One of the avoidable curses of playing competitive chess is an obsession with ratings. Focusing on your opponent's rating when compared to your own can be quite unhelpful while at the chessboard, as covered in "Ratings Fear and Loathing". Similarly, caring too much about your own rating can - rather ironically - create anxiety and stress whether it is currently going down, up, or staying the same.
- A declining rating can obviously be depressing, especially if it is associated too closely with self-worth.
- A stagnant rating can become frustrating, leading to thoughts of "I'll never improve" and such.
- Achieving a particular ratings goal can lead to a crippling desire to maintain it at all costs, which in an extreme form can include deliberately not playing in order to protect it.
The below tournament game is the first one after my breakthrough to Class A, so it was the first time I faced the last situation above after achieving the new rating level. I felt it was important to consciously combat both the potential short-term and long-term effects of ratings obsession. Some observations that helped the process:
- Ratings are a statistical phenomenon and there is little meaningful difference in minor (30-40 point) fluctuations. This means that an arbitrary threshold like 1800 for Class A has no intrinsic value, so falling a short distance below it (if that happens) should not have an outsized psychological impact. People grapple with this psychological phenomenon all the time when nominal statistical data points like body weight, stock prices, etc. are involved. What really matters is the long-term trend line, not short-term ups and downs.
- You have to be willing to lose games in order to win them - nothing risked, nothing gained - and to improve your chess strength over time. This means accepting the statistically inevitable negative results when they occur in the short term, then clearing your mental slate for future games.
- Quality of play is more important for someone truly interested in chess. Focusing on playing well (the process) rather than gain/loss of rating points (the results) is a much better and healthier improvement strategy.
- Mental toughness is a phenomenon that ignores ratings.
In contrast to my usual rough start to a tournament, this game is a win and features only one significant slip, a hard-to-see tactic on move 21 which my opponent also misses. The idea - uncovering control of a key square that would disrupt my skewer tactic - was eye-opening and well worth the analysis.
