I recently learned about german11, one of the most prolific online chess player and loser, a man who plays 140 plus games of chess a day, 40 plus hours a week, just to lose most of them. One must imagine Sisyphus happy with his 84% loss rate. What a dream, what a chad, what it would be like if I could be that happy with my loss rate at Marvel Snap.
I know I could be better, should be better. I hit Infinite rank two seasons ago, a testament to what I thought was skill and instead more likely was a bad meta. Early last month, I hit a roadblock at about rank 75, but wasn’t too worried then; I’d made most of my progress in the last week before. And then it was the last week. And I kept losing. And losing. And losing. I built muscle memory around bad tactics, snapping when I shouldn’t, playing games out I should’ve quit. I pushed the lever to keep playing. It makes sense when it’s sugar water, but this didn’t even feel fun; this felt masochist. I hated it. And I kept playing.
I ended the season at rank 67, lower than I started. I want to imagine a world where I’m happy with losing, where I don’t feel like I wasted hours of my life and instead just spent time enjoying myself. I want to imagine the game being enough for me. But this isn’t that game. Sisyphus hates this fucking boulder and hill.