Chess vs. Tennis - sporting lessons

With the U.S. Open tennis tournament now in full swing, I thought it would be a good time to post this.  I've been a tennis fan for a long time and enjoy playing the game recreationally.  Every time I watch matches during a tennis tournament, though, it also makes me think of dueling with another player over the chessboard, not just about what's happening on the court.

The value of seeing chess as an art has been mentioned before here, including the idea of it being a mental martial art, along with comparisons to other arts such as music.  I think looking at chess as a sport can be similarly interesting and useful, with the ongoing Olympiad in Istanbul being an excellent example of how it can embody the sporting philosophy in world competition.

In some respects chess and tennis are obvious comparisons as sports, as the most popular form of tennis (singles) is also a one-on-one duel.  There are in fact a number of aspects of tennis that have close equivalents in the sport of chess.

• Each game/match tends to develop a rhythm between the two players.  There is normally a natural ebb and flow between attacking and defending phases for each side.  Critical moments also often occur which offer a player the chance to make or break a game.   
• One side is given a small but real advantage in terms of initiative.  Being on serve in tennis is intriguingly like the benefit of being White, which sometimes creates pressure to "hold serve".  However, in both sports a player will have to alternate sides and must have a complete game in order to be successful in tournaments.
• Players have different playing styles, although at the top levels the styles tend to converge towards what provides the most practical results.  One could liken swashbuckling gambit play in the Romantic era of chess to the serve-and-volley style of play in tennis; both have now disappeared from the top echelons of their sport as a dominant style, but are still crowd-pleasers when occasionally resorted to.
• Players exchange moves/shots and move/shot selection is always important on a tactical level.  Sometimes a player has to make a defensive choice because of their opponent's previous move, while other times a player can choose to play more aggressively (and riskily) or more conservatively.  In both sports, aggressive and risky play generally leads to more more wins/winning shots, but also more losses/unforced errors when your opponent successfully defends.
• Endurance over the course of a game/match is important.  Strong play in the beginning is good, but if a player weakens over time, their good initial results may disappear and be overtaken as their opponent outlasts them.
• Tournament results can fluctuate wildly even with top-ranked players.  This year Serena Williams did terribly at the French Open and then won Wimbledon in crushing style, to cite just one example.

Aside from the game mechanics, the pivotal role of psychology and mental training is also a shared focus for both sports.  Having to overcome an opponent's intimidation factor (higher rating/ranking or poor previous match results against them), manage the pressure of a tournament as it progresses, and avoid anything that distracts you from your game are all key factors in players' success or failure.  Even players who are top ranked in terms of skill need that extra mental strength to achieve their goals, as Andy Murray for example has shown.  I've posted before on mental toughness in chess and it would be hard to find a chess player who didn't have their own stories of painful tournament collapses or key games thrown away because of their mental state, rather than a lack of skill.

Watching a high-quality tennis match gives me much the same pleasure as a high-level chess encounter and seeing players fight their duels is both motivational and educational.  There is something that master-level competition can bring out in all of us, a kind of inspiration to compete and succeed, that is the essence of sport.

Chess vs. Tennis - becoming the game

A recent article on Tennis.com highlighted a number of the parallels between The Queen's Gambit series protagonist (pictured above in a scene playing a racket sport) and champion tennis players. The similarities between the two sports/games are many. Notably, both are dominated by the spectacle of individual matches between highly-prepared professional players who have a supporting coaching team. However, at the same time both are accessible to amateurs at all levels. Lately I think chess has done better for itself, being able to move more of its action online.

On the positive side, both sports require both strategic and tactical mastery, which are mental skills that translate well to other situations. It's not enough to simply play a single move or point well, one has to have a consistent game plan that takes the opponent's strengths and weaknesses into account, while also capitalizing on unexpected opportunities. Here's a relevant excerpt from the article:

Since 2013, US Chess Federation senior director of strategic communications Dan Lucas, himself an avid tennis player, has organized a tennis outing for players and family members during the US Open chess tournament. According to Lucas, “The most obvious similarity is how you have to learn to build a point to be a good tennis player and the way you win a chess game is by slowly building a strong position by accumulating small advantages. Even the mistakes beginners make are similar: New tennis players just want to slam a serve as hard as they can; new chess players like to play one-move threats [which are easily parried by better players].” 

