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Comment by Mizza | Hacker News Reader

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy.

I started playing anonymous games on LiChess, and playing without ELO anxiety is way, way more fun. It's a game, this is all I need out of it.

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My only problem with anonymous is you have no idea if the person on the other side is 1100 or 2200 ... I just use Zen mode in Lichess, I know the other person is about my level, but I don't care what the numbers area .....

Yup, that's good to point out. Zen mode helped me enormously when tackling puzzles, because just seeing how I had fared earlier was making me think about my performance instead of puzzles.

And later same thing on competitive games.

I play like 100 ELO better with Zen mode.

I think the effect is actually more that I make fewer careless errors playing worse players than that I am more intimidated by stronger players.

This is a good tip, I didn't know about that mode. Cheers.

I once read 'power of mediocrity' or something like that that I saw here on HN. that article talked about the fact that it's ok to do things just to enjoy them as opposed to getting better at them.

since then I don't worry about my rating anymore, just playing on lichess without loggin in, just to have fun.

I'm not improving much, but i have fun.

The trick for me was understanding that in an MMR system, no matter how much better I got, my winrate was going to remain roughly 50%.

Yeah this is just as valid. I needed something to sink my teeth into, so I’ve been more interested in the improvement and learning side. The bonus is that games get more fun the better you get, until very recently I just found my own play frustrating, hanging pieces and falling for simple tactics.

Huh. I didnt know you could do anonymous lichess games. I've always gotten very anxious playing chess as despite being very very bad, I've wanted to cling to every point of ELO i had.

I found this interesting in the context of the quote: "Returning to the United States in triumph, Morphy toured the major cities, playing chess on his way back to New Orleans. Returning to New Orleans in late 1859 at the age of 22, he retired from active chess competition to begin his law career.[3][4][5][6] Morphy never established a successful law practice, however, and ultimately lived a life of idleness, living on his family's fortune.[7] Despite appeals from his admirers, Morphy never returned to the game, and died in 1884 from a stroke at the age of 47." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy

That kind of reminds me of Dota 2, where knowing your rating tilts you into playing even worse, when you are below average, or makes you toxic when you are above average (because everyone believes they are so good at the game).

There is also an «unranked» mode, where you can play without showing any numbers, but the big difference is that Dota 2 is a team game, and while some people play unranked to be more relaxed and care less about their rating, a lot of players won't try hard to win, because they don't see a point in winning if they don't see their rating get higher anyway.

It's frustrating that community forces you to play ranked if you actually want to win, but you can't relax when you know you are mediocre.

Agree it's more fun without the elo anxiety. Personally 3+0 blitz hits the spot for me, everyone sucks so dropping a piece isnt a big deal. The popular advice is that blitz won't improve your game, but I don't buy it.

I play longer games to try and improve, and 5+0 or shorter when I just want to move the pieces to entertain myself. It's pretty noticeable in my rating too, haha.

> "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy.

He also gave that quote when chess wasn't respected like it is today.

Improvement may also matter a bit more. With ELO you always lose half the time because when you improve you get a higher ELO and get to your half-lose rate again. With anonymous, I assume the pool is stable so with getting better you win more. Though your enemies may outclass you sometimes, especially when your prior ELO is too low.

I don’t really get this. Chess isn’t fun if your opponent is much worse or much better than you.

My suggestion is to take advantage of LiChess Zen mode, which hides the ranking of both you and your opponent. This orients me more towards the game rather than rank, while also providing evenly matched opponents.

If you know your opponent is much worse than you, then chess can still be fun because you dare to play stupid moves. Open with Nh3 and then continue stupid development (don't leave obvious blunders). Or otherwise don't make your known best move until the game is more even. Or spot your opponent the queen from the start. Lots of ways to even out a game when you are better.

When you are worse though, you have to depend on your opponent doing the above. And then you have to depend on the continuing until finally you are so much better than even you can win.

I find crushing people consistently in any competition to be immensely entertaining.

> playing without ELO anxiety is way

Absolutely. My games are a lot more relaxed, I find that my gameplay is a lot more bold and attacking. This results in games that are much more exciting.

When I played logged in, my overriding concern was always trying not to lose, rather than to win.

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