I don't feel that anger as much. I am still irritated but there is a sense that it was un-luck that I blundered, and "maybe next time they will blunder". Obviously it's not entirely luck, but my mindset is based on the idea that you have a certain range of expected play. At anytime you can play anywhere between this range. I don't think there is much value on putting numbers on the range, but for example I am 1670 USCF, so my range would be between 1500-1900. It is just lucky which end of the spectrum you and your opponent play on that day. Of course, I will never lose to a 1000 player whose range is 800-1200, but I have a chance at beating a 2000 if they are playing worse than their mean performance.

B) You enter tournaments with your ‘skill rating’ which you cannot change during the game. So if you’re mad at yourself because you played Kh7 instead of the obvious Kh8, you should really be mad that you didn’t study more before the tournament which would have raised your “skill rating” making it more likely that you performed at a higher level.

That being said I have a couple of doubts/comments about this mindset, which my friend’s remark brought to mind:

#1) It seems this mindset is a kind of coping mechanism. It helps me from fixating on losses too much during tournaments so I can continue to perform. This is because the luck mentality does not reflect the real nature of the game which seems to be far closer to “personal and direct responsibility for one's play” than random forces at work.

#2) However, I worry that not taking responsibility for my losses will make me progress slower. A natural output of the mindset could easily be: “I can't control whether I lose or I win”. This could cause me to not be as motivated to make changes in my play because I don’t have responsibility for my own errors. However, If I really truly believe “B)” then maybe I will make these changes and work on my game outside of the tournament hall.

#3) That said, whether or not the system accurately represents Chess does not negate the real causal power of the system. I do find the method genuinely useful to keep a cool head. When I used to go to these 2-day weekend tournaments after a week of working, and I lost a game, I inevitably wanted to give up and go back home to relax with my wife. Instead of having a nice weekend, Chess Tournaments were sucking up my joyful weekend and it was all for naught if I lose. I have found that with the luck mindset I enjoy tournaments much more and don't get as discouraged by losses.

I will note that this mindset mostly applies to silly mistakes, one move blunders and the like. I am still very upset if I just played the whole game terribly from start to finish regardless of the outcome. But if I play a totally acceptable game to have it all dashed with one blunder at the end, I find it easier to forgive myself.

I would like to hear your opinion on the matter. How do you conceptualize losses? Do you think my mindset will cause me to not improve my game as much?

Post your opinion on this forum: https://lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/my-chess-mindset-discussion