One of the other points made in the article was the nearly all-consuming nature of the game, in which a player's fundamental identity can start merging with their performance and practice. This phenomenon, while common in all sports at top levels, I think can be even more pronounced in individual sports. Even if you have coaches or play in a team scoring event, your performance is still solely up to you during a match. The negative side of this all-consuming focus can be obvious, however, when it leads to becoming obsessed with the game, to the detriment of all other aspects of life. Some aspect of balance needs to be there, even with those who are very serious about it.

Lately I've been on the other side of that coin, not having done much at all on chess over the past couple of months. This has been due to some other projects that perhaps have left me with enough time, but not really enough energy to train and play. I plan to resume this shortly, though.

See other Chess vs. Tennis posts

Book completed: The Inner Game of Tennis

 

As a sport / game / complex skill, concepts of learning and a high level of mental performance in chess strongly resemble that of other similar individual practices, such as martial arts (The Kung Fu of Chess) and tennis (see the Chess vs. Tennis series). Tennis is an especially relevant comparison, being an individual competitive sport with similar Elo-based ratings/rankings and where mental visualization and toughness are primary determining factors in the game's outcome, especially at the professional level.

The Inner Game of Tennis is a classic in the genre of sports performance, being one of the original works that is still very relevant; a 50th anniversary edition recently came out to mark the first publication in 1975. The author, Tim Gallwey, slightly updated the text for it, and there is a new introduction as well by Bill Gates. While the book specifically addresses tennis performance in some parts, including descriptions of how to focus on strokes and ball visualization, it also provides a broader perspective and methodology for the mental-based ("inner game") skills necessary for competitive success. It is also philosophical in nature, not being afraid to ask the why questions regarding individual competition and motivation for play, which are the same for improving chessplayers.

The central focus of the book is distinguishing between "Self 1" and Self 2" - essentially referring to the conscious ego and the unconscious or intuitive mind - and how they interact in competitive performance. I found a strong parallel to the concepts of the split "System 1" and "System 2" modes of thinking popularized in the 2011 book by Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow, as well as discussion of "being in the zone" which corresponds to the state defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience from 1990. All of these related concepts and observations, which are not new and are fundamental to the human experience, also touch on the phenomenon of mindfulness, which is an ancient practice of self-awareness and mental focus, not just a contemporary wellness movement.

While the entire book is a worthwhile, thoughtful (and thought-provoking) read, I'll highlight a few particular parts which generated personally relevant insights.

• Quieting Self 1 / Trusting Self 2: these two chapters demonstrate the core premise, which is that we need to reduce the amount of distracting self-talk and internal judgment during a game, in favor of focusing on the task at hand in the moment. For chessplayers, this is a major factor in being able to play consistently and not think unhelpfully about things like rating differences (which can lead to fear and loathing), future imagined tournament standing, or past mistakes and "should have dones" in game. While our intuitive "Self 2" may not always have the best answer, removing negative or distracting "Self 1" interference in our decision-making at the board is always useful.
• Attempting to follow by rote "expert" instructions and principles is a "Self 1" function as well. Although well-meaning, having a player attempt to execute long checklists for thinking processes on each move, or relying on general opening principles without understanding specific positions, are examples of how this does not function well in practice. The book usefully highlights the difference between book or academic knowledge and experiential knowledge; the former may be correct, but the latter is essentially an integrated, intuitive understanding and application of the correct principles at the correct time. This is why there is no substitute for playing reasonably frequently, while at the same time analyzing your own games to understand what is happening in them.
• The overall "why?" question regarding competition and pursuit of a competitive skill is very important to understand on a meta level, and in fact will be the determining factor of the quality of your experience at it. Many people work to become good, even great at a sport but then lose the joy of actually playing and competing at it, and end up quitting. This happens in chess all the time, of course, at all levels. In my own pursuit, I feel I need to pay more attention to the joy and personal interest aspects, while giving less weight to external (or more correctly imagined external) factors/judgements on performance. As the author points out, once you abandon your fear of negative outcomes, it can become a powerful freeing agent that allows you to unleash your full capabilities. Many chessplayers, including myself, have experienced this phenomenon when we recognize our game is objectively lost on the board, but we still have real chances to keep fighting - at which point we maximize our focus and ability to squeeze every last possibility to draw (or even win) out of the position in front of us. (Wouldn't it be better to be able to focus and be free like that before we're in that position, though? That is what I would like to tap into more.)

