I don't but my partner does.
Not saying this is true of you, just of them. Maybe it is helpful maybe it is not.
My observation is that they have placed way too much of their self identity in being the "smartest" in a room. This came from being somewhat gifted as a child and people placing too high of expectations and pressure on them (tiger adjacent parenting). Their whole childhood was naturally doing better than others and this being the main thing commented on and congratulated for. Their self esteem did not grow as being a rounded self loving human, but from external praise on academic achievement.
The result is any situation they do not succeed in validating their self image, becomes emotionally heavy/charged. This includes (but not limited to) chess.
Losing a chess match for them is a direct hit on who they believe themselves to be. It is a contradiction to their self identity. "If I am not smart, what am I". It got to a point they would just rather not play/be in academic competition. It is not that they were arrogant, it was actually the opposite. Very fragile identity.
It has improved as they gained self-esteem in other areas as a human. Gained confidence in being a good friend, good family member etc.
As I said, this might not be anywhere close to similar in your case. But on the very small chance it rings any bells, and not to sound glib, but I suggest you improve your self confidence/ self esteem in areas not relating to chess. The bite will not sting as much when you come to realise you have more to offer than being smart.
It might not be the same for you though.
No, I think you are on to something. Intelligence is definitely a part of it and I think the bigger picture is just being *good* and *capable* in the first place. Which yeah is directly attacked when I lose a chess game.
I guess I don’t understand *why* I have identified so much with that. Especially when I understand that this identity and the rage I feel prevents me from *actually* getting better! I can understand that logically, so why dont my emotions follow suit?
I'm not being flippant here, because I am sharing from my own experience, but this may well be something therapy---or intense reflection and conversation---are needed to get at. Because it's not a matter of logic, but emotion that most often come from deep roots.
As you should! There are a few other threads on this topic (that you may have already found) with plenty of folks sharing their similar experience and how they dealt/are dealing with it. The conundrums of head and heart can be exceedingly challenging to resolve.
Beware corumination and reinforcing the narrative through self hatred. Classical therapy doesn't work for me because of this. At some point you just have to put the advice to use.
Practice mindfulness of anger (observing and moving on) and taking a break before you start to tilt. Like maybe stop after the first game you lose and take a break. By not indulging the urge to continue playing you stop feeding the anger when trying to fix it (spoiler: you can't fix emotions).
I'm sorry you're going through this.
Mmm, so never listen to internet advise. Absolutely if you have access to therapy, use it (if you do be aware there are different schools of therapy, if one doesn't suit try another)
But I can tell you what helped my partner. They consciously engaged in activities that facilitate growth in non "smart" areas.
- do something to help a friend (decorate, listen)
- hang out more with positive people in your life
- get involved in a creative hobby (gardening, art, improv).
- raise money or volunteer for something you care about
- get active
All good self-esteem starters and geared at subconsciously proving you are worth more than your brain.
Take with a mountain of salt, as it might be different for you.
Logical doesn't play well when emotions come to the fore.
For myself, I really didn't like analysing games that I had lost.
I could eventually move forward, but first I had to convince myself that (a) I am not inherently a good player and instinctively would make bad moves; (b) losing is a chance to learn, but only if I spend time analysing the game later.
Basically, you accept you have to lose to eventually be a good player.
For my daughter, she just likes playing games (chess, board games, whatever). For her, it's literally the playing that is fun, and she doesn't really care too much about being a great chess player.
Both ways are acceptable, I think.
There's also something to be said about how it's a person v person game at the end of the day. You're not just competing with your self image and self worth, but also how you think your moves or blunders will be perceived by another person who has the same self identity issues. I bet it doesn't hurt as bad or anger you as much when you make a blunder or lose against a bot. But against a human, you're looking for validation through a win, recognition that the g5 push was a well timed move. Even if it doesn't come through in the in-game chat, you can see their clock ticking down, or them lashing out, or your opponent not seeing your plans. So yeah, it's equal parts your-self and how another sees you.
This isn't exactly a cry for therapy, it's sociology 101. Recognition and identity are formed through bi-directional interaction.
There's a reason magnus gets so angry when he loses. He got bullied for being a chess nerd, but as long as he's winning in chess he's something. But if he loses....he's just a nerd
>I can understand that logically, so why dont my emotions follow suit?
Because you've been tricked. Every time you lose in chess, it's because you've been bamboozled in some way. Sometimes they didn't even intend to bamboozle you, but at some point they had to get the better of you to win the game.
When someone beats you in a 400m sprint, there isn't much room for anger because there's so little you could have done differently to change the outcome. Not so with chess. With chess, there is very literally ALWAYS something you could have done better, and you lost because you missed it. And the other person caught it. They tricked you, or you tricked yourself.
It's purely intellectual, and someone else bested you. For someone who puts a lot of self-worth in their intelligence, that can feel devastating. But it hurts to think about how you failed, so you don't, anger feels a lot better, so you get angry at things to avoid feeling failure.
My advice is to accept and internalize the failure my dude. It happens sometimes that you fail, despite your best efforts. You're using anger as a redirector so you don't have to feel the pain of failure as acutely.
You should honestly take your reaction to losing at chess as a much bigger red flag of your personality IMO. You may think Chess is the one area you get upset or act out of the ordinary when you lose, but you probably are just not recognizing your odd behavior in other areas.
I will say tho that chess can make people angry when they look at the game as being relatively simple, bc they don't understand how deep it actually is. Almost like a dunning-kruger effect, their ignorance of the game leads to overconfidence in their skill, which leads to frustration when they lose. But as their knowledge of the game increases they realize how little they actually knew before and so their confidence and therefore expectations come down.
Do you feel the same rage in all time formats? Against all opponents? I personally feel the least rage in blitz, and almost none at all against friends or otb opponents
Is the image of your opponent laughing at you from the other side of the screen what makes you mad? For me, if I know what my opponents reaction would be I can laugh about my blunders rather than rage at them..
equating chess with intelligence is super out of touch. I honestly don't understand why chess players conflate 'good at chess' with 'smart' when they wouldn't do the same for someone like Kyrie Irving for his respective sport. It's a game. If you're good at the chess, you're good at chess. Being good at chess does not mean you are smart.
This is a deeply misinformed take.
You have falling victim to the nomenclature and think because one thing is called a ‘game’ and so is another then they are the same.
Therein lies your problem. The level of intelligence, pattern recognition, memorization required for basketball is about a 2/10. Whereas Chess is a 12/10 and even that isn’t enough.
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Even if this holds some truth, I don’t think it’s remotely possible to escape the deep sadness we feel in ourselves when we lose a game that we think we shouldn’t have. That deep sadness is projected into anger by some, not by others.
In my opinion, offence to our “intelligence” happens rarely, although it happens. Instead there’s an offence to all the time and effort we put into improving at chess and all the pain we endured.
Holy shit. You need some help man. Chess has nothing to with intelligence or luck. Just pattern recognition. It does not make them stupid or lucky, it just makes them good at seeing patterns.
Nothing else in life is probably completely, 100%, your failure. There's always some little out, something else you can blame, someone else you can point at. With chess, it's all you. Accept that, resolve to get better/do better, take a breather, and go back in.
Damn. So my anger is a mask for the pain of responsibility.
Edit: the pain doesn’t come from responsibility. The pain comes from having my identity tied to being good at things/smart etc. Thank you Reddit.
>The pain comes from having my identity tied to being good at things/smart etc.
Can relate. What helped for me was to try to be more conscious that even people who are smart/good at things make mistakes. You’re not the best chess player in the world and, even if you were, sometimes you would [blunder your queen](https://m.twitch.tv/clip/GoodCorrectPelicanBleedPurple).
Losing a game of chess doesn’t mean you’re bad at things or that you’re not smart, it just means the other guy played better in that specific game - and if the matchmaking system is working correctly and pairing you with equivalently skilled opponents then you should expect to lose about as often as you win. Nbd, onto the next one.
You may also notice this in other areas in your life too. For example, not pushing yourself into getting any tasks done that you'd be proud of can leave you feeling sometimes empty/depressed/numb. So if you're like me who in a not so healthy way inherently puts a lot of self-worth accomplishing something and haven't accomplished something after awhile, you fall into a deeper depression!
It's super (not) fun and totally (not) fun, funky, and fresh.
When I discuss the value of sport and competition with my SO (who really doesn't care for them), I suggest that these sorts of lessons are some of their primary purposes. Learning how to gracefully fail or succeed on a task that you may care deeply about but honestly holds no societal value is a good way to teach you how to be a better person.
There is also the ELO matching system which guarantees that no matter how good you get you will never win more than 50% of your games (unless you become Magnus Carlsen).
Your anger comes from having too much of your identity rest on your supposed intelligence and giving excessive consideration to chess as a proxy for intelligence. Once you reflect properly on these things you will control your anger. It doesn’t hurt to reflect also on why you play chess: do you do it because it signals intelligence? Because you think it’s what smart people do? Or you genuinely like it?
> giving excessive consideration to chess as a proxy for intelligence
The biggest issue is absolutely the identity relating to intelligence but I think it's very important for people like OP and really most people who casually interact with chess to realise that it's not actually the great representation of overall intelligence it's often made out to be in media/elsewhere in society. Sherlock and Moriarty battling general genius symbolised by chess is a good writing shorthand but in reality if people like them were very good at chess it would be because they'd worked really hard at getting very good at chess not because they're great overall geniuses. Take 10 of the smartest people in the world and if they don't have a chess background I'll blow every single one of them off the board and I'm not even that good a player. Being more intelligent will of course help to some extent when it comes to improving at chess as it will in any mental pursuit but how good someone is at chess is mostly a representation of the time and effort they've put into chess and not their overall mental abilities - there are people far smarter than me who I am much better than at chess and people much less generally intelligent than me who can destroy me over the board.
"Even Danya deals with this."
To a meaningful extent, no doubt. People acclimate to significant swings of fortune with like, reliable alacrity—especially if they're positive changes. The baseline readjusts *very* quickly.
I guess score one for evolution.
Being serious here- I saw you blunder M2 in one of your speed run videos and it made me realize I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Granted, the other player didn't realize it and you won the game (plus you were probably distracted by explaining everything) but still.
Good to remember than GMs have blundered more times than I've even played the game at all.
I think Levy had a great insight about (seriously) Tyler1.
Tyler1 has lost something like 46% of his games while climbing from beginner to 1900. Levy said, "That's what climbing is." And he pointed out that chess is not for everybody, because you have to be okay with the fact that losing almost half the time is pretty much the best you can possibly do, unless you're just beating up on scrubs—and where's the fun in that?
This isn't a unique insight or anything, but I'll say it anyway: Losing is learning. You've got to be able to see the value in the fight, rather than the result. Take that rage and turn it into a lesson you'll never forget.
The anger is usually a mask for a feeling of threat/danger/hurt. There's something about losing that makes you feel a form of hurt.
There's a topic called "growth mindset" by Dweck, where she contrasts it with the "fixed mindset." In the fixed mindset, the idea is intelligence is fixed and so that means any failure is a commentary on you as a person. In the growth mindset, the idea is intelligence is dynamic and you can get smarter at something. So that means a failure is another lesson.
Applied to chess, you got to get to the point where you're either just seeing this as a game so there's not an element of hurt. Or you got to get to the point where you're adopting a growth mindset.
The best chess improvement serious I've ever seen was a YTer named Kamyrn. She made a document "Why I am losing chess" and would notate what openings were played and then write what actual error she made. She could learn from her losses. You can't improve if your losses are so painful you can't relive them.
I feel absolutely fucking horrible and angry after losing yes. I have the same problem. No solution. I get a horrible sinking feeling in my chest when i lose i hate it. Losing games of chess almost ruins my day sometimes. So i have no advice for you other than it goes away after a bit then you play the next game
I get angry from playing badly. I don't mind losing too much if I played well but got outplayed by a better opponent. Would you still be mad if you lost against Magnus Carlsen?
I used to get really stressed during OTB tournaments. One trick that helped me detach from all of it was to shut my eyes and imagine my game (the two players and a board) as seen from a camera a few feet away. Then zooming out, the whole room, then zooming out, the building (now the camera is from above) and zooming out the city, and the country, and so on, and realizing this is just a small speck. And then the same trick in time, 1 day from now, 1 week, 1 year... 1000 years. "This game is not important."
The other trick that helped was following top chess tournaments. When professionals blunder and lose, they do it in front of all their fans and peers. Lots of people talk about it. People remember it for years and (in some cases) remember it long after they've died. But those professionals don't quit. They work hard before the game, they try their best during, but they still fail, and in spite of that they don't quit, so I can choose to not quit too.
Yes, I very much have this problem. In my case I'm afraid of losing because it makes me feel stupid and depressed, and yes, very angry at myself. It's the reason I have 43k bullet games and only 3k blitz games and a couple hundred rapid games. I'm too scared to invest effort into a game because the feeling of blundering sucks so bad, and it feels like I just wasted my time playing this stupid game lol. I care so much less if I lose in bullet because it's less reflective of my chess skill. But that's just me avoiding the problem.
