142 attempts at the hardest game in the world?

I slam the desk so hard my hand hurts. 

I’m raging: “How could I have done this! Am I stupid? Gosh, I hate myself…”

My heart is beating fast, I feel like a fool, a completely lost idiot. 

I’m defeated, well and truly defeated…and I had all the tools to avoid it.

I’ve just lost a game of chess. 

If you’ve never played chess, I probably sound crazy right now. 

If you’ve played chess before, you probably understand some of the emotions you feel when you lose in a completely avoidable way, against an opponent you’re convinced is worse than you. 

What is chess and why are we talking about it? 

Well, here at What Counts we’re fascinated by any type of self improvement and how your personal data can be harnessed to achieve more. This week, I’ll discuss how personal tracking helped me improve my chess level and the many lessons I learned along the way. 

Chess is considered one of the most complex and difficult games in the world to master. 

Gameplay ranges from a simple fun game with your grandpa, to tournaments where the best in the world go head to head with millions of dollars on the line with multi-million dollar organizations behind them. 

Recently, chess has seen a massive explosion in its player base - mostly due to the Queen’s gambit TV show, followed by the huge cheating scandal between Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann. 

I’ve played chess since I was about 10 years old, but until very recently, I never took it seriously.

But back in October of 2024, I devised a pretty crazy hypothesis. 

I believed if I just set aside enough time, I could win pretty much every single game of chess I played. 

See, I’d been playing chess on my phone for months and I felt like when I actually ‘locked in’ against people at my skill level—I was unbeatable.

How do I know if I’m playing against people at my skill level? 

Well, chess has a rating system that’s pretty much infinite, but in rapid chess (20 minute games) the very worst are ranked at around 100 elo (elo being just the word used to describe one’s rating) and the very best around 3000 elo. 

My elo at the time of starting the challenge was just 724. Not the worst, but not the most impressive rank.

My goal was simply to get to a 1000 rating as quickly as possible.

Each game you win, you gain on average 8 rating points, meaning I simply needed to win 34 games in a row. 

Sounds easy right? 

Well…

142 games and approximately 70+ hours of chess later… things didn't go as planned. And let’s just say, it’s certainly going to take a LOT longer to get there than I thought.

Of course, because this is What Counts, I also wanted to take this challenge of growing my chess seriously and track as much data as possible with the objective of being able to get very granular with my progress.

Things I tracked included: training videos watched, my Whoop stress data, how many games I played, what times of day I played games, and much more.

All that being said, here are the biggest things I learned from my journey with chess…

1. Growth is NEVER linear.

As I said, I truly believed it would be possible for me to just win 30+ games in a row and this challenge would really be over before it even started. 

THAT WAS NOT THE CASE.

In fact, at one point I went on an 8 loss streak that ended with me being ranked worse at chess than when I started. 

I also didn’t factor in the fact that if I played one chess game for more than 20 minutes, I genuinely just got so bored I ended up trying to force the win and making silly mistakes. 

Here’s what my overall chess journey looked like: 

As you can see, my game rating showed some pretty serious fluctuation but a good overall upward trend, peaking at 827 (a more than 100 rating point jump!) 

2. Never chase your losses.

I cannot emphasize this enough. 

NEVER chase your losses. 

This is a phrase that is probably most repeated in a Las Vegas Casino gambling, but I learned for myself that when it comes to self improvement, you really do just have to stay consistent and avoid trying to make any large jumps. 

For instance: it would be insane in weight lifting to try and jump your weight by 100 kg in one day, yet that’s what I found myself doing constantly in chess. 

Going from 3 games one day, to 11 games the next day just to try and get back the elo I’d lost. 

This ‘tilted’ mindset led to my biggest 8 loss streak that saw my rating drop below what it had started on day one. 

Genuinely I almost gave up the challenge on that day. 

(Day 19 reflects a day where I should have stopped playing at game three but instead dropped my rating insanely…) 

3. Try to relax. 

In English football they’ll often talk about how the best players are those that play for the love of the game and seem to be completely relaxed. 

