This post was written with Nada Saaidia and David J. Grüning.

Chess is mental torture. — Garry Kasparov

Why play chess if it is torture, as Kasparov testified? One view is that chess is a social trap leading its victims into obsession. It’s hard work but it's fun to learn the ropes and to begin scoring victories with elegant moves, stealthy gambits, and Zugzwang (compelling the opponent to make one move that leads to their checkmate). In time, the ardent learner will tire of smashing novices; she will look for opponents in her own league. With more time, she will realize that she loses about half of her games. On average, it has to be so. Setting aside games ending in a draw, half are won and half are lost. It has to be so. More importantly, this will be so for most individual players. At the fringes of the distribution, we may find masters enjoying themselves beating up the weaklings, and novices seeking the lessons of defeat by challenging masters. But generally, when talent and skill are grossly mismatched, no one is happy. Hence, most players face opponents at their own skill level, and must make peace with the fact that they will lose as often as they win.

Whence happiness? The addictive potential of chess may be amplified in the online playing world, on platforms like chess.com. Some readers may identify with the feeling of still being up at 2 a.m., bleary-eyed and exhausted, promising themselves that it will be just one more game. We will set this descent into sadness aside and focus on days with a reasonable number of games played, to allow us to maintain the assumption that the probability of winning is .5 for each game. Hot hands may exist but again, let’s simplify.

How might a player extract some happiness from daily play? It occurred to one of us (JIK) that it might be a fine idea to........

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