How I Lost 63 Elo In A Day | April 15th, 2025

How did this swing happened, how did this blog turned the complete opposite from the optimistic letters I wrote yesterday, what the hell happened? This blog is probably the complete opposite, the absolute contrast of whatever I articulated yesterday: from the goal of getting 2150 at the end of the week and keeping this honeymoon going, to the optimism I expressed, everything basically turns the opposite direction than I was aiming for.

Let's get the statistics straight. I played 15 blitz games today (couple more in bullet, but that is irrelevant), and I got 3 wins, 1 draw, and 11 losses. If we want to do net gain, that is a net gain of -8. If we want to do elo loss, we started from 2116, finished at 2053, quick subtraction, I lost 63 elo in a single day. It should be pretty obvious that I'm not only tilted by the brain or by the mentality, the results also tilt in the same trend.

Do I have any regrets? Not really, I said in the blog yesterday that eventually, after reaching a peak, somebody has to tilt: you can't win forever, you can't keep the quality of your games to that high of a standard. However, the last time I reached 2100 (which was in November last year), I tilted all the way to 1900, and it took me six months to recover. Therefore, I probably play more and more in fear of not being able to recover from another one of those downfalls.

So let's go into the analysis: I don't want to go into game analysis, mainly because most of the games are miniatures and pretty stupid, composed of one preventable blunder that I definitely would've avoided had my brain become conscious and at full power. Here's just a tiny sample of a landfill:

Why was this tilt caused? Well, looking back at my tutorial on how to lose at chess, it really seems that I ticked a lot of the boxes, which caused this tilt. Let's see what happened today that made me play so awfully. This is not any excuses for my horrible gameplay, this is just a reevaluation as to what has gone wrong.

Tilt Checklist

Let's revisit my tilt checklist, and see what boxes did I tick:

• Are you still continuing to play even after a streak of losses? (three, four defeats in a row?) 
  • Yes, I continued to play even after a three losing streak. Even though I soon break it, another losing streak comes, and over time, more losses accumulate than wins, even though there isn't any "straight" losing streaks.
• Are you raging, smashing and punching yourself or surrounding objects after a loss?
  • Does hitting myself on the leg count? I'd say so, I've been trying to not overreact upon losses, but it's hard not to react anything.
• Are you experiencing excessive emotions? (crying, furious, dissapointed, agony, etc.)
  • Not necessarily, I've been trying to improve that, before in tilts I would do just exactly that. However I can't say I don't feel any negative emotions: I just don't express it excessively.
• Are you regretting every mistakes you made in a blitz or bullet match? (being excessively perfectionistic?
  • I do quite the opposite actually: I didn't even bother reviewing my games afterwards, not even a simple game review (wow, waste of a Platinum Membership).

With me ticking basically every single box in the tilt checklist (which by the way, this is a list I came up in like five minutes, there are so many more factors to tilt), it is probably evident (and expected) for me to tilt.

Hunger

I did not take breakfast today. Ok, that's a reach, but I was still left pretty hungry after breakfast. And what did you know, a lot of my games came in the morning, when my stomach hasn't been satisfied, and therefore my brain is not functioning at 100% of its brain power. It is a little bit distracted, and that is enough for me to miss simple tactics. Additionally to the tilt factor I've already gotten at the end of the last day, it is a perfect combo for continuous losing in chess.

Endgames

I probably should start counting how many times will I continue to rant about my endgames. To be fair, most of the games I'm already objectively lost in the middlegame, and it just so happens that endgame, plus his good friend time trouble, usually come in a duo to screw me over, and most of the time it really works, like dangerously effective. But it's not like it's a problem of luck or time management: it's genuinely skill issue. Here is a game I effectively choked against a FIDE Master (wow, I really have a bad record against titled players):

So yup. This entire blog is just analyzing why my gameplay was absolutely sewer-worthy, and why I lost so much elo in a day. I realized that my goals might've been too frivolous: something I'm well conscious of, but why not, let's keep dream big. Tilts are not my first rodeo: matter of fact, I've probably had more tilts than bones in my body. I'm still struggling to get used to it, but next time, I'll try to keep self-control: but to be completely honest, that's not really possible.

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