Unforced errors

In the tradition of previous Chess vs. Tennis posts, here is another one with an insight for chessplayers, excerpted from The Economist (Sept 11, 2021) article "All Too Human", which leads off talking about Naomi Osaka's collapse after being ahead at this year's U.S. Open tennis tournament:

...Yet the way her fortunes turned at the US Open, with one mistake begetting another, turns out to be common. A recent paper by David Harris, Samuel Vine and Mark Wilson of the University of Exeter and Michael Eysenck of Royal Holloway University of London finds that top-tier tennis players are surprisingly prone to mistakes caused by situation driven anxiety...

The taxonomy of shots in tennis helps to isolate the impacts of consistency and risk appetite. When a player misses a routine shot and loses a point, it is scored as an "unforced error" (UE). Conversely, shots that bounce within the court without being touched by an opponent are "winners".

...In high-pressure contexts such as break and set points, UEs were 15% more common than under less stressful situations. Similarly, during points following UEs, the chances of a repeat blunder rose sharply. These effects reinforced each other, so that UEs were even more common during high-pressure points following a prior UE than you would otherwise expect.

I don't think it's very surprising to find that high-stress moments tend to lead to more mistakes, even at an elite level. However, I find it more interesting to see the study's observations that these mistakes do indeed tend to subsequently reinforce themselves, which can result in a downward spiral of performance. While this could also be considered "common sense", having an acute awareness of these types of situations can be important for a player, who may then choose to consciously focus on their mental toughness in an effort to combat a further downhill slide in their game.

This finding is consistent with what I've seen over the years in analyzing both my own games and those at the master level. Often I've found that a series of sometimes small mistakes - or perhaps even just failures to play better moves - can sometimes then suddenly lead to much more significant blunders when under pressure from an opponent. Blunder recovery is then extremely important and often quite possible, even when down material or under heavy positional pressure, again underlining the importance of mental toughness to the ultimate result of the game. Recently in Annotated Game #255 I had just such a moment for recovery, but was unable to find the drawing line at the board. That was just one of many opportunities that I've seen occur, even in "losing" games, so the old advice to never give up until you are actually beaten remains good.

FT article: The sports helping executives stay at the top of their game

The latest Financial Times article involving chess - "The sports helping executives stay at the top of their game" - sadly was evidently written by non-chessplayers. How could I tell? From this quote:

Chess is not a solved game: despite the computing advances, there is no known perfect way to play it. But for some, it is too controlled an environment to offer a window into the real world — too little emotion, too many pre-planned sequences. How much can you learn about life from a sport that machines play far better?

There are several things wrong with the above statement, but the primary tipoff was the "too little emotion" part - no one who has played a serious game would ever say that, including Magnus Carlsen when he loses. The part about not learning from life in anything that machines "play [or do] far better" would mean abandoning all sorts of activities in modern life. I suppose we should all stop writing and drawing now that generative AI exists?

The other chess quote from the article is more on point:

Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind, became a chess master aged 13. He attributes his early interest in AI to playing chess “and trying to improve my own thought processes”.

And I would say an article quote on tennis is also very applicable (see Chess vs. Tennis here for more parallels) and one of the reasons I enjoy chess as a pastime:

“There’s no favouritism, there’s no politics. You either win or lose based on how you perform in the moment.”

Magnus Carlsen vs. Muhammad Ali

The matchup isn't a direct one, of course, but over the weekend I saw the new(*) Porsche commercial that features alternating sequences of Ali and Carlsen warming up and then fighting matches...against themselves.  The marketing point is that only a champion can defeat another champion - there are also dueling Porsches intercut - and that there's nothing better than a Porsche.  The commercial ran during coverage of the Stuttgart Open tennis tournament (sponsored by Porsche), which is another parallel of chess vs. tennis.

It's always interesting to see how chess sometimes surfaces in popular culture, in this case in the luxury market.  It's also cheering as a chess aficionado to see Carlsen up there with Ali as a contemporary icon of what a world champion can be.

(*) the original version of the commercial, from December, also featured Maria Sharapova, but she got dropped after the drug test issue surfaced.  Honestly I like the newer version better, it's punchier with the intercuts and from the standpoint of total percentage of screen time has relatively more chess content. ;)

Do study techniques matter in chess?

