How to Deal with Failure

Failure and Recovery Are the Keys to Eventual Success

📚 Connect with us. Want to hear what’s new at The Pragmatic Bookshelf? Sign up for our newsletter. You’ll be the first to know about author speaking engagements, books in beta, new books in print, and promo codes that give you discounts of up to 40 percent.

Failing at Chess

Recently, I played in the 2021 Connecticut State Championships chess tournament. I was in the Open section since the Championship section had a cut-off rating of 2000 and included a couple of Grandmasters, and as rated chess players go, I’m only fair to middling. My results were quite mixed. I won two games and lost two.

The last round, however, is sadly worth mentioning. That game is now officially the worst-rated game of chess I’ve played in my entire life. It’s so short, I was able to create an animated gif of the entire game.

I was matched against someone with a provisional rating of 1973, and I’m about 1463. That rating is over 500 points below my opponent, which means that out of ten games, he should win at least nine. I figured I was doomed going in. Still, I planned to do better than I did.

If you want the details, when he moved his bishop to d3, I knew I needed to oppose it with my own…