from Hacker News

Victory Disease

by thazework on 9/2/23, 9:19 AM with 1 comments

• by d-lisp on 9/2/23, 10:01 AM

  I can relate to this, specially when playing chess. On sunday morning I play rapid games online. When I reach a certain amount of victories in a row, I tend to trust my intuitions or feelings more than my analysis, this is a weird mechanism because losing seems to be the cure.

  If I stop playing after three wins in a row, my elo is raising better than with a let's continue approach. (Paranoïa)

  That's a little bit out of the initial subject, but it is a pain for me to play in a tournament. Every win in such a situation makes me anxious : the more you progress toward the final game, the more winning a game is valuable and the more losing a game is overwhelming. (Pressure)

  But then there is Victory Disease, which relates to being overconfident, and Tournament Disease, which relates to "there's no way I will win, I must throw the game because pressure is unbearable to me".

  I suffer from both, and I wonder how I can still enjoy very much that game.