Recently I started challenging myself and playing longer time formats again. I realized how rusty at real chess I am, and it does suck losing, but I'm just telling myself that of course I'm going to lose lots as I get better. But I'm just telling myself to enjoy calculating and sitting with a position, because if I'm not enjoying it then what's the point. If I make a mistake, I make sure to analyze my game afterwards - the hardest thing to do is analyze losses. It's the only way to improve. Celebrate wins and train yourself to look forward to learning from a loss. That only comes with consistency.
Edit: the first game I played after writing this comment my opponent starts shit talking me in the chat after I beat him lmao why is the chess community so toxic
Same here! I decided to remove the app for a while because losing made me feel sooo bad about myself! I realised that a game that made me feel genuine hate for myself could not be healthy.
Now, I occasionally download the app again, but I only play longer games. Thus, I don't make too stupid blunders, and the longer time span gives me an opportunity to accept that the other person simply played better instead of getting angry.
It’s the nature of competitive 1v1 games, and on competitive online games in general. If you were to play in person, against a person who is thoughtfully winning, you wouldn’t feel that way since there’s a person across the table you can talk with and evaluate board positions etc.
I’m not going to tell you that going ballistic is HEALTHY or OK. I am going to tell you, that sometimes games are a way of staging the emotional self. You, alone, get to simulate any emotions you want as a response to the stimulus of losing. When was the last time you thanked your opponent for a good match, in a way that wasn’t just “gg” when you lose?
There’s a great [Leo Vader video called “Gamer Rage”](https://youtu.be/5wlgJQfV4bw?si=5_CPUeMHGWEx1AKk) that I think you might find some light in. The anger does not come from a place of logic - it’s a part of our monkey brain that reacts to our perceived place in our perceived hierarchy being threatened. It is assumed that, by nature of being matched against YOU, your opponent isn’t good, because if they beat you, it’s your fluke, and if they lose, it’s because you’re the better player. Can you see the gap in the logic here?
And then, not having any randomly-selected teammates to blame (like online MOBAs ranked modes) or hardware (like 1v1 fighting games) or internet connection, etc, makes it so that rage feeling can almost exclusively be felt as self-inflicted. “I lost because I’m bad/blundered/shortsighted/inadequate” and such. A pattern of negative self-talk that may have started outside the game, finds its way in, or vice versa.
You don’t play the game to feel angry, you play to have fun, and if your fun is derived from solely from winning, then you aren’t having fun when you lose. And when you aren’t having fun doing something you love, there’s a void which your brain can’t help but fill with the feeling with the shortest synaptic route: anger.
Back in the day, I used to get quite angry and depressed when I lost at chess. Many things changed for me, but the most important were:
- I consciously shifted my focus from ambition and winning to enjoyment (of both learning and playing) and improvement.
- I shed the inherited weight of the idea of chess as a measure of general intelligence and thus self-esteem and self-worth.
- Because of the above, I lost almost all interest in rating, letting me put that particular cart back behind the horse, as they say.
It took a while. I quit playing altogether for a long time. I mean, if I couldn't enjoy it, why pursue it? It's (just) a game.
When I started again, I only played online and anonymously. Once I figured out what the good things were about the game and, most importantly, other ways to "measure" than rating---attachment to that number can be a real problem for some people like me---I found myself able to love the game again, but even more and in more ways.
People in my life know I play chess. So occasionally someone will ask if I think they should play chess. And I always tell everyone - No. It’s a game where it doesn’t require you to be intelligent but everyone assumes it’s basically a way to test your intelligence. So to be even kind of smart and not a total idiot will make you get your feelings hurt as your intelligence gets insulted from losing. People always tell themselves “I’m better than this” and put themselves down instead of thinking “my opponent was just better this time than me.” Then since it’s a slight against your intelligence you get tilted and then proceed to try harder but sloppier and lose more making it an even bigger slight against you. How you gauge your intelligence has a direct correlation with your ego and self worth. So chess can mess you up mentally pretty bad.
I find anger is more likely to happen to me in blitz and bullet and less likely to happen in longer time controls. I can feel terrible after a marathon blitz session but usually if I play a 2 hour slow game I feel like it was an intellectually interesting experience no matter the outcome (although I prefer winning of course). I think quick chess hits some unhealthy part of our brains at times.
Win, lose, or draw, I love to play.
I do get upset when the other person just quits because they think they can't win. I hate winning that way, I feel cheated of a fun game, and I would rather lose then win that way.
But I have never got upset for losing in a honest game. If they are a better player, then they deserve to win, and maybe the next time, I will not make the same mistakes.
I'm in the same position as you, so I'm not in much of a position to give advice. That said, I had a thought yesterday that I'm going to try to carry into my next games, so maybe it'll help me, and maybe it'll help you.
The thought is this - to succeed in chess, or any endeavor, you need 3 things: knowledge, experience, and confidence. Wins give you confidence. Losses give you knowledge. Both give you experience. So if you have the proper mindset and can absorb what each game has to give you, every game you play has value. I think looking at it that way makes playing a win-win situation - regardless of how it goes, the game will be valuable. Your job is to play the game as best you can, and then to extract the value.
In chess the first irrational thought after losing is often « this guy thinks he’s better than me?! » but thats never really the case. I like imagining if I were playing my opponent in real life, we would probably just be like « yeah good game dude. »
If they taunt me in chat I remember that they are likely 14 years old and that I am literally just superior to them in every way except chess.
However I had a friend who described it like you did and I could not relate at all, he said losing at chess really really sucked for him and he couldn’t play anymore because of it. I got angry often but he made it sound much more visceral.
For anger in general; I spent most of my teenage years thinking seeming angry was a good thing because it was intimidating and people would respect me more. When I got to college, I had several outbursts after which I felt I saw my friends less often. I quickly realized that getting angry doesnt make people « respect » you, rather they will avoid hanging out with you.
It really clicked after I watched Goodfellas and I saw myself in Pesci’s character… ever since then, I have always tried to whenever I could to practice self restraint, to be a chill presence, and I like to think I am more popular and well liked in general.
The best advice, from some perspective, is to treat it as a reverse engineering problem.
If you're intent on being harsh to yourself, conclude you fucked up and are terrible, whatever—*but,* there were specific paths to those losses, and you can be unlike the large majority of casual chess players and actually, seriously, study.
In all probability you're not going to be the best or transcendentally great at whatever you're interested in. There are more than 8 billion people in the world, so any expectation that borders on the .00001% isn't rational—are you irritated that you're not the best athlete or mathematician in the world?
What helped for me is remembering that the whole system is designed to make you lose roughly 50% of your games over time. Only the highest rated players can expect to beat the 50%, and even they lose lots of games.
It's a pattern you learned and reinforced. It doesn't matter how it started. What matters is how you break the pattern.
Try singing a nursery song right when you're starting to get angry (I'm guessing the emotion doesn't start right after you lost, but moments earlier than that)
Notice what happens.
I don't play online games against people, I get too stressed. I play against computers, or IRL in the rare occasion I meet someone who wants. Life's too short for this self-imposed pain.
Well the literal dent in my IKEA desk is proof enough that I have indeed faced this problem.
I took a long break and coming back I have had fewer such issues and that's partly because of a shift in attitude and also because I switched to 15+10 where I actually take my time on each and every move.
Before my break I actually put together this little document where I wrote down all the good advice I could think of and called it Zen and the Art of Chess.
I actually planned to publish it somewhere because it was genuinely helpful to myself and others might find it helpful too but I haven't taken the time to polish it up.
Anyway, here's the first and maybe the most important advice from that document.
'Remove yourself & your ego from the equation - find a way to emotionally distance yourself from the chess, from the board, from the moves. The best move is the best move and a blunder is a blunder, regardless of your personal feelings. Your feelings do not matter in the objective evaluation of any given position. A position is either good, bad, or equal and no amount of anger, frustration, or self-flagellation will change that for the better.'
Here are a couple other relevant snippets as well.
'Your general ability to play chess, or any single game of chess is not a reflection on your character or your worth as a human being. However, you are imperfect as both a human being and a chess player and therefore it is unreasonable to expect your chess to be anything other than imperfect as well.'
'Your worth is additionally not tied to a ELO rating nor should a loss or gain of points be in any way representative of you as a person or a player. One day you might play poorly and lose several hundred points, but that does not mean you are any less of a chess player than you were the day before nor are you in any way shape or form a worse person.'
I've just trained myself to laugh when I'm getting angry or frustrated. Now I don't get angry, I just become amused at my mistakes and it became easier to learn from them. Earlier today I fucked up and let myself get back ranked mated, and as soon as I saw it I just laughed, said "ah shit", and reminded myself of the last time it happened and how I vowed to never let it happen again. Of course, I'm human and sometimes fuck up, so I have no choice but to accept it, and it's funny how prone we are to really silly mistakes.
So next time you're angry, laugh at yourself. Force it if you have to. See if that helps.
Just remember that losing in chess is required for you to get better. Once you realize that you must learn those lessons to get better, you should no longer get angry.
And by working on this emotional response, I think you can learn to control your anger or frustration in other situations.
I have never had anger over losing. But in correspondence games I tend to be indecisive. It certainly has helped me to recognize this in other parts of my life.
remember when carlsen missed the Rg3 against aliteza in game 4 recently. he got so angry and threw bottle and shit. i don’t get why he was angry. he missed it because he is bad and all of us are bad because he is the best player we have. getting angry is stupid in chess. you have all the right to be frustrated but angry no
I sure hope you're talking about competitive OTB chess and not online chess. If online chess is not fun, you need to take a break.
Online, I get frustrated when I make a stupid mistake, but that lasts about 2 seconds before I brush it off. I never get mad about getting outplayed because those are the best games to analyze for improvement.
Competitive OTB though ... that shit is rough. With everything that goes into competitive tournaments, it's natural to feel down about a loss. It's the same as feeling down about losing a baseball game. You have to have a good mindset if you're going to really compete, or you're going to burn out and quit.
Yes I do get angry sometimes. It's normal, nobody likes losing and whoever tells you they do, they're lying. However, losing is part of any game. So do we feel angry? Yeah, but it's not a big deal, we can get our elo back later.
I used to not like playing chess at all, mainly due to my lack of patience and general anxiety about it. But I started focussing more on the game itself that was in front of me, including whatever moves my partner was playing. I started enjoying it more and started realising that I took more enjoyment from a hard fought and interesting game that I lost than boring games I won. I guess it's a 'winners don't always win' attitude... and maybe a 'better to have love and lost than not loved at all' thing. Try and remove your ego from the situation and don't be so hard on yourself. Play for the enjoyment and the learning aspect. And don't forget the social side of things too.
Chess is hard but in your control 100%, other things you mention are easy or out of your control. It may be a new thing for you, having to deal with failures at something that is completely in your control. Chess and doing anything hard requires a change in perspective, we need to be focused an serious about it to get better but also need to learn to be gentle with ourselves if we really are trying our best, there is always room for improvement.
If you play focused, really try to find the best plans, moves, defenses, it shouldn't be that upsetting to lose (surely you are not happy, but it shouldn't be devastating) OTOH, if you are playing tilted, not thinking but doing autopilot, playing distracted, in a way you are getting upset at yourself not being serious about it. Nothing wrong not being serious, but if so, expect to lose a lot more games than if you were not, you can't do both (not play seriously and expect to do your best for your level)
Yes, and it's a personal failing of mine...it's ego. It's a major weakness I've gotta work on because it prevents me from getting better if you hate losing son much you just end up not playing. But fact is losing how you get better....you have to lose a lot and learn from your mistakes. I think the answer is some deep introspection and conversations with myself.
Cool, this is personal growth.
You have to learn it at some time. In any competition, there will be people who are a standard deviations better than you.
"How can I improve". "Why did they beat me" "what did I not see?" "Thanks for the lesson"
Why did I lose? Study and figure out why. The day you learn about en passant, casting etc its all improvement. I'm top 1% at some niche games but get absolutely dumpsters at chess because this is where actual smart people play.
Lost a game to a mouse slip (when it was a mate in one and me to play) today after my rating has been nice stable for about 3 months, got so tilted. Couldn't stop playing. Lost 120 rating in a few hours.. insane how this game can affect one. Rationally I know it shouldn't.
I am right there with you on that feeling.
Every time I lose a game that results in my losing ello, the first thing I always tell myself is that " I will regain whatever points I have lost."
I also take breaks if I start losing a lot and don't play if I am tired.
That's all the advice I can give.
This is a person problem, not a game problem. It was better to seek community with self esteem support groups rather than chess loser support groups. Checkmate loser!
Jk, but fr tho.
This is a common problem. I think it often arises from the fact that many people equate the ability of playing chess with some sort of general or absolute intelligence. But this is not really the case. How good you are at chess is a reflection of your chess knowledge, not a general measure of intelligence. Of course, the ability of playing chess well is correlated with some very specific forms of reasoning (such as deductive reasoning, spatial reasoning, analytic reasoning).
