Nobody Audits a Win

I played three blitz games before work.

I lost the first while eating. I had also run six miles that morning. Either explanation was available: distraction, fatigue, divided attention.

Both were plausible. That did not make either one true.

So I put the food down and played again.

I lost again.

This time, I was not distracted. I reviewed the game, found the move where the position turned, and understood what I had missed.

I had simply been outplayed.

That distinction matters because a legitimate explanation can become a reusable excuse. 

Distraction may explain one loss without explaining the next. The only way to know is to examine each game independently.

The test is simple:

Can you find the move?

If you can identify where the position turned and explain what you failed to see, you were present and beaten. That is a chess problem.

If the middlegame is a blur and you cannot reconstruct your own reasoning, you were absent. That is an attention problem.

The results may look identical. The corrections are not.

Then I won.

Thirty-eight moves. One hundred seventy-eight seconds. Black. I flagged my opponent with 1.6 seconds remaining.

That victory taught me almost nothing about my middlegame. At 4.7 seconds per move, I was mostly recognizing patterns and producing moves. The calculation I intended to test was never seriously tested.

Two players were drowning. He drowned first.

What interested me was how little explanation the win demanded. After the losses, I searched for causes. After the win, I was prepared to accept the result as proof that I had played well.

That is the asymmetry:

A loss interrogates you. A win takes your word for it.

Players review losses because something visibly failed. Wins are allowed to pass without examination, carrying flattering conclusions with them: I played well. I saw the board clearly. I am improving.

Maybe.

But the result alone does not establish any of those things.

The record for the third game should read:

W. Black. Flag. 38 moves. 178 seconds. 1.6 seconds remaining. 4.7 seconds per move. No meaningful middlegame test performed.

Not played well.

Not back on form.

Not the food was the problem.

Those are interpretations. The record should preserve what happened.

The first loss showed that I was absent.

The second showed that I was beaten.

The win showed that my opponent ran out of time.

Only an audit tells you the difference.