If You Lose, What Should You Do?


Defending is a skill on its own but unless you have a way out, resign. Consult a stronger player (500+ ELO above you), if you can't quite figure out what your mistake was or else you will run into strong underfitting when analyzing your games, which will lead to a local minimum in your learning curve and therefore a plateau (you won't improve).

OP has made a good effort with his list. However, I disagree with points (2) and (4). There is no need to reinvent the wheel, chess engines are an invaluable tool for game review, the challenge is in knowing when to disregard their chess analysis. A player needs to consider their own playing strength in relation to engine analysis---one shouldn't be interested in 10-ply tactical misses or subtle positional errors when they are dropping pieces for free, losing to over-loading tactics or missing mate in 2. Look to identify and correct errors that are common for your playing strength. Next, in chess and in real life know when to give up, that's a vastly underappreciated skill. Sometimes "victory" is not worth the cost, cultivate the skill of walking away.