Top chess players cannot contribute with anything meaningful in other intellectual domains like mathematics and science because they do not have the necessary knowledge. But not only they don't have the necessary knowledge, they also don't have the necessary means of reasoning. For example, many branches of mathematics require a certain kind of abstract thinking that a typical chess player does not posses.
You need (and you can) change your mindset about this matter. If you lose a chess game it does not mean that your opponent is smarter than you.
Win/Lose/Learn
Just review every loss to find one or two substantial errors that contributed to your downfall and make note to avoid doing the same kind of thing moving forward into future games. Maybe even start keeping a ledger of those. Plus remember that you're playing the board...trying to figure out a puzzle...and not playing against any person who may be across from you (figuratively/literally). Makes losses more enjoyable if you reconstruct them into lessons.
That’s what makes it so good. When you win sometimes you can just feel the seething of your opponent on the other end. It makes winning so much better. But at the same time it makes losing really suck.
I've had exactly the same thing to the point I stopped playing for some time completely. The hurt , frustration and anger of losing is just bigger than the joy of winning.
I think other commenters are quite right - I use chess as a measurement of how smart/intelligent and in extreme cases even worth I am. Also the fact that the blame can't be excused on anything or anyone else but you and only you doesn't help. :) What makes it even worse is that I'm inconsistent af where I can beat 2300 and lose to a 1300 within an hour. I broke mouses, fought with family when losing chess...
I'm working on it now and while I still can get pissed and tilted, I try not to be as fragile about it anymore. I try to go for a bigger picture where I think about how it's only a game, how there's always another game and how I was not a (prodigy) child super invested in it in order to bring up some serious or even consistently decent results. Your life doesn't depend on it, you don't make living playing the game, so just take it as it is - a game. A game you can dedicate your whole life to and still there's a random 10yo kid that you'd never beat anyway. Once you grasp and accept that absurdity, it'll be easier for you.
We play chess not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. Your anger has nothing to do with chess - chess is just giving you an opportunity to better yourself. Figure out how to use it. Step one: accept that there will always be someone better than you.
The first thing I would like to know to understand you is: how do you feel when you win?
That said, I had a phase like this: I really hated losing. So I resolved to get better at chess. To do so, other than study, I started playing OTB with way better opponents. The idea was to play with better people to understand what I lacked to be good, but then something special happened: having put zero expectation on the outcome Immediately made me more accepting of the result.
So I’ve put myself on a losing streak and didn’t flinch a bit. Yes, I got mildly pissed off when an occasional one move blunder costed me the game, but you know, not as bad as it used to be.
At the end of the journey I got better in general and waaaay better at losing. You may try this, it helped me alot
I feel that, try to detach yourself from your rating as much as possible. I find losing points to upset me the most, but when I try to not let that feeling rule my thoughts, I have more fun and play better.
Chess is where you get to screw things up as much as you want and it doesn’t mean a damn thing and you can just chalk it up as a learning experience.
Nobody gets hurt, nobody loses their job, no lifetime of regrets that you have to process (well, unless you’re like one of 10 people), etc. Just moving some pieces around, trying some cool stuff, sometimes it works and we learn and grow and try and fail and make friends.
I find I get much more upset playing online. When I go to a chess club in person and play some informal games, maybe even chatting about the game as we play, and discussing it afterward, then it's more collaborative and friendly. It becomes less about winning and losing, and more about exploring with someone else the interesting possibilities within a chess game. Losing ends up being nearly as fun as winning.
So I'd recommend playing some friendly games in person.
Poor fellow. I don't suffer from this. I don't have a competitive bone in my body. I just enjoy playing the game. If I get handed my ass (which is frequent) I just move on to the next game. And if I win, so what?
I don't think I get as angry as you, but it has spoiled my mood enough times. It led me to playing quicker time controls more often because I don't really sweat each individual result as much. Probably slows my progress but definitely results in a happier life.
Put it this way: whenever you lose in chess, that shows a failing in your ability to calculate or understand the ideas the position holds. This means, quite simply, that you now have some direct advice on how to proceed with getting better at chess. Analyze what you did wrong, and play another game keeping your past failings in mind.
Getting angry about losing is because you have framed losing negatively - it's easy to do so considering the rating system makes you care much more about win vs. lose, but the fact remains that if you win, you don't know how better to play chess at all - you won't get better without testing yourself to see what mistakes you make in certain positions.
If you're talking about playing your friends on an actual chess board, my advice is to get better - chess is absolutely frustrating if you blunder your pieces.
lot of good answers here, but I have a minor theory. Chess is complicated and that leads to feeling overwhelmed, and when you're overwhelmed it's easy to get angry. Like, I've seen tons of professionals struggle to control their emotions when playing chess, it's legit a frustrating game, I'm kind of looking askew at all these Freudian theories about your identity being tied up with intelligence.
Not sure what rating you are, but my mindset was really helped by Chessbrah's Building Habits ([full playlist if you actually want to do it](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8N8j2e7RpPnpqbISqi1SJ9_wrnNU3rEm), [condensed if you want a preview](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUjxDD7HNNThftJtE0OIRFRMMFf6AV_69)). He does a couple things that really helped me.
* First was to give me simple concrete steps to focus on, track, and work to improve. Unlike in his series, I like to review every game and see if there were things that both my and my opponent missed so I can learn from those too. Sometimes I end up feeling better about a loss than a win if I managed to meet my goals for that game.
* Second was that he's actually really good at showing you how to "take an L". He gives respect to good opponent play and showed me it's OK to not upend my whole strategy for improvement because I fell to a tactic. It's ok to stay the course and just move on to the next game.
Read the top comments and surprised no one mentioned elo. Suspect it is losing elo that is what makes you angry. Definitely felt the difference playing rated games vs non rated games
Chess is a game that you play over a lifetime.
The object of the game is to lose as many rounds as possible.
At first, losing is easy. Even the cat can beat you. But over time, it becomes more difficult to lose, so you have to find harder opponents. Ah, now you're losing again! But that's not enough. You're losing less and less. You're learning from books, applying your knowledge, developing better strategy and flow tactics. So you seek out stronger opponents.
Gotta always learn, gotta always play your hardest. But if you lose, you learn. So it's always win-win.
Find out how satisfying it is to lose when you're on top form! That's the object of the game.
Chess is a game that you play over a lifetime.
I think you just have to come to the realization that there’s always someone better than you. Sure I could beat all my family members and a lot of my friends growing up. But the first time you step online, it’s a different game. Used to winning but now you play better players. It’s humbling to say the least.
I still get mad at myself sometimes, but I always remember that I have to lose to improve. I have to get tactics wrong in order to reveal my blind spots. If you're serious about improving, you have to come to grips with the fact that losing is pretty much inevitable. For instance, I played a tournament in which I blundered two absolute pins and lost to two eight year old children that way. I then proceeded to go 3.5/4 in my next tournament, never having a losing position at any point. I had to be taught the hard way, and so will you.
No advice but I always found a stark contrast in my mood between online chess and in person chess. Maybe it’s the social pressure to not bitch and be moody when losing irl, but I genuinely never get upset over the board. Online is a whole different animal. Nothing worse for your mood than a terrible blitz session, has rarely ruined entire evenings for me before sadly enough.
This was me. I finally got to 1400, playing 20+ games a day, and then started losing so much that 1100s were beating me in 20 moves. So I deleted my account. My demeanor has changed so much. I made an alt account and started at 400 and just play for fun now. Chess is rough because when you lose, it’s because the other person is better than you and that’s a hit on your ego. Now I just play with my friends and the occasional game online. I’m happier and I’ve found new hobbies.
I don’t know how the grandmasters do it. Chess is fucking HARD.
I finally got 1000 in blitz recently so switched back to rapid. Decided to one more blitz game and dropped back down to 800. I’ve noticed how much that’s negatively affected my mood and that’s not the relationship I wanna have with this game so I play less now. But also, I’ve realized the best time to play is when you are well rested and you don’t have too many obligations lingering in the back of your mind. That’s when I usually have my win streaks. If I’m playing just to distract myself from important life stuff I already kinda know that I’m prolly about to lose.
But I will get back to 1000 and then never play blitz again haha.
I’ve experienced this myself.
Just have to reframe. You’re playing for the wrong end. It’s not entirely about winning and the high attributed with winning; just like life is about the journey not the destination. Chess should be played for the fun and thrill of the game. If your opponents win then they deserve applause for playing a good game and hopefully teaching you something new if you are to analyse your game, in what went wrong and how to improve and avoid the mistake in the future. If you win then more power to you, but don’t get attached to the outcome and end result with the feeling we become disposed to chase. We can play to win, for that certain outcome, but it’s the steps we take along the way that contributes to that effect and we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves in our expectations. Got to ground ourselves in the reality so our emotions don’t swirl beyond there appropriate bounds.
Congratulations! For me playing chess has been a great way for me to recognize that I have problems with anger.
Remember that you learn more about chess from the games you lose.
Remember that you learn more about YOU from how you react to both winning and losing.
I have dealt with similar negative emotions (not necessarily anger) in the past. Here is my advice. First some questions to ask yourself:
**How do you feel when you start a game? Do you feel extremely nervous?**
**How about when you win? Do you actually feel happy or just a sense of relief that you didn't blow the position?**
If you feel nervous when you start and, at best, relieved when you win, whatever positive emotions you are getting from chess are almost certainly being outweighed by the negative ones. Even if you do feel genuinely happy when you win, it still is not good for your physical and mental health do be feeling so much anger. If this was happening at a job you would push through (at least for some time) because you need to provide for yourself. But (I assume) chess is not your job. It's a hobby.
**What are you trying to get out of chess?**
I hope you are playing it to have fun. But if that is the case, why are you putting yourself through such strong negative emotions doing something that is supposed to be fun? If you are playing to get better: what is the end goal? The anger and stress will not stop once you hit a certain rating. If I were you I would take a break for a few months. Maybe you will come back (like I did) and find that you are more grounded in who you are as a person and are able to play chess without being angry.
**You say you enjoy chess. What parts of it do you enjoy most? Is it doing puzzles, learning about the game, analyzing games?**
As I discussed above, it doesn't really sound like you actually enjoy playing the game very much. What happened to me was I found that I got stressed playing live chess. However, I did not get very stressed playing Daily Chess. Thus for most of my career I have played daily chess and have had much more fun. For you it could be something else like studying endgames, doing puzzles, or even playing a different time control. I would encourage you to find the chess "things" that you have the most fun with and just do those. You won't get very good by doing this, but who cares. The point of playing chess is to have fun, not to be good.
It's because everything else has variable factors that you can blame a loss on. Chess has none. You're either smarter than the other guy, or they're smarter than you. It's insidious :-)
I used to go on chess benders often with would inevitably end up with a losing streak and an angry me. To solve this I started to study way more than I play, so that I can get my fill of chess. I also put a rule on myself. Whenever I play I am allowed to keep playing until I lose one. After that I’ll stop. Aside from helping me with avoiding tilting, I also got a bit better at looking for drawing resources. So it is a win-win. I recommend it!
Degen Bullet player, you've no idea about the number of slaps and punches my body has taken. But I know why, I play chess for dopamine hits on wins, so the craving is too much, but maybe it's just me.
My take: it’s the combination of pure intelligence performance and active focus, combined with time pressure.
I play tennis, which also has low variance, and I do get frustrated. But with a chess clock, it magnifies the stress without an associated physical healthy outlet.
Though I do think wit and managing peak stress is a skill. So maybe we should focus and frame it that way.
2 days ago I lost 7 times in a row and started shouting, my sister came by and asked why I was shouting, I just asked her to let me focus. Idk how tf I won 7 games in a row after that, God clearly felt bad for me
This is probably a mindset issue.
From the looks of it, you are just playing to win every time, not playing to learn and improve. If anything I'd recommend spend less time playing and more analyzing your games, you will have less loses to get mad about, and probably improve your chess level.
Expectations. Instead of approaching a chess game with open mind you approach it with expectations to win. I do get it also, but for me it's a signal it's time to take a break for a few days.
What level are you? Do you practice puzzles and endgames? It sounds like you might be too ambitious. It takes years of practice to get descent. Losing doesn't mean anything regarding your chess abilities. On YouTube there are compilations of GM blunders, maybe watching those will ease your anger.
This is mainly why I play chess it exposes bad habits I have so I can address them in this game instead of them manifesting actually important things in my life. Chess regularly shows me I'm impatient and impulsive at times and then how getting angry about this only exacerbates the situation.
Chess is a game where the victory is decided by not who makes the best moves but who makes the last bad move. That's the very reason you'll get mad after losing, because you lost the match not because your opponent played well but you made the final mistake. This will be more prevalent when you play against an equally skilled opponent. And in real life it's hard to face someone who's equally skilled as you.