Part of the quest for chess improvement is, of course, some type of study plan.  I prefer to think of mine as being part of an overall training program, as this conveys more of the breadth and long-term nature of the improvement process.  Training is something that a professional athlete, martial artist or chessplayer is always doing, in some form or another, for their entire career.  Serious amateurs, ones who care about advancing their game, will also need to have their own training program - perhaps a less intense one and one that is not central to their livelihood, like the professionals, but nonetheless a program that is 1) structured in some fashion and 2) generally followed over time.  There are naturally a huge variety of ways to structure a chess training program or a personal study plan.  And unfortunately it can be difficult to follow any plan over time, as our energy wanes or other things disrupt our studies.

In "Tournament Preparation: Chess Skills" I made the assertion that it is more important for a player to train all the various skill sets before a tournament, rather than how exactly they go about it.  This parallels my general outlook on chess training, as captured in the early post "Reflections on Training".  A recent thoughtful comment queried whether after my experiences in chess training over the past two years, I think that study techniques matter - one way to rephrase the concept.  A good question and one that, to answer fully, requires some further reflection on the entire chess training process.

Looking at any training program, one must consider the performance objective and how to train the component parts that go into it.  For chessplayers, the primary long-term objective is to increase your playing strength to improve game performance; put more simply, to win more often and against stronger opponents.  While it's not completely cut-and-dried, chess can usefully be broken down into opening, middlegame and endgame phases, with different principles and techniques that dominate in each.  To use a sports analogy (as in "Chess vs. Tennis - sporting lessons"), if one is training to be a better tennis player, the primary objective (win more and against better opponents) is exactly the same, while the game can be broken down into elements such as your service game, return game, baseline play, net play and shot selection.  Other sports analogies can be used as well, for example long-distance running.  That is an excellent illustration of the fact that while it's important to train a variety of things, the main focus needs to be on actually doing the activity you are training for; runners can do other types of physical and mental training, but in the end the best training for running is, in fact, running.  (My view of chess training is broadly similar, as reflected in "Analyzing your own games is more than just analyzing your own games".)

I use the sporting analogy because it may help highlight the idea, in a more intuitive way, that chess performance in the end is a combination and culmination of many different things - training of component skills, application and integration of those skills in a "real-world" environment, judgment, mental toughness and creativity.  Perhaps it's because so much goes into a chess game or tournament that our egos often become involved and if we're not careful, it can seem like our personal worth is on the line with the result.  The same thing happens in sports - I consider chess to be a mental, individual sport - as athletes have good days and bad days in team matches, or in an individual sport get crushed in one tournament but then find the mental fortitude to do well in the next one.

So how does this broader perspective factor into the question of study techniques in chess?  I think improving players can often lose sight of the goal, namely improving playing strength and performance in actual games, while focusing on training component parts.  This is most obvious with tactics drills, where it is easy to keep solving problem after problem and honing your ability to find 1001 mating solutions in the quickest way possible, then fail to find the way forward in over-the-board situations where mating attacks are nowhere to be found.  While the description is somewhat exaggerated, this is in fact a common trap.

Does this mean that tactics drills are useless to improve your performance, as are other specific study techniques for openings, middlegames and endgames?  Of course not.  I used to be quite weak on tactics (believing myself to be a "positional" player - the subject of "Playing Styles Deconstructed" - and therefore not needing to dirty my hands with it).  Once I realized the folly of this, I greatly improved my tactical understanding and performance by studying Understanding Chess Tactics and applying myself on the Chess Tactics Server and the Chess.com tactics trainer.  I do believe, however, that any training program that fails to take a holistic approach to chess and instead focuses only on training a single component skill will ultimately fail.  Also, your training program must be realistic and calibrated to your current level of understanding - pushing the envelope, as mentioned in "Mindfulness and Effortful Study", but not ripping it to shreds.

Finally, an important consideration when determining how you should study, as compared to generally what should you study, is your learning style.  Learning styles vary greatly and I think this fact is underappreciated in the chess improvement community.  Some common training principles are worth emphasizing, as I did in the tournament chess skills post, but especially at the amateur level I'm a big believer in the "whatever works" school of training.  This is because it's done as a pastime, for love of the game, so the motivational factor is so important; if you hate a training method, you're simply not going to want to do it any more, regardless of how effective it is supposed to be (according to Authority X).  If you don't believe this is important, simply search through the chess improvement blogosphere, which is littered with dead "Seven Circles (of Hell)" blogs.

Chess vs. Tennis - breaking through and momentum

The come-from-behind victory of Simona Halep in the 2018 French Open, which I just watched, reminded me of the Chess vs. Tennis lessons, as well as of course Andy Murray's breakthrough Grand Slam, after a huge amount of psychological pressure (both external and internal) to win.  The most important factor in Halep's victory was her being able to change the momentum of the game, which was all in her opponent's favor until partway into the second set (i.e. about halfway through the match).

