3 life lessons I've learned while losing at chess
Hello. It's me. 🎶I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet 🎶
Sorry y'all. I had to channel my inner Adele since I have this song stuck in my head. I decided that I wouldn't be the only one with that problem.
After writing about being eliminated in round 1 of the 2025 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship, I felt compelled to delve deeper on the topic of losing since it's an experience we all share.
I'll be straight with you: losing isn't the most enjoyable aspect of chess. When I play, I play to win. Losing is, by definition, the opposite of winning. Hearing the checkmate sound effect is a stark reminder that we have fallen short.
However, not winning isn't always a bad thing. For instance, if you are down several pieces and you manage to salvage a stalemate... hurray!
Losing is inevitable. If even Magnus loses, we will too. We are not alone. We are all losers! Hurray?
What I mean is that we must accept that we will lose a lot of games before even sitting at the board. Over the last year, I've been focussed in improving in chess. Mission accomplished: I gained 250 points in rapid! But it would be dishonest of me to hide the fact that I've lost 44% of my games during that time.
Losing that much has taught me lessons that I extend beyond the 64 squares. Here are three life lessons that I've learn from losing at chess:
Learning something new is hard, but it's rewarding
I has been a while since I started something from scratch. When I began my journey as a writer and a comedian seven years ago, I made plenty of mistakes in front audiences. The good thing with chess is that I can make embarassing moves in the privacy of my home. No one is watching... I hope!
Since I became good at comedy, I haven't really faced total failure at something I wanted to excel at. Sure, I've failed many times in karaoke bars, but I didn't care. Apologies to all the patrons who had to endure that. Turns out that I'm definitely no Adele!
What's particularly humiliating about chess is that, unfortunately, there is no luck involved. No dice are rolled, and no cards are drawn. It's all on you. And yet, with the best that I could muster, I decided to hang my queen in one move.
As I was rolling in the deep discomfort of my existence after making stupid blunders, I took great pride in my spectacular victories. Finding a tactic in a middle of the game felt incredibly rewarding. It was all me. The great thing about chess is that, fortunately, there is no luck involved. No dice are rolled, and no cards are drawn. It was me, and me alone, that found a brilliant fork.
As the dramatist Pierre Corneille once said: "To conquer without danger is to triumph without glory". When you lose, it's on you, but when you win, it's also on you!
When you draw... well... that's on you too, I guess.
Losing in the best opportunity to learn
Losing is only a total loss if we never learn from it. If I played the first four moves of my opening perfectly but blundered on the fifth, it's a moment to learn what I should do next. Sure, I could go through a book full of chess theory, but I'll learn the most when I'm losing. I know I won't make that mistake twice. Or will I? Maybe. I know certainly that I won't make that mistake thrice! Or will I? Maybe.
But someday, I'll have failed so many times on a particular concept that I will rarely make that same mistake ever again.
Also, the engine is cruel. As much as our brilliant moves are screenshot-worthy, it also highlights every misses and blunders. It can make us feel like a dog that couldn't hold its bladder, with the engine rubbing our nose in it.
But, in order to never make a specific mistake again, we have to make it once. Then, I know that I'll set fire to the rain.
It's a chance to grow as individuals
As we age, we become more attuned to primary emotions. Life becomes less black and white and our experience makes it so that we are rarely in the extremes. But throwing away a winning position into a losing one is devastating.
We've have all empathized with Ivanchuk when he started crying at the board during the 2024 Fide World Blitz Championship. The positive side of surviving hardship is that we emerge stronger on the other side of hard times.
Though defeat, we experience a mix of anger and sadness. Losing repeatedly exposes us to those emotions so much that we learn to manage them. With time, a 10-minute tilt becomes a 5-minute tilt, and then a 3-minute tilt, and eventually, a 15-second one.
Let's pat ourself in the back: we are not playing Tic-Tac-Toe, we are playing chess. Losing is part of the game. The Elo system ensures that we are always matched with players of our caliber. If sometimes we are paired with an opponent outside of our range, the system will say: next game, nevermind I'll find someone like you.
In closing, let me reiterate that losing is completely normal. In fact, if you are not losing, it's either because you are cheating or because you are opponents far below your level. In both cases, it's shameful. So let's take pride in our losses!
