“So… what’s your chess.com rating?”
The single statement that follows pretentious silence on the giant chess board of our South Parramatta campus.
But what is the sudden obsession with chess, and why is your chess rating a big deal?
The unanticipated arrival of lockdowns drove everyone, particularly young adults, into seeking countless elixirs to cure their boredom.
Whether attempting arts and crafts, spending hours online gaming or the unhinged binging of streaming services, people jumped on any bandwagon to carry them through.
Until late 2020, that bandwagon caught fire with the Netflix miniseries, The Queens Gambit.
Seemingly overnight, people became obsessed with chess.
Chess videos took the YouTube algorithm by storm, with previously small chess accounts and streamers, like GothamChess, overflowing with chess youth ready to become instant grandmasters.
The Chess.com website and app blew up with new users, still trending upwards. From active users ready to implement all the chess theory they have learnt to those just finding casual satisfaction in the game.
The structure of chess.com sees users choosing to either play against bots or online against other users, with the latter increasing or decreasing their rating (otherwise known as Elo) depending on their wins and losses.
According to the Chess.com:
“The purpose of this rating is to try to show the level of skill of each player, to better match you against other players of equal rating”.
Not surprisingly, ratings quickly become vital to a person’s play – one that requires constant surveillance and maintenance. Watching your rating numbers increase after winning a game is a gratifying ego boost.
It can be easily compared to the obsession with getting likes or views on social media posts, hence the addiction. However, unlike social media, these ratings quickly become an outward representation of the user’s abilities, significantly affecting their confidence.
Losing a chess game then becomes the ultimate enemy of a player. Even worse, a losing streak can completely put one’s intelligence into question.
And so, chess no longer becomes a game but a battlefield for one’s ego – an ultimate display of ‘stoic’ grandiosity.
But what can we do to prevent our ego from engulfing our enjoyment of chess?
First, we must make explicit that having pride in your accomplishments and chess standing is not what we are discussing here. Instead, we explicitly target stubborn pride that diminishes our self-awareness in the game.
You can recognise this type of pride in the following:
- Inability to accept that another person plays as good or better than you do.
- Failure to realise that you might need to improve your play and that it’s not ‘perfect.’
- Blaming your losses on external factors rather than admitting you’ve lost fair and square.
- Having an emotional outburst either during or long after the game.
- Quitting the game before it is finished to save face.
Most of these tendencies rise due to a phenomenon dubbed the Dunning-Kruger effect. Put simply, it is when one overestimates their skills and competence just by having limited knowledge of a particular topic.
We can limit this effect by taking in constructive criticism and actively recognising that we can further improve the game. Furthermore, occasionally taking a short break from chess helps us gather fresh insights from our play, leading us to a healthier understanding of ourselves.
Like Socrates states, the more we learn, the less we realise we know.
So, next time you are in front of that giant chess board, care less about your opponent’s rating and more about what you can learn from your play.
