So you're Bad at Chess: A Demotional Guide to Accepting your Place in the World of Chess

You initially played chess with the belief that it was a fun pastime. You would get excited when you began a game, and yet you lost again and again. For, no matter how much you played, someone inevitably would outplay you. You placed yourself into a constant state of denial and blamed the time pressure on your miscalculations as you second guessed every move you made, while internally questioning whether you were beaten by a child prodigy or a cheater. This list of excuses grew, and yet one simple fact remained; you were beaten the moment your inflated ego told you that you were good at chess (because you had once utterly trounced a friend who rarely plays chess), thus denying yourself the ability to accept that you just aren't truly that good at chess. 

Contents

• Introduction to the Five Stages of Grief
• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance
• Conclusion

Introduction to the Five Stages of Grief

Excuses may differ from person to person, as will each player's relative elo, however, the skill disparity between you and truly good players only becomes more prevalent as each day passes. There are players who are actively solving chess while your greatest accomplishment in chess was learning how to pronounce "en passant" with a French accent. I say this because I once thought that I was good at chess. I would only analyse my wins and took any positives that the chess engine coach gave me as evidence that I was deserving of the love that my mother never gave me. But I digress, I eventually went through the five stages of grief, beginning with being in denial, followed by anger, bargaining and depression before I was able to accept what I knew deep down all along about my relative ability in chess. This acceptance has helped me immensely, and because of this, I would now like to help others by writing this guide through the five stages of grief so that by the end, you are able to accept your place in the world of chess. 

Denial

Currently, you may be in denial about your chess skills. You can beat all of your non-chess playing friends, which must mean you are better than the majority of the population, right? And yet, you have most likely never read a chess book and will often, if not always play the same opening in every game. Instead, you convinced yourself that working hard at chess simply entails playing more games. However, the issue you now face is that working hard only leads you to then having to work even harder against tougher opponents, as the better you get, the stiffer the competition and the more likely you will be to failing. This is because your best isn't good enough. No matter how hard you try, you personally are not going to have a near photographic memory that propels you to greatness. Your thoughts on hard work will never culminate in studying and memorising obscure games from the 1960's and 1970's between Petrosian and Fischer, to understand the contrasts in aggressive and defensive styles... and that would make anyone angry.

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Anger

It's not your fault, you attempt to convince yourself. Chess is a stupid game anyway, right? And yet you can't stop playing as you get more frustrated every time you lose. You want to fling the chessboard across the room, but you're playing online. It's not fair that you didn't begin playing chess instead of learning how to walk, because now you are years behind almost every other up and coming chess player and sadly, you're just too old to become truly great at chess. For the older you get, the less you learn, and your reflexes and quick-thinking skills are already diminishing, as you are left trying to hang on to any ounce of skill you thought you had. You might not even be a teenager yet and still; your decline is just around the corner. And as the anger subsides, you realise that this was not what you bargained for when you began to play chess.

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Bargaining

Your excuses don't measure up. Your opponents must have premium, triple diamond chess.com accounts, right? You question "If only I saw that move", in situations that you wouldn't have found without the engine showing you. You knew you were better than your last opponent and you send them a rematch only to be beaten again. If only you could have just one more game, you irrationally convince yourself. You begin to plead to the chess Gods, "Oh Checkmateus, Lord and Saviour of the checkered board, I pray to thee. Please provide me with the ability to win without there being any extra effort on my part". When begging to the chess God's doesn't work, you vow to study more and change your playing style, believing you played too aggressively or not aggressive enough and yet, you still lose, which would slip the strongest of minds into depression. 

Depression

You want to sit in a room and cry. It is all your fault, right? The more ambitious you were, the more disappointed you became in yourself with your inevitable failure. This is because no one ever truly wins at chess. Two players that play a perfect game will end up having a draw every time. This means that the only way you have ever won was by your opponent's mistakes and the only way you have lost is by your own mistakes, which is an utterly miserable lesson to come to terms with. Even after this revelation, you blunder by playing again while you are tilting, making mistakes that even someone of your caliber wouldn't normally make. Your first brilliant move of the day comes when you finally decide to have a break, accepting that your relative skill level is that of a pawn compared to the current Kings and Queens of chess, and this is a pawn that cannot promote itself.

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Acceptance

Conclusion

To conclude, yes, you are a bad chess player, but for the vast majority of the world, chess should be seen as a means of self-expression, and expressions are not based on wins, losses or the quality in which they shine. These expressions exist so that we are able to communicate who we are through chess, connecting to like-minded others from all walks of life, while playing a game that we love.