Summer vs Chess Cognition
Tragedy struck! On a micro level I’ve rarely been so struck by something quite like a sneaky checkmate. Struck is an over exaggeration in this scope though. In reality tragedy splintered in a slow and steady decline in the form of chess elo.
During the spring semester my chess elo hit a peak of 1674 on LiChess.com. It’s duly noted there is a major discrepancy between the elo rating system of LiChess.com and the more popular, Chess.com. According to ChessGoals.com, between the two, the same player is rated about 300 to 400 more elo on LiChess than Chess.com. For example a 1200 rated player on Chess.com would be about 1560 on LiChess. This is a good rule of thumb for the non-prodigy players as the ratings eventually intersect at 2600 elo.
Now, come late summer, I am disgraced by what feels like an all time low of 1567 on lichess. Regardless of how many games I play or how focused I am, I’m giving free pieces to the same noobs I used to annihilate for +3 elo. Maybe they got tired of me sniping them with my bishops so they all studied how to defend against The King's Fianchetto opening. Hmm… maybe I should try a different opening; no that can’t be it, bishops are unstoppable on long diagonals. There’s something else going on.
I hit my peak of 1674 on April 17th, 2023. I was on top of the world and over the bell curve at greater than 72% of rapid players while also crushing opponents with elo ratings of up to 1800. Today I’m not on top of the world but on the top of the bell curve. So what happened?
During the month of April I was taking a full course load and worked two jobs. I was stressed and had little to no freetime. Everyone knows chess is an intellectual sport and that it ought to be part of a healthy regiment withstanding mounting external stress, plus I found it useful for detoxing in between study sessions.
Compare the environment I was in when I peaked versus where I am now and the elo discrepancy reads like a book. I’ve been lounging by the pool, consuming media, and at max cognition: writing python. The lack of surrounding stress and stimuli pleads guilty to all 107 counts of embezzlement from my chess elo.
The correlation between stress and decision making is news to none, and obviously a telling factor in my performance comparatively speaking. What’s interesting, however, is that stress doesn’t just affect our decision making, it also affects our ability to learn. Tali Sharot of the BBC tells: “A study using brain imaging to look at the neural activity of people under stress revealed that this ‘switch’ was related to a sudden boost in a neural signal important for learning (known as a prediction error).” The key here is prediction error meaning: a measure of the discrepancy between expectation and reality.
In a 30 minute game of chess, there is plenty of time to think through decisions to a satisfactorily (relative to my current elo) deep level, but the resultant effect of the decision is dependent on my prediction error. If I have all the time in the world to think through and decide on a move, but that switch isn’t flipped, my intuitive capability to predict the error of each choice is dampened. Consider this empirical evidence of cognitive decline in the case against summer vacation. I can’t wait to get back into school and to start taking names again. Watch out noobs!