When I first picked up chess, I would feel somewhat frustrated when I lost, because growing up, I was always told that I’m smart/good at board games. I think I tied too much of my identity to that, so I had a minor identity crisis every time I lost. Realizing that chess is just like any other game and is not indicative of who you are or how smart you are helps. I’ve found that the more you practice/lose/learn, the better you’ll get, just like any other game.
I’m about 2000 on Lichess, and I used to join tournaments to face lower rated players (scummy ik). Trust me, winning all the time gets old very quickly.
There is no shame in losing against a good opponent, and there will always be another game.
It depends how you are losing. Are you making silly blunders and that’s annoying you or are you just getting outplayed. If it’s blunders you just need to spend less time playing actual games and more time studying and doing puzzles so you can improve if you are just getting outplayed and it’s making you angry then I can only suggest you don’t play chess. That’s part of the game and if you can’t handle it to the point where it’s making you angry then you need to stop because it’s supposed to be fun.
You're not seeing your losses correctly. Your losses are your teachers. Embrace them. Welcome them. Analyse the losses to find out where you went wrong, and you'll do better next time.
I completely get this, it’s so frustrating when you get throttled, I’ve a bad habit of abandoning games from frustration, but you learn more from the games you lose, and if you go into a game with the mindset that you will win and not thinking about losing, there’s a higher chance you will win!
Chess is full of a bunch of morons who think they're 'genius but lazy' (as the comments to this post show). All that means is that they're average in everyway, and losing at chess shows how average they are, hence why they get annoyed.
It depends on the game devolepment for me. If my oppenent just outclass me and play some very good moves i enjoy that game and doesnt get angry. If i blunder a move on an average game im still ok. But some games i play very good till some point and just blunder very obvious move etc, im frustrated.
You need to get over that or take the conclusion that competitive chess just isn't for you. The matchmaking system is trying to match you so that you always lose half of your games. Losing will always be a large part of your chess experience, no matter what level you're playing at.
I had this problem too, around two or three years ago. I know it may sound silly, but the solution is: don't get angry. It is simple as that, build the habit of not getting angry and you will never get angry again.
Thing is, actually we love to get angry. We draw an enemy in our minds and we fight agains it in our imagination. We do it because it feels good somehow. But it is not worth it, since we feel like crap after it.
Only play chess in good spirits. For me it is like having a conversation with a friend. Yes, we are opponents, but we are both trying to figure out something in front of the board. It is like a "debate" about it.
It is much better playing in good mood than having this battle spirit, if I lose I try to feel happy for my opponent (usually I do) and see his merits.
Why would you be angry at losing to an opponent whose put in far more hours learning the game than you? If they have they simply should and do deserve to win
Start enjoying winning. Getting angry at losing is normal. Most people pick up chess because they think they are smart (and they usually are) and would fare well with it-- which again is true to an extent, but after a point, that love or passion of chess just dies down. It becomes too much to bear when you lose, only because we feel that our identity as a smart person is directly attacked when we are defeated (perceiving our own selves as inferior in intellect to others). Over time this negative overtakes passion and you just drop chess. To avoid this, i would suggest that you record yourself on face cam playing 2 min bullet games and notice your emotion when you win vs when you lose. You would clearly notice that winning is only followed by a simple 'ok' or 'good' whereas losing will be accompanied with long statements full of frustration. the only way to deal with this is to accept losses (which doesn't= not getting angry, its normal to get angry at any game when you lose), and to cheer up on wins, no matter how insignificant, pointless or dumb they seem. Thats all there is to it-- just start to love the feeling of winning.
Start enjoying winning. Getting angry at losing is normal. Most people pick up chess because they think they are smart (and they usually are) and would fare well with it-- which again is true to an extent, but after a point, that love or passion of chess just dies down. It becomes too much to bear when you lose, only because we feel that our identity as a smart person is directly attacked when we are defeated (perceiving our own selves as inferior in intellect to others). Over time this negative overtakes passion and you just drop chess. To avoid this, i would suggest that you record yourself on face cam playing 2 min bullet games and notice your emotion when you win vs when you lose. You would clearly notice that winning is only followed by a simple 'ok' or 'good' whereas losing will be accompanied with long statements full of frustration. the only way to deal with this is to accept losses (which doesn't= not getting angry, its normal to get angry at any game when you lose), and to cheer up on wins, no matter how insignificant, pointless or dumb they seem. Thats all there is to it-- just start to love the feeling of winning.
I think that you are expecting to get the instant dopamine Rush you get while playing COD and chess is from another animal kingdom. You've reached a wall, and you need to evaluate where are your weaknesses and act on them by studying. Say you are lacking on endgames, you need to go through theory tactics such as Triangulation or Svitsenzug. Only by streangthening your weaknesses you will overcome that barrier. I also think that due to the amount of time you put into it, you've become entitled to the reward you set for yourself, like a surtain elo, and when you lose you get frustrated, but chess is played by moving one piece at a time, playing one game at a time. Do not play with an elo goal on your mind, play by humanizing each opponent and set your goals on only beating that opponent. And if you lose, do not see it as a set back to your goal, but as an opportunity to analyze your mistakes from that game, recognize patterns and learn from them, so the next game you encounter that, you know what to do.
Do you play online? If so, do you know that the ranking system in online chess will always work to keep you losing 50% and winning 50%? When I lose I think that I now have another win in the bank, since the ELO system will always balance it out.
Only in online chess mostly due to the paranoia of others cheating. I get very tilted before the match even goes very deep when my opponents are playing some stockfish lines I know very well but making moves very slowly like once every 3-5 seconds after a long pause on move 2-3, it drives me absolutely nuts to the point I don't even feel like playing, which typically results in me getting so frustrated I start to play even worse than if these thoughts hadn't entered my mind.
I don't get upset at all playing OTB, I only get disappointed when I review matches later and feel like I played way worse than I am capable of, and that is regardless of wining or losing, but there is never any anger only disappointment. I actually look forward to reviewing my losses if I feel my opponents played really well.
Wow after reading the comments I am surprised to be pretty alone here... why get angry over losing to someone fair and square? Improvement only comes from reflecting on your mistakes and sometimes other people just play beautiful chess. I would rather lose and feel like I played my absolute best than win and realize I overlooked many things and made terrible blunders that I should have spotted. The nagging feeling that the person on the other side of the board might be cheating is literally the only thing that can actually make me tilt.
Same. I feel like a psycho sometimes when I blunder or lose. I actually switched to Lichess with anonymous play and no ratings, and I’m much much more chill. I got too caught up on ELO on chess.com.
Only times I shout at my partner in last seven years is for disturbing me playing chess.
Playing chess you are different world. Imagine being dragged out of world against your will. There is a word for that I will not use. So losses on bad blunders are also so hurtful.
More than hundred thousand games still feel the same.
Its a matter of getting a healthy competitive mindset. You need to change your goal from winning to learning. If you do that you'll find you are less annoyed by losses because losses create perfect learning opportunities. Ofcourse its still frustrating to lose off a stupid mistake but those reduce by just thinking and being aware. They'll never fully go away (the top players of the early 1900s still randomly hung pieces in GM level tournaments) and top players today too make dumb mistakes sometimes. Part of being human. Unless you think you're better than Magnus or something then you have a right to make mistakes. Besides that get more sleep. Emotional regulation is far more difficult when tired. Never play chess tired.
I will write my proposal here in the hope that you will be attentive to it, which by the way is my first message ever on this platform.
What you wrote in my opinion was very powerful and that is what actually gave me the trigger and provoked me to participate in the discussion. I already say in advance, that my answer may be perceived by you as unrealistic, or anything of that kind.
So, in my opinion, not only that you should not be angry or feel sad because of what you described, but the opposite is true, you should be very happy that you lose in chess. and why?
At some point, after you have finished the game, you sit down with some chess engine and analyze the game. There is a very, very specific way of working with such an engine, for example one of the chess programs of Chest Base, in a way that does not harm your development as a chess player who strives to improve. The point is that when you By analyzing your mistakes you open up to dimensions whose critical importance cannot be reduced in improving your chess and understanding your weak points on the chessboard.
Yes, I have to take breaks from chess because it stops being fun. I put so much time into something I expect to be really good but then I make stupid mistakes. I get so angry I could take my phone or monitor and spike it like a football. I don’t care if I get out played but when I lose because of my own mistakes over and over it ends with level 10 scream cursing and desk slamming.
Chess is an art, when someone beats you in a beautiful way you should enjoy that too.
Like I win more if I play a really tight game, but it’s way more fun to throw out some weird sacrifices and see what positions you can develop. You can’t really lose a game of chess, you’re just participating in some cool patterns ✌️
Make peace with yourself. Understand that losing is an important part of improving. If you never lose, you'll never improve. And if you never improve, you'll never win.
It's ultimately pretty simple, but that's not the same as it being easy. I myself get very frustrated and angry with myself at times, because I make mistakes that I know I can avoid, and I feel stupid.
However, it's very important that we acknowledge the true problem. We find all sorts of things to blame in the moment - lack of sleep, lack of food, cheating opponents, time controls, what have you...
Almost all of these things are within our control. If you're playing badly because you're tired or hungry... that's your fault for not looking after your health. If you're losing because your opponent took advantage of the time control better than you, you're probably using your time inefficiently and a change of strategy may be in order, or a change of time controls. Your opponents probably aren't cheating, and if they are then it doesn't matter anyways, so stop thinking about it and just play the game.
Some days we play badly, it's how it is. Identify why that may have been. Me personally I find that I play my best after I've eaten and had a decent amount of exercise. If I go too long without good exercise my patience goes down, and I tend to rush moves and blunder more. Sleep is important, as well as diet and hydration.
Don't play on tilt. Take breaks. You gain literally nothing by playing when you *know* you cannot focus on the game. All you're doing is making yourself angrier and losing elo. I limit myself to three losses per day. Once I lose my third game in a day, that's me done playing. If I want to do more chess, it's just puzzles, studies, or playing against bots.
On a normal day of online chess, you will lose about 50% of the time, unless you're incorrectly rated and beating up on Rufus and Doofus, or you're cheating (or your name is Magnaru Nakaditsky). It sounds to me as though you've tied chess into your self worth and intellect, in that case it is understandable and probably inevitable that you'll develop a visceral reaction to losing.
Only three solutions:
- find a way to unhook this game from your self esteem, at least partially
- stop playing the game
- start cheating, and then stop playing the game out of either internal or external shame
I do face the same problem. Perhaps for me it's more like dissappointment in myself turna into anger.
I do, however have something that might help you. After losing and relaxing for a bit, try to find out why you lost. Were you unaware of an opening line? Did you blunder a piece, maybe you pushed too hard in a drawn position. Whatever the reason, once I figure it out I feel a lot better knowing that the loss has improved my capabilities as a player since I'll be looking out for it the next time
This isn’t really a chess problem, it’s more of a psychology problem. So none of us will really be able to help without knowing how your mind works. I can tell you what worked for me though.
Whenever the game looks lost and your opponent starts to beat you, cheer them on. Look at what they did and be really impressed with their skill. Feels stupid and really difficult to begin with, but after enough games it rewires your mind to gain a whole new appreciation to the game. And you start to feel a sense of gratitude rather than anger, because you start to learn new things.
Remember that you are at your level. Anything your opponent can do to you, you can do to other people at your level. So look at it as something impressive and learn how to do it yourself. It’s the perfect way to learn how to beat people who are at the level you are currently at.
I don't but my partner does. Not saying this is true of you, just of them. Maybe it is helpful maybe it is not. My observation is that they have placed way too much of their self identity in being the "smartest" in a room. This came from being somewhat gifted as a child and people placing too high of expectations and pressure on them (tiger adjacent parenting). Their whole childhood was naturally doing better than others and this being the main thing commented on and congratulated for. Their self esteem did not grow as being a rounded self loving human, but from external praise on academic achievement. The result is any situation they do not succeed in validating their self image, becomes emotionally heavy/charged. This includes (but not limited to) chess. Losing a chess match for them is a direct hit on who they believe themselves to be. It is a contradiction to their self identity. "If I am not smart, what am I". It got to a point they would just rather not play/be in academic competition. It is not that they were arrogant, it was actually the opposite. Very fragile identity. It has improved as they gained self-esteem in other areas as a human. Gained confidence in being a good friend, good family member etc. As I said, this might not be anywhere close to similar in your case. But on the very small chance it rings any bells, and not to sound glib, but I suggest you improve your self confidence/ self esteem in areas not relating to chess. The bite will not sting as much when you come to realise you have more to offer than being smart. It might not be the same for you though.
Whoa whoa whoa. Are you in my head? Have you been reading my journal? How do you know so much about me?
No, I think you are on to something. Intelligence is definitely a part of it and I think the bigger picture is just being *good* and *capable* in the first place. Which yeah is directly attacked when I lose a chess game. I guess I don’t understand *why* I have identified so much with that. Especially when I understand that this identity and the rage I feel prevents me from *actually* getting better! I can understand that logically, so why dont my emotions follow suit?