The times I played worst in this challenge were when I was thinking about the challenge itself. 

European Gold Medallist Rio Mitcham, who we’ve interviewed here at What Counts, said something similar when he was talking about his goals for the year: 

“My focus is on staying healthy and enjoying the sport. When I’m healthy and improving, I’m confident I’ll compete at the highest level. It’s about trusting the process and not getting too caught up in the outcome.” 

When I was thinking about writing this piece for all of you, I got very stressed about the end result instead of what was really important - winning a game of chess. 

4. Stick to the basics.

Here’s the weird thing about chess. You’d think it was all about playing the very best moves and destroying your opponent as quickly as possible. 

In reality, at my level, it’s simply about playing as many standard moves for as long as possible. 

The amount of dopamine I got when I saw the following image was insane: 

This basically means I didn’t make a single mistake the entire game. 

Sometimes in chess, it’s simply about not losing rather than winning and letting your opponent throw away the game for you. 

5. Momentum is everything. 

One thing I was shocked by when I looked back at my data was the fact that my biggest loss streak was longer than my biggest winning streak.

(As my rating did see some big growth over the course of the challenge, I didn’t expect that.) 

My biggest win streak was 6 games in a row. 

My biggest loss streak was 8 games in a row.

It’s said a lot in sport, but confidence really breeds more confidence. 

Sometimes in life we can be incredibly risk averse, which can actually be quite detrimental to our progression. 

It's a well known scientific fact that it feels far worse to lose something than to gain something. 

E.g. Losing 100 dollars can feel far worse than gaining 1000 dollars. 

However, while this can be a limiting mindset day to day, it’s actually quite a good mindset to adopt when you’re aiming for cumulative growth. 

One way I adopted this siege mentality was that from Day 30 to present, I reduced the number of games I played strictly to just 3 a day and that made an incredible difference for me. 

It meant that no matter what, I could not lose more than 3 games in a day. And most days I would at least stay the same, if not improve. 

It helped me compete solely at the level I was at, trying to go for a W, L, W or at the very least a W, L, D. 

Momentum is easy to lose, so do everything you can to maintain it - no matter how confident you might feel. 

6. Everything else

I tracked a lot of data while doing this challenge..

When my Whoop stress level was high (0.35 correlation), I lost more games. Maintaining a calm mind and body led to more wins. 

Time of Day & Performance: Morning (AM) average rating: 754 Afternoon (PM) average rating: 772.13

Basically I perform better when it’s the afternoon and honestly I really didn’t expect this because I always felt stronger in the morning. But I suppose when I wanted to start the day with a win it would really put unnecessary pressure on my games and lead to a lot of tilt. 

Puzzle Rating vs. Game Rating: The correlation between my puzzle rating and game rating is (0.40). Basically better puzzle-solving skills seem to correlate with improved gameplay.

My chess journal: the number one thing I wrote in my chess journal was to play basics and never try to force a win. 

I also found keeping the chess journal to be a massive help for me, I massively improved based on what I wrote in it, and it gave me a reason to review my losses with a more scientific eye and actually try to improve rather than just get angry. 

Taking a break: I took a break from chess after a massive loss streak and came back with a far more relaxed outlook, since then my chess rating has only been on the up.

Learn from the best: On days I didn’t watch training videos, my average rating was 753.25 on days where I did watch videos, my average rating was 764.

7. What’s next? 

Well, I haven’t given up on my journey to 1000 chess rating, and until I hit it, I will keep a record of everything I do. 

Overall it’s been a really fun experience to track these 142 games of chess. It's kept me accountable, showed me how I can tangibly improve and taught me the best playstyle and mindset to get wins. 

I would recommend a similar system to anyone who wants to improve at any skill e.g. set yourself 8-9 things to track, keep a journal and who knows - the sky’s the limit, right? 

Progress may be far slower than you first expect, but when you look back over everything, there is progress. 

I’m excited to revisit this subject very soon. 

For now, here’s my favorite checkmate I pulled off, the icing on the cake was that I made 0 mistakes that entire game…

Thank you for reading.

Until next week,

Jacob.

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