Chess and Worth
Everybody wants to learn...but nobody wants to lose.
I joked with a friend of mine that I wanted to get a custom chess t-shirt that says, "I don't learn...I win". I'd be too chicken to wear it, though, lol. It's my response to the sage wisdom of, "You don't lose, you learn".
I don't know about you, but I am sick of "learning".
I want to find Beth Harmon and demand an apology and a refund.
She lied to me.
I was supposed to beat Mr. Schaibel, then beat him and his boy in a simul (not even looking at the board), then enter the open section at my first tournament, destroy everyone, and not lose a game until I met Benny "All pawns no hope" Watts. I was supposed to read a few chess books and three months later ascend to chess godhood.
Instead, I just keep "learning".
This frustrates me to no end. I had a chat with another buddy of mine who started encouraging me to begin "trusting the process". He emphasized prioritizing process goals over outcome goals. What's funny is, I am very agreeable to this when I'm not losing, LOL.
The more I tried to focus on learning, the more stressed I became whenever my Rapid rating decreased in elo. I don't know what it is about that ChessCom Rapid elo, but when it crosses over into a new milestone - there is no better feeling. I care more about that than I do my USCF rating - which makes no sense.
And yet makes perfect sense - if you came into a love of chess because of the Queen's Gambit - as I did. There were no OTBs at that time. All we had was online chess, so the very first rating I ever received that mattered was this one. It would be 18 months before I played in a tournament.
No matter how hard I try, I still get beside myself - bordering on depression - when I lose. I had to figure out how to fix this because losing is an unfortunate requirement for growth. If you become too afraid to lose, you ultimately become too afraid to play. I found myself playing Blitz too much to avoid playing Rapid, in order to protect my rating. All this does is make you play too fast when you go back to Rapid/Classical. I was like a person who was "skinny fat". Most of the time I "eat clean", but I also snack, so my weight is always up and down.
That was how my chess was.
I started to realize that the reason I was struggling was because I was tethering my self-worth to my rating. In my head, buried deep down, if my rating goes up then I had more value as a person. Sound ridiculous? Well, sure, but so does hiding a phone in a bathroom that you can sneak and look at during an OTB. So does sending Morse code signals to beads that tell you what moves to make.
How many of you have been playing an opponent that stops making moves the moment the position is lost to them? They might have 3:00 on their clock, and they are content to watch it tick down rather than resign. I'm not sure why losing on time is better than resigning - other than you can say, "I never resign".
How many of you have played an opponent that just straight-up vanishes when the position is no longer favorable for them? I've lost count of how many games I have won by abandonment.
For a while I got so many of those ChessCom emails telling me someone cheated that I started looking forward to them anytime I lost a game - sad when I didn't get them, because that meant I just got outplayed, LOL.
Admit it - anytime ChessCom notifies you that you have mail, you expect it to be that standard letter telling you that you got some elo back. That rating matters, but why? Why does it matter more than growth?
I think it all goes back to worth. If I resign, then I quit, and therefore I have less worth? If I abandon a game as opposed to getting mated, I feel better, and have more worth?
As long as the measure of your worth is more a question than a statement, you run the risk of doing everything from a position of self-service. But when you know your worth, you can appreciate outcome goals. You can start learning more and "losing" less.
Note to self: Settle your worth and you'll get better at chess (and everything else, too).