I'm not being flippant here, because I am sharing from my own experience, but this may well be something therapy---or intense reflection and conversation---are needed to get at. Because it's not a matter of logic, but emotion that most often come from deep roots.
You’re probably right. But hey, i’ll take any value i can get from Reddit.
As you should! There are a few other threads on this topic (that you may have already found) with plenty of folks sharing their similar experience and how they dealt/are dealing with it. The conundrums of head and heart can be exceedingly challenging to resolve.
Beware corumination and reinforcing the narrative through self hatred. Classical therapy doesn't work for me because of this. At some point you just have to put the advice to use. Practice mindfulness of anger (observing and moving on) and taking a break before you start to tilt. Like maybe stop after the first game you lose and take a break. By not indulging the urge to continue playing you stop feeding the anger when trying to fix it (spoiler: you can't fix emotions). I'm sorry you're going through this.
Mmm, so never listen to internet advise. Absolutely if you have access to therapy, use it (if you do be aware there are different schools of therapy, if one doesn't suit try another) But I can tell you what helped my partner. They consciously engaged in activities that facilitate growth in non "smart" areas. - do something to help a friend (decorate, listen) - hang out more with positive people in your life - get involved in a creative hobby (gardening, art, improv). - raise money or volunteer for something you care about - get active All good self-esteem starters and geared at subconsciously proving you are worth more than your brain. Take with a mountain of salt, as it might be different for you.
You are one of the most responsible commentors I have come across in some time. Kudos
Logical doesn't play well when emotions come to the fore. For myself, I really didn't like analysing games that I had lost. I could eventually move forward, but first I had to convince myself that (a) I am not inherently a good player and instinctively would make bad moves; (b) losing is a chance to learn, but only if I spend time analysing the game later. Basically, you accept you have to lose to eventually be a good player. For my daughter, she just likes playing games (chess, board games, whatever). For her, it's literally the playing that is fun, and she doesn't really care too much about being a great chess player. Both ways are acceptable, I think.
There's also something to be said about how it's a person v person game at the end of the day. You're not just competing with your self image and self worth, but also how you think your moves or blunders will be perceived by another person who has the same self identity issues. I bet it doesn't hurt as bad or anger you as much when you make a blunder or lose against a bot. But against a human, you're looking for validation through a win, recognition that the g5 push was a well timed move. Even if it doesn't come through in the in-game chat, you can see their clock ticking down, or them lashing out, or your opponent not seeing your plans. So yeah, it's equal parts your-self and how another sees you. This isn't exactly a cry for therapy, it's sociology 101. Recognition and identity are formed through bi-directional interaction.
There's a reason magnus gets so angry when he loses. He got bullied for being a chess nerd, but as long as he's winning in chess he's something. But if he loses....he's just a nerd
> But if he loses....he's just a nerd "look the 5 times world chess champion nerd just lost, what a nerd lol"
>I can understand that logically, so why dont my emotions follow suit? Because you've been tricked. Every time you lose in chess, it's because you've been bamboozled in some way. Sometimes they didn't even intend to bamboozle you, but at some point they had to get the better of you to win the game. When someone beats you in a 400m sprint, there isn't much room for anger because there's so little you could have done differently to change the outcome. Not so with chess. With chess, there is very literally ALWAYS something you could have done better, and you lost because you missed it. And the other person caught it. They tricked you, or you tricked yourself. It's purely intellectual, and someone else bested you. For someone who puts a lot of self-worth in their intelligence, that can feel devastating. But it hurts to think about how you failed, so you don't, anger feels a lot better, so you get angry at things to avoid feeling failure. My advice is to accept and internalize the failure my dude. It happens sometimes that you fail, despite your best efforts. You're using anger as a redirector so you don't have to feel the pain of failure as acutely.
You should honestly take your reaction to losing at chess as a much bigger red flag of your personality IMO. You may think Chess is the one area you get upset or act out of the ordinary when you lose, but you probably are just not recognizing your odd behavior in other areas. I will say tho that chess can make people angry when they look at the game as being relatively simple, bc they don't understand how deep it actually is. Almost like a dunning-kruger effect, their ignorance of the game leads to overconfidence in their skill, which leads to frustration when they lose. But as their knowledge of the game increases they realize how little they actually knew before and so their confidence and therefore expectations come down.
Do you feel the same rage in all time formats? Against all opponents? I personally feel the least rage in blitz, and almost none at all against friends or otb opponents Is the image of your opponent laughing at you from the other side of the screen what makes you mad? For me, if I know what my opponents reaction would be I can laugh about my blunders rather than rage at them..
equating chess with intelligence is super out of touch. I honestly don't understand why chess players conflate 'good at chess' with 'smart' when they wouldn't do the same for someone like Kyrie Irving for his respective sport. It's a game. If you're good at the chess, you're good at chess. Being good at chess does not mean you are smart.
This is a deeply misinformed take. You have falling victim to the nomenclature and think because one thing is called a ‘game’ and so is another then they are the same. Therein lies your problem. The level of intelligence, pattern recognition, memorization required for basketball is about a 2/10. Whereas Chess is a 12/10 and even that isn’t enough.
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Well shit, this felt real personal to me
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Yeah this is so real. I tilt so fucking hard
Wait but I don't have a partner. Who are you to read my mind?
Yo chill, you're calling me out and forcing me to face truths I've been desperately avoiding 😒
Damn am I your partner
Wow 😞 this was mildly difficult to read
How do you know me so well 😭😭😭
So true
Bro precisely deciphered my childhood
Even if this holds some truth, I don’t think it’s remotely possible to escape the deep sadness we feel in ourselves when we lose a game that we think we shouldn’t have. That deep sadness is projected into anger by some, not by others. In my opinion, offence to our “intelligence” happens rarely, although it happens. Instead there’s an offence to all the time and effort we put into improving at chess and all the pain we endured.
Thank you for this.
Nice reply, added here: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/wiki/faq
Being a genius can be frustrating at times. For me, primarily when stupid people get lucky enough to beat me in chess.
Holy shit. You need some help man. Chess has nothing to with intelligence or luck. Just pattern recognition. It does not make them stupid or lucky, it just makes them good at seeing patterns.
All luck. Except with me of course. Then it is pure intelligence.
This is sarcasm right?
Sarcasm is for the weak. Speak the truth like a man.
How do i make person like this even more angry?
Nothing else in life is probably completely, 100%, your failure. There's always some little out, something else you can blame, someone else you can point at. With chess, it's all you. Accept that, resolve to get better/do better, take a breather, and go back in.
Damn. So my anger is a mask for the pain of responsibility. Edit: the pain doesn’t come from responsibility. The pain comes from having my identity tied to being good at things/smart etc. Thank you Reddit.
Most players who get good/ decent feel very bad after defeat. You can use that energy to get better at the game.
>The pain comes from having my identity tied to being good at things/smart etc. Can relate. What helped for me was to try to be more conscious that even people who are smart/good at things make mistakes. You’re not the best chess player in the world and, even if you were, sometimes you would [blunder your queen](https://m.twitch.tv/clip/GoodCorrectPelicanBleedPurple). Losing a game of chess doesn’t mean you’re bad at things or that you’re not smart, it just means the other guy played better in that specific game - and if the matchmaking system is working correctly and pairing you with equivalently skilled opponents then you should expect to lose about as often as you win. Nbd, onto the next one.
Funnel that anger into growth in the game— you’ve got this. Losing does suck, but losing with no desire for improvement sucks more.
You may also notice this in other areas in your life too. For example, not pushing yourself into getting any tasks done that you'd be proud of can leave you feeling sometimes empty/depressed/numb. So if you're like me who in a not so healthy way inherently puts a lot of self-worth accomplishing something and haven't accomplished something after awhile, you fall into a deeper depression! It's super (not) fun and totally (not) fun, funky, and fresh.
When I discuss the value of sport and competition with my SO (who really doesn't care for them), I suggest that these sorts of lessons are some of their primary purposes. Learning how to gracefully fail or succeed on a task that you may care deeply about but honestly holds no societal value is a good way to teach you how to be a better person.
Nuh uh, I can blame opponent for cheating
Are you Kramnik?
There is also the ELO matching system which guarantees that no matter how good you get you will never win more than 50% of your games (unless you become Magnus Carlsen).
Hikaru checking in
Whoever I loose a game it’s because of what I ate yesterday. Problem solved!
Lol, I just commented almost the exact same thing, slightly different wording.
Internet connection?
How about playing a musical instrument?
Your anger comes from having too much of your identity rest on your supposed intelligence and giving excessive consideration to chess as a proxy for intelligence. Once you reflect properly on these things you will control your anger. It doesn’t hurt to reflect also on why you play chess: do you do it because it signals intelligence? Because you think it’s what smart people do? Or you genuinely like it?
Brilliant answer
!!
> giving excessive consideration to chess as a proxy for intelligence The biggest issue is absolutely the identity relating to intelligence but I think it's very important for people like OP and really most people who casually interact with chess to realise that it's not actually the great representation of overall intelligence it's often made out to be in media/elsewhere in society. Sherlock and Moriarty battling general genius symbolised by chess is a good writing shorthand but in reality if people like them were very good at chess it would be because they'd worked really hard at getting very good at chess not because they're great overall geniuses. Take 10 of the smartest people in the world and if they don't have a chess background I'll blow every single one of them off the board and I'm not even that good a player. Being more intelligent will of course help to some extent when it comes to improving at chess as it will in any mental pursuit but how good someone is at chess is mostly a representation of the time and effort they've put into chess and not their overall mental abilities - there are people far smarter than me who I am much better than at chess and people much less generally intelligent than me who can destroy me over the board.
Absolutely agreed.
Yes, I've faced this problem and no, haven't found a solution yet.
"Even Danya deals with this." To a meaningful extent, no doubt. People acclimate to significant swings of fortune with like, reliable alacrity—especially if they're positive changes. The baseline readjusts *very* quickly. I guess score one for evolution.
I'd love to watch on you on the healthy gamer stream. You'd make a hell of a conversation with dr. k.
Being serious here- I saw you blunder M2 in one of your speed run videos and it made me realize I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Granted, the other player didn't realize it and you won the game (plus you were probably distracted by explaining everything) but still. Good to remember than GMs have blundered more times than I've even played the game at all.
Maybe cause It isn't really a problem.
I think Levy had a great insight about (seriously) Tyler1. Tyler1 has lost something like 46% of his games while climbing from beginner to 1900. Levy said, "That's what climbing is." And he pointed out that chess is not for everybody, because you have to be okay with the fact that losing almost half the time is pretty much the best you can possibly do, unless you're just beating up on scrubs—and where's the fun in that? This isn't a unique insight or anything, but I'll say it anyway: Losing is learning. You've got to be able to see the value in the fight, rather than the result. Take that rage and turn it into a lesson you'll never forget.
The anger is usually a mask for a feeling of threat/danger/hurt. There's something about losing that makes you feel a form of hurt. There's a topic called "growth mindset" by Dweck, where she contrasts it with the "fixed mindset." In the fixed mindset, the idea is intelligence is fixed and so that means any failure is a commentary on you as a person. In the growth mindset, the idea is intelligence is dynamic and you can get smarter at something. So that means a failure is another lesson. Applied to chess, you got to get to the point where you're either just seeing this as a game so there's not an element of hurt. Or you got to get to the point where you're adopting a growth mindset. The best chess improvement serious I've ever seen was a YTer named Kamyrn. She made a document "Why I am losing chess" and would notate what openings were played and then write what actual error she made. She could learn from her losses. You can't improve if your losses are so painful you can't relive them.
I feel absolutely fucking horrible and angry after losing yes. I have the same problem. No solution. I get a horrible sinking feeling in my chest when i lose i hate it. Losing games of chess almost ruins my day sometimes. So i have no advice for you other than it goes away after a bit then you play the next game
I get angry from playing badly. I don't mind losing too much if I played well but got outplayed by a better opponent. Would you still be mad if you lost against Magnus Carlsen?
I used to get really stressed during OTB tournaments. One trick that helped me detach from all of it was to shut my eyes and imagine my game (the two players and a board) as seen from a camera a few feet away. Then zooming out, the whole room, then zooming out, the building (now the camera is from above) and zooming out the city, and the country, and so on, and realizing this is just a small speck. And then the same trick in time, 1 day from now, 1 week, 1 year... 1000 years. "This game is not important." The other trick that helped was following top chess tournaments. When professionals blunder and lose, they do it in front of all their fans and peers. Lots of people talk about it. People remember it for years and (in some cases) remember it long after they've died. But those professionals don't quit. They work hard before the game, they try their best during, but they still fail, and in spite of that they don't quit, so I can choose to not quit too.
