How to Avoid Tilt

This is a personal blog for me (Jess). I wasn't necessarily a 'sore loser' when I was younger, but I definitely disliked losing. This pushed me to better myself at sports to avoid that sting of defeat as much as I could and when I became disabled, I transferred that energy into chess. The thing with chess (and most sports/games) is that you're going to lose at times and if you're not able to handle those losses well, it'll send you into a spiral of shame, self-loathing, and anger toward the game. So it's critical that we work not only on our chess skills, but also our skills of how to lose graciously without that flood of negative emotions. These tips are all things that I use to help myself avoid tilting (or to pull myself back if I'm already upset).

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Setting Realistic Expectations

Keeping your expectations in check is huge for avoiding tilts. The expectation should always be, "There's a chance that I could lose this game." That's not at all to say 'play like you're going to lose' (you should always be playing for a win) but instead it's there to remind you that positions change. Let's say you're up a piece in a game. It's too easy to start to get lazy and start thinking along the lines of 'I'm totally going to win this game.' You might start thinking about what your average centipawn loss will be or maybe you start imagining showing this amazing game off to your partner. Then suddenly you focus on the game again to realize it's a forced mate against you. By having the wrong expectations and thinking the game is over, you set yourself up to get more upset when things change. Keep yourself focused and remind yourself that until the game ends, there's always a possibility for a loss.

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Limit Your Playing

A lot of times when my students tilt, it's because they've played way too many games in a day. Setting a game limit (between three and five games is a good starting point) can help avoid long losing tilts where you lose 100+ rating points. If you only play a few games a day, you're less likely to get very upset even if you lose all of your games. So what else can you do once you've reached your playing limit? Work on studying chess instead of playing! Do puzzles, analyze your games, look at a master game or two, study the endgame, anything like that! You'll still be interacting with chess but you won't be overworking yourself and potentially hurting your rating/mental.

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Play for the Right Reasons

This is huge for avoiding tilt! Playing chess for the right reasons can greatly improve your playing experience. Mind you, there's technically no 'wrong' reason to play chess, but what I mean by right/wrong is simply reasons that are more likely to cause tilting. So for example, one of the more common 'wrong' reasons I see is playing to 'regain' lost rating. You lose three games and you keep playing because you can't stand that you lost 15 points of rating. Playing just to regain that rating is most likely going to lead to a loss of more rating and most likely it's going to tilt you. So to avoid tilting, play only when you're well-rested, calm, and in a learning mindset.

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Go Over Your Games After

This is a good way to avoid playing too many games in a day. If you analyze each game after you play it, you're taking a little break in playing where you have time to reset your mental and avoid tilt. So take five minutes or so to go over each game right after you play it (without the computer is best) and review your openings with the book, look for missed tactics, study the positions to see if there were better choices for either side, etc. This will help you improve as a chess player but it will also help you avoid tilting.

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Work on Your Overall Psychology

This is important for every sport you play and just for your overall life. Practicing breathing exercises, grounding exercises, and other anxiety/anger management tools can be greatly helpful for your chess. And speaking of psychology, it's important to separate your chess ability with your perception of yourself. A lot of people lose a game and feel worse about their intelligence or self-worth, but it's critical to remember that losses will happen and they simply mean there's a weakness in your play that needs working on. It's also critical to let go of the obsession with rating. Ratings fluctuate and that's normal. Don't become so attached to your rating that you let it drive you into a spiral of tilt. When you start to feel these more unhealthy thoughts creep into your mind (feeling down on yourself because of a loss, feeling the need to have a higher rating, anxieties about losing, etc.), work on calling them out and challenging them.

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I hope these tips can help you avoid tilting while playing chess! A lot of these tips will take a lot of self-control and they may take time to get used to, but I promise if you're having trouble with tilting, these tips will help. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out! I hope you enjoy this blog and make sure to check out our collection of studies!