Do you ever feel like you’re two different people when you play chess?
I kept asking myself this question while staring at nearly 11,000 games spread across my two accounts — IsmatS and Cassiny. It started as a simple curiosity: which account actually represents the “real” me? But the deeper I dug, the more I realized I was asking the wrong question entirely.
Here’s what I found instead: we’re all multiple chess players, depending on when we sit down, what mood we’re in, and what we’re trying to prove to ourselves that day.
The Short Version (For When You’re Between Games)
Having two accounts taught me that the same brain can produce completely different chess depending on tiny choices — time controls, opening selections, even what hour you play. Win rates matter, sure, but the real story lives in the curves: how your rating moves over time, when you play your best games, and whether you’re the kind of player who experiments or sticks to what works.
The most useful discoveries? Small experiments beat big revelations. Fifty games with better scheduling taught me more than any opening book ever did.
What Caught Me Off Guard
Time of day isn’t just preference — it’s performance. I always thought I was overthinking it when I felt sharper in the afternoons. Turns out the numbers don’t lie. Some hours really are “you” and others… aren’t.
Consistency beats peaks. This was the hardest pill to swallow. My 52% account that rarely had dramatic swings actually climbed faster than my 58% account that would go on wild winning and losing streaks. Apparently, chess ratings reward reliability more than brilliance.
Your opening choices reveal your personality. Looking at which openings I chose when felt like reading my own diary. Certain lines were comfort food — I’d reach for them when I was tired or stressed. Others were weekend experiments when I felt bold.
What Still Puzzles Me
The data can tell me what happened, but not always why. Did that rating drop in March happen because I was experimenting with new openings, or because work was crushing me? Was I deliberately using one account for testing and the other for serious play, or did it just evolve that way?
And here’s the thing that keeps me up at night: I can see patterns, but I can’t always see the cause. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe the patterns are enough to work with.
The Charts (Or: What the Numbers Actually Whispered)
📊 Chart 1: Win Rates Overview This is where everyone looks first, and I get it — who doesn’t want to know their winning percentage? But here’s what surprised me: the account with the higher win rate wasn’t necessarily the one where I felt like I was playing better chess. Sometimes a high win rate just means you’re comfortable playing lower-rated opponents or you’ve found a time control that suits your natural rhythm. The real question isn’t “how often do I win?” but “when I win, does it feel earned or lucky?”
📈 Chart 2: Rating Evolution Rating curves are like emotional weather maps. Those slow, steady climbs? That’s usually when I was doing the boring work — studying endgames, sticking to a repertoire, showing up consistently. The dramatic drops hurt to look at, but they’re honest: life happened, I got distracted, or I tried to force improvement too fast. There’s something oddly comforting about seeing your chess journey laid out this way. Even the plateaus tell a story.
♟️ Chart 3: Opening Analysis This chart made me laugh and cringe in equal measure. You can literally see my personality in the opening choices: the safe lines I clung to when I was rating-anxious, the wild experiments from weekends when I felt creative, the defenses I abandoned after one bad loss. Some openings were clearly working for me, but I kept avoiding them because they felt “too simple.” Note to self: simple isn’t shameful if it wins games.
⏱️ Chart 4: Time Control Performance Here’s where I learned I’m basically three different players depending on the clock. In blitz, I’m intuitive but sloppy. In rapid, I’m more solid but sometimes overthink simple positions. In longer games… well, let’s just say my attention span has room for improvement. The fascinating part is realizing that “getting better at chess” might actually mean “getting better at this specific time control.”
⚫⚪ Chart 5: Color Performance White vs. Black performance feels deeply personal, doesn’t it? My Black results were consistently weaker, and I spent months blaming it on “not having first-move advantage.” But the real issue was psychological — I approached Black games defensively before they even started. It’s amazing how much your mindset at move one affects move forty.
🏁 Chart 6: Termination Analysis How your games end says a lot about who you are as a player. I resign too much in equal positions (working on this), but I also avoid timeout losses better than most. There's something humbling about seeing your chess habits reduced to categories: resignation, checkmate, time forfeit. It made me realize that half of chess improvement is just... not giving up too early.
🕐 Chart 7: Time of Day Performance This chart changed how I schedule my life. I always knew I was “more of an afternoon person,” but seeing the numbers made it impossible to ignore. My evening games were disasters — not because I was tired (though I was), but because the competition was different. Late-night chess attracts a specific type of player, and apparently, I wasn’t one of them.