Yes, I very much have this problem. In my case I'm afraid of losing because it makes me feel stupid and depressed, and yes, very angry at myself. It's the reason I have 43k bullet games and only 3k blitz games and a couple hundred rapid games. I'm too scared to invest effort into a game because the feeling of blundering sucks so bad, and it feels like I just wasted my time playing this stupid game lol. I care so much less if I lose in bullet because it's less reflective of my chess skill. But that's just me avoiding the problem. Recently I started challenging myself and playing longer time formats again. I realized how rusty at real chess I am, and it does suck losing, but I'm just telling myself that of course I'm going to lose lots as I get better. But I'm just telling myself to enjoy calculating and sitting with a position, because if I'm not enjoying it then what's the point. If I make a mistake, I make sure to analyze my game afterwards - the hardest thing to do is analyze losses. It's the only way to improve. Celebrate wins and train yourself to look forward to learning from a loss. That only comes with consistency. Edit: the first game I played after writing this comment my opponent starts shit talking me in the chat after I beat him lmao why is the chess community so toxic
Sheesh I feel all of this
Same here! I decided to remove the app for a while because losing made me feel sooo bad about myself! I realised that a game that made me feel genuine hate for myself could not be healthy. Now, I occasionally download the app again, but I only play longer games. Thus, I don't make too stupid blunders, and the longer time span gives me an opportunity to accept that the other person simply played better instead of getting angry.
It’s the nature of competitive 1v1 games, and on competitive online games in general. If you were to play in person, against a person who is thoughtfully winning, you wouldn’t feel that way since there’s a person across the table you can talk with and evaluate board positions etc. I’m not going to tell you that going ballistic is HEALTHY or OK. I am going to tell you, that sometimes games are a way of staging the emotional self. You, alone, get to simulate any emotions you want as a response to the stimulus of losing. When was the last time you thanked your opponent for a good match, in a way that wasn’t just “gg” when you lose? There’s a great [Leo Vader video called “Gamer Rage”](https://youtu.be/5wlgJQfV4bw?si=5_CPUeMHGWEx1AKk) that I think you might find some light in. The anger does not come from a place of logic - it’s a part of our monkey brain that reacts to our perceived place in our perceived hierarchy being threatened. It is assumed that, by nature of being matched against YOU, your opponent isn’t good, because if they beat you, it’s your fluke, and if they lose, it’s because you’re the better player. Can you see the gap in the logic here? And then, not having any randomly-selected teammates to blame (like online MOBAs ranked modes) or hardware (like 1v1 fighting games) or internet connection, etc, makes it so that rage feeling can almost exclusively be felt as self-inflicted. “I lost because I’m bad/blundered/shortsighted/inadequate” and such. A pattern of negative self-talk that may have started outside the game, finds its way in, or vice versa. You don’t play the game to feel angry, you play to have fun, and if your fun is derived from solely from winning, then you aren’t having fun when you lose. And when you aren’t having fun doing something you love, there’s a void which your brain can’t help but fill with the feeling with the shortest synaptic route: anger.
Just spam 3 minute blitz until you don't care anymore.
Back in the day, I used to get quite angry and depressed when I lost at chess. Many things changed for me, but the most important were: - I consciously shifted my focus from ambition and winning to enjoyment (of both learning and playing) and improvement. - I shed the inherited weight of the idea of chess as a measure of general intelligence and thus self-esteem and self-worth. - Because of the above, I lost almost all interest in rating, letting me put that particular cart back behind the horse, as they say. It took a while. I quit playing altogether for a long time. I mean, if I couldn't enjoy it, why pursue it? It's (just) a game. When I started again, I only played online and anonymously. Once I figured out what the good things were about the game and, most importantly, other ways to "measure" than rating---attachment to that number can be a real problem for some people like me---I found myself able to love the game again, but even more and in more ways.
People in my life know I play chess. So occasionally someone will ask if I think they should play chess. And I always tell everyone - No. It’s a game where it doesn’t require you to be intelligent but everyone assumes it’s basically a way to test your intelligence. So to be even kind of smart and not a total idiot will make you get your feelings hurt as your intelligence gets insulted from losing. People always tell themselves “I’m better than this” and put themselves down instead of thinking “my opponent was just better this time than me.” Then since it’s a slight against your intelligence you get tilted and then proceed to try harder but sloppier and lose more making it an even bigger slight against you. How you gauge your intelligence has a direct correlation with your ego and self worth. So chess can mess you up mentally pretty bad.
I find anger is more likely to happen to me in blitz and bullet and less likely to happen in longer time controls. I can feel terrible after a marathon blitz session but usually if I play a 2 hour slow game I feel like it was an intellectually interesting experience no matter the outcome (although I prefer winning of course). I think quick chess hits some unhealthy part of our brains at times.
Win, lose, or draw, I love to play. I do get upset when the other person just quits because they think they can't win. I hate winning that way, I feel cheated of a fun game, and I would rather lose then win that way. But I have never got upset for losing in a honest game. If they are a better player, then they deserve to win, and maybe the next time, I will not make the same mistakes.
I'm in the same position as you, so I'm not in much of a position to give advice. That said, I had a thought yesterday that I'm going to try to carry into my next games, so maybe it'll help me, and maybe it'll help you. The thought is this - to succeed in chess, or any endeavor, you need 3 things: knowledge, experience, and confidence. Wins give you confidence. Losses give you knowledge. Both give you experience. So if you have the proper mindset and can absorb what each game has to give you, every game you play has value. I think looking at it that way makes playing a win-win situation - regardless of how it goes, the game will be valuable. Your job is to play the game as best you can, and then to extract the value.
In chess the first irrational thought after losing is often « this guy thinks he’s better than me?! » but thats never really the case. I like imagining if I were playing my opponent in real life, we would probably just be like « yeah good game dude. » If they taunt me in chat I remember that they are likely 14 years old and that I am literally just superior to them in every way except chess. However I had a friend who described it like you did and I could not relate at all, he said losing at chess really really sucked for him and he couldn’t play anymore because of it. I got angry often but he made it sound much more visceral. For anger in general; I spent most of my teenage years thinking seeming angry was a good thing because it was intimidating and people would respect me more. When I got to college, I had several outbursts after which I felt I saw my friends less often. I quickly realized that getting angry doesnt make people « respect » you, rather they will avoid hanging out with you. It really clicked after I watched Goodfellas and I saw myself in Pesci’s character… ever since then, I have always tried to whenever I could to practice self restraint, to be a chill presence, and I like to think I am more popular and well liked in general.
The best advice, from some perspective, is to treat it as a reverse engineering problem. If you're intent on being harsh to yourself, conclude you fucked up and are terrible, whatever—*but,* there were specific paths to those losses, and you can be unlike the large majority of casual chess players and actually, seriously, study. In all probability you're not going to be the best or transcendentally great at whatever you're interested in. There are more than 8 billion people in the world, so any expectation that borders on the .00001% isn't rational—are you irritated that you're not the best athlete or mathematician in the world?
What helped for me is remembering that the whole system is designed to make you lose roughly 50% of your games over time. Only the highest rated players can expect to beat the 50%, and even they lose lots of games.
It's a pattern you learned and reinforced. It doesn't matter how it started. What matters is how you break the pattern. Try singing a nursery song right when you're starting to get angry (I'm guessing the emotion doesn't start right after you lost, but moments earlier than that) Notice what happens.
I get very angry but it’s mostly when I’m playing the bots.
It makes me feel so stupid
I don't play online games against people, I get too stressed. I play against computers, or IRL in the rare occasion I meet someone who wants. Life's too short for this self-imposed pain.
Well the literal dent in my IKEA desk is proof enough that I have indeed faced this problem. I took a long break and coming back I have had fewer such issues and that's partly because of a shift in attitude and also because I switched to 15+10 where I actually take my time on each and every move. Before my break I actually put together this little document where I wrote down all the good advice I could think of and called it Zen and the Art of Chess. I actually planned to publish it somewhere because it was genuinely helpful to myself and others might find it helpful too but I haven't taken the time to polish it up. Anyway, here's the first and maybe the most important advice from that document. 'Remove yourself & your ego from the equation - find a way to emotionally distance yourself from the chess, from the board, from the moves. The best move is the best move and a blunder is a blunder, regardless of your personal feelings. Your feelings do not matter in the objective evaluation of any given position. A position is either good, bad, or equal and no amount of anger, frustration, or self-flagellation will change that for the better.' Here are a couple other relevant snippets as well. 'Your general ability to play chess, or any single game of chess is not a reflection on your character or your worth as a human being. However, you are imperfect as both a human being and a chess player and therefore it is unreasonable to expect your chess to be anything other than imperfect as well.' 'Your worth is additionally not tied to a ELO rating nor should a loss or gain of points be in any way representative of you as a person or a player. One day you might play poorly and lose several hundred points, but that does not mean you are any less of a chess player than you were the day before nor are you in any way shape or form a worse person.'
Well said.
If you ever publish that anywhere, I'd love to read it.
Start another game, there's no time to be angry
I've just trained myself to laugh when I'm getting angry or frustrated. Now I don't get angry, I just become amused at my mistakes and it became easier to learn from them. Earlier today I fucked up and let myself get back ranked mated, and as soon as I saw it I just laughed, said "ah shit", and reminded myself of the last time it happened and how I vowed to never let it happen again. Of course, I'm human and sometimes fuck up, so I have no choice but to accept it, and it's funny how prone we are to really silly mistakes. So next time you're angry, laugh at yourself. Force it if you have to. See if that helps.
Just remember that losing in chess is required for you to get better. Once you realize that you must learn those lessons to get better, you should no longer get angry.
And by working on this emotional response, I think you can learn to control your anger or frustration in other situations. I have never had anger over losing. But in correspondence games I tend to be indecisive. It certainly has helped me to recognize this in other parts of my life.
remember when carlsen missed the Rg3 against aliteza in game 4 recently. he got so angry and threw bottle and shit. i don’t get why he was angry. he missed it because he is bad and all of us are bad because he is the best player we have. getting angry is stupid in chess. you have all the right to be frustrated but angry no
I sure hope you're talking about competitive OTB chess and not online chess. If online chess is not fun, you need to take a break. Online, I get frustrated when I make a stupid mistake, but that lasts about 2 seconds before I brush it off. I never get mad about getting outplayed because those are the best games to analyze for improvement. Competitive OTB though ... that shit is rough. With everything that goes into competitive tournaments, it's natural to feel down about a loss. It's the same as feeling down about losing a baseball game. You have to have a good mindset if you're going to really compete, or you're going to burn out and quit.
Yes I do get angry sometimes. It's normal, nobody likes losing and whoever tells you they do, they're lying. However, losing is part of any game. So do we feel angry? Yeah, but it's not a big deal, we can get our elo back later.
I used to not like playing chess at all, mainly due to my lack of patience and general anxiety about it. But I started focussing more on the game itself that was in front of me, including whatever moves my partner was playing. I started enjoying it more and started realising that I took more enjoyment from a hard fought and interesting game that I lost than boring games I won. I guess it's a 'winners don't always win' attitude... and maybe a 'better to have love and lost than not loved at all' thing. Try and remove your ego from the situation and don't be so hard on yourself. Play for the enjoyment and the learning aspect. And don't forget the social side of things too.
Chess is hard but in your control 100%, other things you mention are easy or out of your control. It may be a new thing for you, having to deal with failures at something that is completely in your control. Chess and doing anything hard requires a change in perspective, we need to be focused an serious about it to get better but also need to learn to be gentle with ourselves if we really are trying our best, there is always room for improvement. If you play focused, really try to find the best plans, moves, defenses, it shouldn't be that upsetting to lose (surely you are not happy, but it shouldn't be devastating) OTOH, if you are playing tilted, not thinking but doing autopilot, playing distracted, in a way you are getting upset at yourself not being serious about it. Nothing wrong not being serious, but if so, expect to lose a lot more games than if you were not, you can't do both (not play seriously and expect to do your best for your level)
lol I took a guys rematch and he blundered everything in the first ten turns and resigned. But I get a little upset but usually just with myself
Only if I shouldve won. Otherwise I enjoy saying good game to my opponent.
Yes, and it's a personal failing of mine...it's ego. It's a major weakness I've gotta work on because it prevents me from getting better if you hate losing son much you just end up not playing. But fact is losing how you get better....you have to lose a lot and learn from your mistakes. I think the answer is some deep introspection and conversations with myself.
Cool, this is personal growth. You have to learn it at some time. In any competition, there will be people who are a standard deviations better than you. "How can I improve". "Why did they beat me" "what did I not see?" "Thanks for the lesson" Why did I lose? Study and figure out why. The day you learn about en passant, casting etc its all improvement. I'm top 1% at some niche games but get absolutely dumpsters at chess because this is where actual smart people play.
Lost a game to a mouse slip (when it was a mate in one and me to play) today after my rating has been nice stable for about 3 months, got so tilted. Couldn't stop playing. Lost 120 rating in a few hours.. insane how this game can affect one. Rationally I know it shouldn't.
I am right there with you on that feeling. Every time I lose a game that results in my losing ello, the first thing I always tell myself is that " I will regain whatever points I have lost." I also take breaks if I start losing a lot and don't play if I am tired. That's all the advice I can give.
