Venrick Azcueta (Unsplash)
I reached 1900 on Lichess by being lucky
I reached 1900 on Lichess by being lucky.Lichess says that I am better than 90% of players. You may think I must be tactically solid and have a good understanding of strategy. I thought I did. It was easy going from 1600 to 1960. I thought I would make 2000 in a handful more games. But then I lost a game. Then I lost another, and another. My rating fell to 1890. It’s been 3 months, and I still haven’t broke through the plateau. I reflected on how this could be. I realize that luck played a big part in me becoming a 1960.
Chess seems to be a game that is completely free of luck. All the information is available to both players. So how can some be lucky while playing chess?
Let’s imagine I’m walking down a sidewalk. I approach a quiet intersection and start to cross the street. I’m too busy thinking about what to eat for dinner and walk across the intersection with my eyes looking at the ground. I make it across and continue walking. Unknown to me, 1 second after I make it across, a car whizzes past the same intersection.
I walk down the sidewalk and get to the next intersection. I’m still distracted and walk across the intersection with my eyes at the ground. A car stops short 5 feet from me. The driver yells at me from his car, but I don’t hear him. I make it across the intersection and continue walking.
Crossing the street is a skill that is free of luck. But this assumes that you look both ways. This assumes that you are looking for cars and bicyclists. And when you do see a car, this assumes you evaluate how fast the car is going. And if you have time to cross before the car hits you.
I’ve been playing chess like this reckless pedestrian in our story. I was making my moves without looking at what my opponent could do. In the games I played to get to 1960, I was lucky. I missed plenty of my opponent's tactics, but luckily I was able to wiggle out of it. But eventually my luck ran out. And my rating followed suit by dropping.
Another name for this is hope chess.
Hope Chess is not when you make a threat and you hope your opponent does not see it. Hope chess is when you make a move, wait for what your opponent does, and then hope you can meet his threats. Players that play Hope Chess will never get very good because some threats cannot be met.
- Dan Heisman
So how do I break through this plateau? My simple plan is to stop playing hope chess. In my next article, I'll talk about why I play hope chess, and how I'll try to stop.