Top 5 Biggest Chess Fails They Want You To Forget About
What are the biggest chess fails of all time? Thus with that question, began my journey of researching and finding some of the largest chess fails of all time ranging from terrible decisions made by chess.com to infamous blunders to even the movie industry! To be frank, though, there are plenty more fails in chess history, so if you're interested in this becoming a series let me know in the comments below! And without further ado, I present to you, the Top 5 Biggest Chess Fails They Want You To Forget About!
#5 - Chess.com Loves Crashing Doesn't It...
AKA the screen of death, this notorious screen was one of the darkest moments in chess.com's history and arguably one of the biggest chess fails in history. At this point, you've probably experienced a server crash or multiple of them before with the infamous Danny Rensch's 502 Error. But none of those previous crashes came even close to the database overloads chess.com experienced from mid/late December of 2022 to well into mid-February of 2023. So what caused these server crashes?
Official photo released by Chess.com depicting the increased traffic on the site.
So what caused these server crashes? Was it Chessboxing? PogChamps? A mere surprise? Or perhaps a combination of all of these and more. Either way, chess.com was increasing in members at rates far greater than what chess.com could have ever expected. Though, to chess.com's credit they did address the issue but, by the time they had multiple more active chess.com fans had left to chess.com's competitor sites. It was ultimately an extremely frustrating period for new chess players and major fans of chess.com.
Reddit post made by user 27bluestar.
Multiple times, I along with many others experienced huge rating losses due to servers crashing midgame or being forced to refresh consistently without any luck. One Reddit user going by the username of 27bluestar, took to Reddit to express their concerns by stating that if chess.com hadn't crashed in the middle of one of their games they would have won their highest-rated match ever! In an effort to resolve this issue, chess.com ended up upgrading its servers and giving access to unlimited puzzle battles but the damage had already been done. Without a doubt, I can confidently say this will earn a spot as one of the biggest failures in chess.com history!
#4 - The Infamous 'Noob' Plays
Alright, so you can’t really talk about chess fails without talking about not-so-great players playing not-so-great chess. Hmm, I wonder who that might relate to…oh yeah chess players somehow finding ways to lose even when winning. GothamChess popular chess content creator has time and time again uploaded videos depicting even bigger failures in chess games. In fact, he even has a whole playlist on YouTube of this called, “Lose at Chess”. After looking through multiple games and multiple videos I somehow still came back to Levy’s video, “The Worst Chess Game I’ve Ever Seen”. Let’s turn it over to Levy to explain this game.
Credits: GothamChess
Without a doubt, this is one of the worst chess games with (SPOILER: 1400’s playing) quite clearly “noobs”. With the time spent by each player, this was an absolutely ridiculous game and just blows my mind time and time again, giving it a clear 4th place spot.
#3 - The Lowest Rated Chess Movie Ever
Movies. We all love movies right? Whether it’s to spend time with family on a Friday night or binge-watch on Netflix. More than that chess movies in the past decade have somewhat improved and gained more popularity alongside chess with movies like Searching for Bobby Fischer and Pawn Sacrifice. What do a lot of these movies have in common? Politics and chess. Sometimes those two work well together other times, the implementation is so terrible that it frustrates the chess world. One of those examples and probably the largest failure is the movie, “The Coldest Game”. For the sake of you not diving any deeper into this movie…well just watch the trailer itself.
Official Trailer Of The Coldest Game.
It starts off intense and just ends quite disappointing. But, critics were even harsher with this movie. The movie ended up receiving a 48% audience rating on Rotton Tomatoes and 6.2/10 on IMDB. These ratings aren’t the worse until you look at the reviews and are left mystified at how this movie even made it onto Netflix. Rotten Tomato, Top Critic Jamie Ludwig described this film as follows. 
Another user on Rotten Tomatoes. Well, they had some interesting thoughts about the movie...
#2 - Chess.com Leagues
Ahh yes…we have arrived at the topic that inspired me to create this whole blog. The “very popular” feature could have been so much greater had it just been implemented correctly. Another miscalculation perhaps by chess.com? For those who don’t know or quite remember, Leagues was a previously beta-only feature that involved competing with other chess players in a division to increase your rank and eventually reach a “Leagues” club with cash prizes.
Chess.com's Official Announcement for the release of Leagues!
This feature was incredibly exciting and I along with hundreds of thousands of other players were enticed by an even larger announcement with leagues of a $50,000 cash prize pool for those who would reach the Legend League first. The cash prize pool ended up having the opposite effect of what chess.com had hoped, causing many chess players to not participate in the event at all in fear of cheaters in the event. Indeed those concerns were valid as multiple instances of cheating did occur throughout the event but were handled well by the renowned company.
Chess.com user Carwasher_Superdrunk discussing their views on leagues.
The problem arose more as the competition went on though. At first, it seemed that really anyone had the opportunity to win but lack of coverage on the event and inhuman amounts of played chess by the top league competitors resulted in many chess players feeling angered by chess.com’s decision to make this event happen. For perspective in Wood League, the most you needed to qualify for the next league was a few hundred trophies max. By the time of the Crystal League (where I ended my efforts), the required amount of trophies to make it into even the top 4 or 5 in your league was well approaching the multiple thousands. It was at these later stages that many players started dropping off due to mental health concerns and unrealistic expectations for qualifying.
Chess.com user dfgh123 expressing complaints about the league.
Further problems arose with many in other leagues qualifying far more easily than others due to competitors that weren’t as interested in making it to further stages while others had to invest far more time and effort without any real results. By the time people had reached the higher, “Elite” and “Champion” leagues, some players would need over 5000+ trophies to qualify for just the next league. To put that into numbers, you would need to play at least 133 rapid games and win all of them to earn a mere 2,000 trophies. Or the much more preferred option with blitz would take 222 blitz games (again winning them all) to reach a mere 2,000 trophies. Each rapid game generally takes 10 minutes, so you would need to play for 22 hours in a week to reach 2000 trophies that would immediately reset the next week.
Chess.com League's Official Photo On The Site.
At this point, it’s quite clear why many members were so upset by these inhuman standards leading to a further loss in popularity. With terrible advertising, loss of popularity, and unrealistic standards it goes without saying that the Leagues easily earned the number 2 spot on this list.
#1 - Worst Blunder in History?
Alright, so you can’t really talk about chess failures without talking about blunders sorry for some of the stupidest/biggest blunders in history. A blunder as defined by Oxford Languages is “a stupid or careless mistake.” Keeping that in mind in general it is lower-rated players that blunder but when a blunder happens at a higher level of chess it is already plenty surprising. But, what if a blunder happened in a World Championship match? And what if I told you that this has happened at least 7 times with a whole list being created by NM SamCopeland with his blog The 7 Most Shocking World Championship Blunders. But, even more shocking, what if I told you that this heavy blunder was made in a World Championship Match? Wow. I have to agree with NM SamCopeland on this one, without a doubt, this is an incredibly silly blunder. Below is the game annotated by NM SamCopeland.
Thank you so much for reading! This blog was submitted for Round 1 of BlogChamps and hopefully, I can qualify for the next round! Credits to Google Docs, my mental health for again withstanding this level of procrastination, Google, Canva, and the countless amount of images that hopefully chess.com won't sue me for... I hope you enjoyed this blog and see you next time!