📅 Chart 8: Monthly Activity and Trends Chess follows the calendar of your life in ways you don’t expect. December was always rough (holiday distractions), but so was August (vacation mode). There’s something liberating about accepting these patterns instead of fighting them. Now I plan light maintenance during my historically weak months and save intensive training for when I know I’ll be focused.
💪 Chart 9: Opponent Strength Analysis This one stung. I was beating lower-rated players at a decent rate but struggling against equals. Classic case of getting comfortable in my rating range instead of pushing upward. The good news? My results against stronger players were better than expected, which suggests I might be sandbagging myself psychologically.
📏 Chart 10: Game Length Analysis Short games usually meant tactical disasters or opening disasters. Long games meant endgame disasters or concentration disasters. The sweet spot seemed to be somewhere in the middle — complex enough to be interesting, but not so long that my focus wandered. This chart basically told me where my chess stamina runs out.
📊 Chart 11: Performance Streaks I’m a streaky player, and this chart proved it. When I’m winning, I keep winning — confidence breeds better decisions. When I’m losing, I keep losing — frustration breeds worse ones. The scary part is how predictable the emotional spillover is. Winning three in a row almost guarantees I’ll be overconfident in game four.
📆 Chart 12: Weekday vs Weekend Performance Weekdays: structured, focused, consistent. Weekends: experimental, relaxed, volatile. Neither is inherently better, but understanding the difference helps me set appropriate expectations. If I want to climb rating, weekday chess is my friend. If I want to explore new ideas, weekends are perfect for that.
🌸 Chart 13: Seasonal Performance Winter chess: serious, studied, indoor energy. Summer chess: distracted, casual, outdoor life calling. Spring and fall: the sweet spots where focus and energy align. I stopped feeling guilty about seasonal dips once I saw they were completely normal. Now I work with my natural rhythms instead of against them.
🔥 Chart 14: Opening Performance Heatmap This visual is both beautiful and brutal — green squares where my openings work, red squares where they don’t. The pattern was clearer than I expected: I’m much better with familiar, principled systems than with sharp, theoretical lines. My homework became obvious: either study the red squares or stop playing them.
📈 Chart 15: Performance Volatility The moodiness metric. High volatility meant creative but inconsistent play — big wins followed by puzzling losses. Low volatility meant steady, predictable chess. Neither is wrong, but understanding your natural volatility helps you pick the right improvement strategy. Consistent players need to push boundaries; volatile players need to build foundations.
⏰ Chart 16: Time Investment Analysis This hurt to look at. Hours spent on casual blitz versus hours spent studying openings versus hours analyzing games — the return on investment varied wildly. Some practice was clearly more valuable than others, but I’d been treating all chess time as equally useful. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
🎯 Chart 17: Comprehensive Dashboard The monthly health check. If you only look at one chart regularly, make it this one. It pulls together the major signals and helps you pick one or two things to focus on. I started using it like a chess physical exam — what’s working, what needs attention, what can wait until next month.
🧮 Chart 18: Advanced Performance Metrics The nerd chart. Expected results versus actual results, statistical significance, confidence intervals. This is where the data gets honest about whether you’re actually improving or just getting lucky. Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable, but it’s always useful for planning what to work on next.
Where This Leaves Me
After swimming through all these numbers, here’s what I keep coming back to: small changes compound. The dramatic “I need to overhaul my entire chess game” moments never lasted. But playing during my best hours? That stuck. Cutting out my two worst openings? That worked.
The data is fascinating, but the action is what matters. I’m not looking for perfect play — I’m looking for better patterns. And patterns, it turns out, are built one small decision at a time.
If I had to pick one thing from this entire deep dive, it would be this: figure out when you play your best chess, then protect that time like it’s sacred. Everything else can wait.
What I’m Still Curious About
Do the patterns hold if I change my approach? If I forced myself to play only during “bad” hours, would they become good hours through repetition? How much of chess improvement is about getting better versus getting luckier with matchups?
And the bigger question that started this whole journey: maybe asking “which account is the real me?” was backwards. Maybe the real question is “which version of me do I want to become?”
That’s what I’m still figuring out, one game at a time.
Published
September 23, 2025