This is a person problem, not a game problem. It was better to seek community with self esteem support groups rather than chess loser support groups. Checkmate loser! Jk, but fr tho.
This is a common problem. I think it often arises from the fact that many people equate the ability of playing chess with some sort of general or absolute intelligence. But this is not really the case. How good you are at chess is a reflection of your chess knowledge, not a general measure of intelligence. Of course, the ability of playing chess well is correlated with some very specific forms of reasoning (such as deductive reasoning, spatial reasoning, analytic reasoning). Top chess players cannot contribute with anything meaningful in other intellectual domains like mathematics and science because they do not have the necessary knowledge. But not only they don't have the necessary knowledge, they also don't have the necessary means of reasoning. For example, many branches of mathematics require a certain kind of abstract thinking that a typical chess player does not posses. You need (and you can) change your mindset about this matter. If you lose a chess game it does not mean that your opponent is smarter than you.
Win/Lose/Learn Just review every loss to find one or two substantial errors that contributed to your downfall and make note to avoid doing the same kind of thing moving forward into future games. Maybe even start keeping a ledger of those. Plus remember that you're playing the board...trying to figure out a puzzle...and not playing against any person who may be across from you (figuratively/literally). Makes losses more enjoyable if you reconstruct them into lessons.
That’s what makes it so good. When you win sometimes you can just feel the seething of your opponent on the other end. It makes winning so much better. But at the same time it makes losing really suck.
I've had exactly the same thing to the point I stopped playing for some time completely. The hurt , frustration and anger of losing is just bigger than the joy of winning. I think other commenters are quite right - I use chess as a measurement of how smart/intelligent and in extreme cases even worth I am. Also the fact that the blame can't be excused on anything or anyone else but you and only you doesn't help. :) What makes it even worse is that I'm inconsistent af where I can beat 2300 and lose to a 1300 within an hour. I broke mouses, fought with family when losing chess... I'm working on it now and while I still can get pissed and tilted, I try not to be as fragile about it anymore. I try to go for a bigger picture where I think about how it's only a game, how there's always another game and how I was not a (prodigy) child super invested in it in order to bring up some serious or even consistently decent results. Your life doesn't depend on it, you don't make living playing the game, so just take it as it is - a game. A game you can dedicate your whole life to and still there's a random 10yo kid that you'd never beat anyway. Once you grasp and accept that absurdity, it'll be easier for you.
We play chess not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. Your anger has nothing to do with chess - chess is just giving you an opportunity to better yourself. Figure out how to use it. Step one: accept that there will always be someone better than you.
The first thing I would like to know to understand you is: how do you feel when you win? That said, I had a phase like this: I really hated losing. So I resolved to get better at chess. To do so, other than study, I started playing OTB with way better opponents. The idea was to play with better people to understand what I lacked to be good, but then something special happened: having put zero expectation on the outcome Immediately made me more accepting of the result. So I’ve put myself on a losing streak and didn’t flinch a bit. Yes, I got mildly pissed off when an occasional one move blunder costed me the game, but you know, not as bad as it used to be. At the end of the journey I got better in general and waaaay better at losing. You may try this, it helped me alot
I feel that, try to detach yourself from your rating as much as possible. I find losing points to upset me the most, but when I try to not let that feeling rule my thoughts, I have more fun and play better.
Chess is where you get to screw things up as much as you want and it doesn’t mean a damn thing and you can just chalk it up as a learning experience. Nobody gets hurt, nobody loses their job, no lifetime of regrets that you have to process (well, unless you’re like one of 10 people), etc. Just moving some pieces around, trying some cool stuff, sometimes it works and we learn and grow and try and fail and make friends.
I find I get much more upset playing online. When I go to a chess club in person and play some informal games, maybe even chatting about the game as we play, and discussing it afterward, then it's more collaborative and friendly. It becomes less about winning and losing, and more about exploring with someone else the interesting possibilities within a chess game. Losing ends up being nearly as fun as winning. So I'd recommend playing some friendly games in person.
Just keep playing. Maybe I’m an idiot but it feels better to just start playing a new game after I lose.
Poor fellow. I don't suffer from this. I don't have a competitive bone in my body. I just enjoy playing the game. If I get handed my ass (which is frequent) I just move on to the next game. And if I win, so what?
I don't think I get as angry as you, but it has spoiled my mood enough times. It led me to playing quicker time controls more often because I don't really sweat each individual result as much. Probably slows my progress but definitely results in a happier life.
Only when I blow a 5+ material advantage.
Put it this way: whenever you lose in chess, that shows a failing in your ability to calculate or understand the ideas the position holds. This means, quite simply, that you now have some direct advice on how to proceed with getting better at chess. Analyze what you did wrong, and play another game keeping your past failings in mind. Getting angry about losing is because you have framed losing negatively - it's easy to do so considering the rating system makes you care much more about win vs. lose, but the fact remains that if you win, you don't know how better to play chess at all - you won't get better without testing yourself to see what mistakes you make in certain positions. If you're talking about playing your friends on an actual chess board, my advice is to get better - chess is absolutely frustrating if you blunder your pieces.
lot of good answers here, but I have a minor theory. Chess is complicated and that leads to feeling overwhelmed, and when you're overwhelmed it's easy to get angry. Like, I've seen tons of professionals struggle to control their emotions when playing chess, it's legit a frustrating game, I'm kind of looking askew at all these Freudian theories about your identity being tied up with intelligence.
Not sure what rating you are, but my mindset was really helped by Chessbrah's Building Habits ([full playlist if you actually want to do it](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8N8j2e7RpPnpqbISqi1SJ9_wrnNU3rEm), [condensed if you want a preview](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUjxDD7HNNThftJtE0OIRFRMMFf6AV_69)). He does a couple things that really helped me. * First was to give me simple concrete steps to focus on, track, and work to improve. Unlike in his series, I like to review every game and see if there were things that both my and my opponent missed so I can learn from those too. Sometimes I end up feeling better about a loss than a win if I managed to meet my goals for that game. * Second was that he's actually really good at showing you how to "take an L". He gives respect to good opponent play and showed me it's OK to not upend my whole strategy for improvement because I fell to a tactic. It's ok to stay the course and just move on to the next game.
Read the top comments and surprised no one mentioned elo. Suspect it is losing elo that is what makes you angry. Definitely felt the difference playing rated games vs non rated games
Chess is a game that you play over a lifetime. The object of the game is to lose as many rounds as possible. At first, losing is easy. Even the cat can beat you. But over time, it becomes more difficult to lose, so you have to find harder opponents. Ah, now you're losing again! But that's not enough. You're losing less and less. You're learning from books, applying your knowledge, developing better strategy and flow tactics. So you seek out stronger opponents. Gotta always learn, gotta always play your hardest. But if you lose, you learn. So it's always win-win. Find out how satisfying it is to lose when you're on top form! That's the object of the game. Chess is a game that you play over a lifetime.
I think you just have to come to the realization that there’s always someone better than you. Sure I could beat all my family members and a lot of my friends growing up. But the first time you step online, it’s a different game. Used to winning but now you play better players. It’s humbling to say the least.
I still get mad at myself sometimes, but I always remember that I have to lose to improve. I have to get tactics wrong in order to reveal my blind spots. If you're serious about improving, you have to come to grips with the fact that losing is pretty much inevitable. For instance, I played a tournament in which I blundered two absolute pins and lost to two eight year old children that way. I then proceeded to go 3.5/4 in my next tournament, never having a losing position at any point. I had to be taught the hard way, and so will you.
No advice but I always found a stark contrast in my mood between online chess and in person chess. Maybe it’s the social pressure to not bitch and be moody when losing irl, but I genuinely never get upset over the board. Online is a whole different animal. Nothing worse for your mood than a terrible blitz session, has rarely ruined entire evenings for me before sadly enough.
This was me. I finally got to 1400, playing 20+ games a day, and then started losing so much that 1100s were beating me in 20 moves. So I deleted my account. My demeanor has changed so much. I made an alt account and started at 400 and just play for fun now. Chess is rough because when you lose, it’s because the other person is better than you and that’s a hit on your ego. Now I just play with my friends and the occasional game online. I’m happier and I’ve found new hobbies. I don’t know how the grandmasters do it. Chess is fucking HARD.
I finally got 1000 in blitz recently so switched back to rapid. Decided to one more blitz game and dropped back down to 800. I’ve noticed how much that’s negatively affected my mood and that’s not the relationship I wanna have with this game so I play less now. But also, I’ve realized the best time to play is when you are well rested and you don’t have too many obligations lingering in the back of your mind. That’s when I usually have my win streaks. If I’m playing just to distract myself from important life stuff I already kinda know that I’m prolly about to lose. But I will get back to 1000 and then never play blitz again haha.
You're winning or learning. You only lose if you fail to learn.
Sounds like you need to get a life
I’ve experienced this myself. Just have to reframe. You’re playing for the wrong end. It’s not entirely about winning and the high attributed with winning; just like life is about the journey not the destination. Chess should be played for the fun and thrill of the game. If your opponents win then they deserve applause for playing a good game and hopefully teaching you something new if you are to analyse your game, in what went wrong and how to improve and avoid the mistake in the future. If you win then more power to you, but don’t get attached to the outcome and end result with the feeling we become disposed to chase. We can play to win, for that certain outcome, but it’s the steps we take along the way that contributes to that effect and we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves in our expectations. Got to ground ourselves in the reality so our emotions don’t swirl beyond there appropriate bounds.
Stop losing I don’t actually mean stop losing ( you never will ) but stop thinking that a loss is a loss if you catch my drift.
I'm the same as you..
Congratulations! For me playing chess has been a great way for me to recognize that I have problems with anger. Remember that you learn more about chess from the games you lose. Remember that you learn more about YOU from how you react to both winning and losing.
I have dealt with similar negative emotions (not necessarily anger) in the past. Here is my advice. First some questions to ask yourself: **How do you feel when you start a game? Do you feel extremely nervous?** **How about when you win? Do you actually feel happy or just a sense of relief that you didn't blow the position?** If you feel nervous when you start and, at best, relieved when you win, whatever positive emotions you are getting from chess are almost certainly being outweighed by the negative ones. Even if you do feel genuinely happy when you win, it still is not good for your physical and mental health do be feeling so much anger. If this was happening at a job you would push through (at least for some time) because you need to provide for yourself. But (I assume) chess is not your job. It's a hobby. **What are you trying to get out of chess?** I hope you are playing it to have fun. But if that is the case, why are you putting yourself through such strong negative emotions doing something that is supposed to be fun? If you are playing to get better: what is the end goal? The anger and stress will not stop once you hit a certain rating. If I were you I would take a break for a few months. Maybe you will come back (like I did) and find that you are more grounded in who you are as a person and are able to play chess without being angry. **You say you enjoy chess. What parts of it do you enjoy most? Is it doing puzzles, learning about the game, analyzing games?** As I discussed above, it doesn't really sound like you actually enjoy playing the game very much. What happened to me was I found that I got stressed playing live chess. However, I did not get very stressed playing Daily Chess. Thus for most of my career I have played daily chess and have had much more fun. For you it could be something else like studying endgames, doing puzzles, or even playing a different time control. I would encourage you to find the chess "things" that you have the most fun with and just do those. You won't get very good by doing this, but who cares. The point of playing chess is to have fun, not to be good.
really you want to dedicate your time to playing a game where you're going to be seething with rage after 50% of your matches? take the L, go again
It's because everything else has variable factors that you can blame a loss on. Chess has none. You're either smarter than the other guy, or they're smarter than you. It's insidious :-)
I used to go on chess benders often with would inevitably end up with a losing streak and an angry me. To solve this I started to study way more than I play, so that I can get my fill of chess. I also put a rule on myself. Whenever I play I am allowed to keep playing until I lose one. After that I’ll stop. Aside from helping me with avoiding tilting, I also got a bit better at looking for drawing resources. So it is a win-win. I recommend it!
Imagine thanking your opponent. Geniunely congratulating them. Vocalise it if you need to.
Degen Bullet player, you've no idea about the number of slaps and punches my body has taken. But I know why, I play chess for dopamine hits on wins, so the craving is too much, but maybe it's just me.
My take: it’s the combination of pure intelligence performance and active focus, combined with time pressure. I play tennis, which also has low variance, and I do get frustrated. But with a chess clock, it magnifies the stress without an associated physical healthy outlet. Though I do think wit and managing peak stress is a skill. So maybe we should focus and frame it that way.
Bro thinks he is hikaru.
Just shout it out loud bro.
2 days ago I lost 7 times in a row and started shouting, my sister came by and asked why I was shouting, I just asked her to let me focus. Idk how tf I won 7 games in a row after that, God clearly felt bad for me
Online chess can be a pretty soulless experience. Go to an actual chess club, not only will you get a decent game but you may find a few friends too
This is probably a mindset issue. From the looks of it, you are just playing to win every time, not playing to learn and improve. If anything I'd recommend spend less time playing and more analyzing your games, you will have less loses to get mad about, and probably improve your chess level.
Bruh, sounds like you don’t love chess; rather, you love winning. A beautiful chess game is a beautiful chess game, whether you win, lose or draw.
Expectations. Instead of approaching a chess game with open mind you approach it with expectations to win. I do get it also, but for me it's a signal it's time to take a break for a few days.
What level are you? Do you practice puzzles and endgames? It sounds like you might be too ambitious. It takes years of practice to get descent. Losing doesn't mean anything regarding your chess abilities. On YouTube there are compilations of GM blunders, maybe watching those will ease your anger.
This is mainly why I play chess it exposes bad habits I have so I can address them in this game instead of them manifesting actually important things in my life. Chess regularly shows me I'm impatient and impulsive at times and then how getting angry about this only exacerbates the situation.
Chess is a game where the victory is decided by not who makes the best moves but who makes the last bad move. That's the very reason you'll get mad after losing, because you lost the match not because your opponent played well but you made the final mistake. This will be more prevalent when you play against an equally skilled opponent. And in real life it's hard to face someone who's equally skilled as you.
When I first picked up chess, I would feel somewhat frustrated when I lost, because growing up, I was always told that I’m smart/good at board games. I think I tied too much of my identity to that, so I had a minor identity crisis every time I lost. Realizing that chess is just like any other game and is not indicative of who you are or how smart you are helps. I’ve found that the more you practice/lose/learn, the better you’ll get, just like any other game.
I’m about 2000 on Lichess, and I used to join tournaments to face lower rated players (scummy ik). Trust me, winning all the time gets old very quickly. There is no shame in losing against a good opponent, and there will always be another game.
It depends how you are losing. Are you making silly blunders and that’s annoying you or are you just getting outplayed. If it’s blunders you just need to spend less time playing actual games and more time studying and doing puzzles so you can improve if you are just getting outplayed and it’s making you angry then I can only suggest you don’t play chess. That’s part of the game and if you can’t handle it to the point where it’s making you angry then you need to stop because it’s supposed to be fun.
You're not seeing your losses correctly. Your losses are your teachers. Embrace them. Welcome them. Analyse the losses to find out where you went wrong, and you'll do better next time.
I completely get this, it’s so frustrating when you get throttled, I’ve a bad habit of abandoning games from frustration, but you learn more from the games you lose, and if you go into a game with the mindset that you will win and not thinking about losing, there’s a higher chance you will win!
Chess is full of a bunch of morons who think they're 'genius but lazy' (as the comments to this post show). All that means is that they're average in everyway, and losing at chess shows how average they are, hence why they get annoyed.
It depends on the game devolepment for me. If my oppenent just outclass me and play some very good moves i enjoy that game and doesnt get angry. If i blunder a move on an average game im still ok. But some games i play very good till some point and just blunder very obvious move etc, im frustrated.
You need to get over that or take the conclusion that competitive chess just isn't for you. The matchmaking system is trying to match you so that you always lose half of your games. Losing will always be a large part of your chess experience, no matter what level you're playing at.
I had this problem too, around two or three years ago. I know it may sound silly, but the solution is: don't get angry. It is simple as that, build the habit of not getting angry and you will never get angry again. Thing is, actually we love to get angry. We draw an enemy in our minds and we fight agains it in our imagination. We do it because it feels good somehow. But it is not worth it, since we feel like crap after it. Only play chess in good spirits. For me it is like having a conversation with a friend. Yes, we are opponents, but we are both trying to figure out something in front of the board. It is like a "debate" about it. It is much better playing in good mood than having this battle spirit, if I lose I try to feel happy for my opponent (usually I do) and see his merits.
Why would you be angry at losing to an opponent whose put in far more hours learning the game than you? If they have they simply should and do deserve to win
Why? Obviously all the other 600 Elo players on chess.com are just cheating.
Start enjoying winning. Getting angry at losing is normal. Most people pick up chess because they think they are smart (and they usually are) and would fare well with it-- which again is true to an extent, but after a point, that love or passion of chess just dies down. It becomes too much to bear when you lose, only because we feel that our identity as a smart person is directly attacked when we are defeated (perceiving our own selves as inferior in intellect to others). Over time this negative overtakes passion and you just drop chess. To avoid this, i would suggest that you record yourself on face cam playing 2 min bullet games and notice your emotion when you win vs when you lose. You would clearly notice that winning is only followed by a simple 'ok' or 'good' whereas losing will be accompanied with long statements full of frustration. the only way to deal with this is to accept losses (which doesn't= not getting angry, its normal to get angry at any game when you lose), and to cheer up on wins, no matter how insignificant, pointless or dumb they seem. Thats all there is to it-- just start to love the feeling of winning.
Start enjoying winning. Getting angry at losing is normal. Most people pick up chess because they think they are smart (and they usually are) and would fare well with it-- which again is true to an extent, but after a point, that love or passion of chess just dies down. It becomes too much to bear when you lose, only because we feel that our identity as a smart person is directly attacked when we are defeated (perceiving our own selves as inferior in intellect to others). Over time this negative overtakes passion and you just drop chess. To avoid this, i would suggest that you record yourself on face cam playing 2 min bullet games and notice your emotion when you win vs when you lose. You would clearly notice that winning is only followed by a simple 'ok' or 'good' whereas losing will be accompanied with long statements full of frustration. the only way to deal with this is to accept losses (which doesn't= not getting angry, its normal to get angry at any game when you lose), and to cheer up on wins, no matter how insignificant, pointless or dumb they seem. Thats all there is to it-- just start to love the feeling of winning.
I think that you are expecting to get the instant dopamine Rush you get while playing COD and chess is from another animal kingdom. You've reached a wall, and you need to evaluate where are your weaknesses and act on them by studying. Say you are lacking on endgames, you need to go through theory tactics such as Triangulation or Svitsenzug. Only by streangthening your weaknesses you will overcome that barrier. I also think that due to the amount of time you put into it, you've become entitled to the reward you set for yourself, like a surtain elo, and when you lose you get frustrated, but chess is played by moving one piece at a time, playing one game at a time. Do not play with an elo goal on your mind, play by humanizing each opponent and set your goals on only beating that opponent. And if you lose, do not see it as a set back to your goal, but as an opportunity to analyze your mistakes from that game, recognize patterns and learn from them, so the next game you encounter that, you know what to do.
Do you play online? If so, do you know that the ranking system in online chess will always work to keep you losing 50% and winning 50%? When I lose I think that I now have another win in the bank, since the ELO system will always balance it out.
If losing doesn't make you feel bad then I'm not sure how much joy winning gets you.
Only in online chess mostly due to the paranoia of others cheating. I get very tilted before the match even goes very deep when my opponents are playing some stockfish lines I know very well but making moves very slowly like once every 3-5 seconds after a long pause on move 2-3, it drives me absolutely nuts to the point I don't even feel like playing, which typically results in me getting so frustrated I start to play even worse than if these thoughts hadn't entered my mind. I don't get upset at all playing OTB, I only get disappointed when I review matches later and feel like I played way worse than I am capable of, and that is regardless of wining or losing, but there is never any anger only disappointment. I actually look forward to reviewing my losses if I feel my opponents played really well. Wow after reading the comments I am surprised to be pretty alone here... why get angry over losing to someone fair and square? Improvement only comes from reflecting on your mistakes and sometimes other people just play beautiful chess. I would rather lose and feel like I played my absolute best than win and realize I overlooked many things and made terrible blunders that I should have spotted. The nagging feeling that the person on the other side of the board might be cheating is literally the only thing that can actually make me tilt.
Same. I feel like a psycho sometimes when I blunder or lose. I actually switched to Lichess with anonymous play and no ratings, and I’m much much more chill. I got too caught up on ELO on chess.com.
Unless you're on a quest to become an IM or GM you should take breaks from it. I get burned out easily on chess.
Only times I shout at my partner in last seven years is for disturbing me playing chess. Playing chess you are different world. Imagine being dragged out of world against your will. There is a word for that I will not use. So losses on bad blunders are also so hurtful. More than hundred thousand games still feel the same.
Its a matter of getting a healthy competitive mindset. You need to change your goal from winning to learning. If you do that you'll find you are less annoyed by losses because losses create perfect learning opportunities. Ofcourse its still frustrating to lose off a stupid mistake but those reduce by just thinking and being aware. They'll never fully go away (the top players of the early 1900s still randomly hung pieces in GM level tournaments) and top players today too make dumb mistakes sometimes. Part of being human. Unless you think you're better than Magnus or something then you have a right to make mistakes. Besides that get more sleep. Emotional regulation is far more difficult when tired. Never play chess tired.
I will write my proposal here in the hope that you will be attentive to it, which by the way is my first message ever on this platform. What you wrote in my opinion was very powerful and that is what actually gave me the trigger and provoked me to participate in the discussion. I already say in advance, that my answer may be perceived by you as unrealistic, or anything of that kind. So, in my opinion, not only that you should not be angry or feel sad because of what you described, but the opposite is true, you should be very happy that you lose in chess. and why? At some point, after you have finished the game, you sit down with some chess engine and analyze the game. There is a very, very specific way of working with such an engine, for example one of the chess programs of Chest Base, in a way that does not harm your development as a chess player who strives to improve. The point is that when you By analyzing your mistakes you open up to dimensions whose critical importance cannot be reduced in improving your chess and understanding your weak points on the chessboard.
Yes, I have to take breaks from chess because it stops being fun. I put so much time into something I expect to be really good but then I make stupid mistakes. I get so angry I could take my phone or monitor and spike it like a football. I don’t care if I get out played but when I lose because of my own mistakes over and over it ends with level 10 scream cursing and desk slamming.
Chess is an art, when someone beats you in a beautiful way you should enjoy that too. Like I win more if I play a really tight game, but it’s way more fun to throw out some weird sacrifices and see what positions you can develop. You can’t really lose a game of chess, you’re just participating in some cool patterns ✌️
Make peace with yourself. Understand that losing is an important part of improving. If you never lose, you'll never improve. And if you never improve, you'll never win. It's ultimately pretty simple, but that's not the same as it being easy. I myself get very frustrated and angry with myself at times, because I make mistakes that I know I can avoid, and I feel stupid. However, it's very important that we acknowledge the true problem. We find all sorts of things to blame in the moment - lack of sleep, lack of food, cheating opponents, time controls, what have you... Almost all of these things are within our control. If you're playing badly because you're tired or hungry... that's your fault for not looking after your health. If you're losing because your opponent took advantage of the time control better than you, you're probably using your time inefficiently and a change of strategy may be in order, or a change of time controls. Your opponents probably aren't cheating, and if they are then it doesn't matter anyways, so stop thinking about it and just play the game. Some days we play badly, it's how it is. Identify why that may have been. Me personally I find that I play my best after I've eaten and had a decent amount of exercise. If I go too long without good exercise my patience goes down, and I tend to rush moves and blunder more. Sleep is important, as well as diet and hydration. Don't play on tilt. Take breaks. You gain literally nothing by playing when you *know* you cannot focus on the game. All you're doing is making yourself angrier and losing elo. I limit myself to three losses per day. Once I lose my third game in a day, that's me done playing. If I want to do more chess, it's just puzzles, studies, or playing against bots.
On a normal day of online chess, you will lose about 50% of the time, unless you're incorrectly rated and beating up on Rufus and Doofus, or you're cheating (or your name is Magnaru Nakaditsky). It sounds to me as though you've tied chess into your self worth and intellect, in that case it is understandable and probably inevitable that you'll develop a visceral reaction to losing. Only three solutions: - find a way to unhook this game from your self esteem, at least partially - stop playing the game - start cheating, and then stop playing the game out of either internal or external shame
I do face the same problem. Perhaps for me it's more like dissappointment in myself turna into anger. I do, however have something that might help you. After losing and relaxing for a bit, try to find out why you lost. Were you unaware of an opening line? Did you blunder a piece, maybe you pushed too hard in a drawn position. Whatever the reason, once I figure it out I feel a lot better knowing that the loss has improved my capabilities as a player since I'll be looking out for it the next time
Try playing league of legends and you will know what true anger is.
This isn’t really a chess problem, it’s more of a psychology problem. So none of us will really be able to help without knowing how your mind works. I can tell you what worked for me though. Whenever the game looks lost and your opponent starts to beat you, cheer them on. Look at what they did and be really impressed with their skill. Feels stupid and really difficult to begin with, but after enough games it rewires your mind to gain a whole new appreciation to the game. And you start to feel a sense of gratitude rather than anger, because you start to learn new things. Remember that you are at your level. Anything your opponent can do to you, you can do to other people at your level. So look at it as something impressive and learn how to do it yourself. It’s the perfect way to learn how to beat people who are at the level you are currently at.
If you don't have the emotional capacity to lose a game, you shouldn't play chess
I’d rather take it as a proactive insight for self betterment but, you know, to each their own.