Chessplayers experience very similar effects from momentum during an individual game, or over the course of a match.  The psychological impression of being under pressure, especially feeling that you are worse off and having to fight from an inferior position, can negatively effect your thinking and cause you to miss opportunities to equalize or even gain an advantage over your opponent.  On the other hand, it can also make us dig deep for strength and focus and lead to better play, eventually turning the tables on our opponent (as happened in Halep's match).

The best practical treatment of this phenomenon I've seen is in The Road to Chess Improvement by GM Alex Yermolinsky.  From the section on "Trend-Breaking Tools":

...Imagine a familiar scenario: your position is worse; moreover you feel that the trend is unfavourable.  You can't just sit around and wait, making normal, solid moves and watching your decline to continue - you may as well resign. This is what many chessplayers do - they mentally resign when things don't go their way.

Yermolinsky then goes on to offer several observations about how the momentum can shift, starting with a stubborn defence, assuming that the position is not in fact lost.  He says

...You may hate yourself for defending passively for many moves, but look at a bright side: your opponent knows he's better and he feels obliged to win - isn't that a pressure? ...Most of your opponents would be content with keeping their advantage in a secret hope that you'd go mad and self-destruct. If you simply can avoid that by just staying put, you'd be gaining some psychological edge even when your position is not improving.

He offers up a lot more besides this, but I'll let you see for yourself; the book is one of the best I've read on chess improvement.

Remember, if you can weather the storm and then start playing at the top of your own game, it can end with a victory...no matter the pressure.

Breaking Through to the Next Level

Breaking through barriers is something common to all sports.  Some are harder than others, but reaching a level of true mastery is never easy and often requires many years of struggle.  Many never achieve it, lacking the necessary will, effort, or simply the ability.  All three are required.

As a follow-up to the Chess vs. Tennis post, I'm very pleased to congratulate Andy Murray on his first Grand Slam title, having won the U.S. Open in a five-hour marathon match.  No one could doubt his tennis ability before; now, no one can say that he is not a master of the game.  It's been interesting to see how he has taken his training and mental preparation to the next level, which is what was needed for his own breakthrough.  It can serve as an inspiration for all those looking to achieve mastery of their chosen sport.

Training quote of the day #53: Tim Gallwey

 

From The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey:

How to Make Best Use of Technical Instructions

So the question that remains is how one person's greater level of experience can help another person. The short answer is that a valid instruction derived from experience can help me if it guides me to my own experiential discovery of any given stroke possibility. From the point of view of the student, the question becomes how to listen to technical instructions and use them without falling into the Self 1 traps of judgment, doubt, and fear. For the teacher or coach, the question has to be how to give instructions in such a way as to help the natural learning process of the student and not interfere with it. If insight can be gained into these questions, I believe they would be applicable to the learning of skills in many different domains.

FT: Interview with Magnus Carlsen - October 2015

             

The original interview can be found here at ft.com - you may have to register (for free) to read it at the Financial Times site.

Since it's a mainstream media site (although the FT is rather highbrow), there's not a lot of chess depth.  However, spending time with Carlsen always brings up some valuable and interesting points for further consideration.  One of the most relevant ones I thought was his view of himself as an athlete, including his training regimen.  This is in tune with some previous posts here and also with the modern understanding of mind/body optimization for athletes.  For example, sports such as tennis become very mental at the top levels; it's often not an athlete's physical training that makes the difference in their performance under pressure, it's their mental toughness.

Another interesting point is Carlsen's personal love of the game and its history.  It is by no means a prerequisite for master strength to have an encyclopedic knowledge of chess world champions and their games, but there is also little doubt that it can help inform and instruct one's play.

Book quote: The Empty Copper Sea

 

From Chapter 7 of The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald:

I saw her in a little while, trotting back and forth in the dining room, wearing a crotch-length tennis dress with a sailor collar and a little white yachtsman’s cap. Another waitress had joined her. A couple of construction workers—off at four—came in for beers. Somebody started the juke. I watched Michele. She had absolutely great legs. I felt guilty at the way I was going to try to booby-trap my question. Not very guilty. Anticipatory guilt, the kind that Meyer calls chessboard guilt, when you realize that the weaker player is making a frail response to a standard opening, and you are about to ram your bishops down his throat.

Chess vs. Football (FT edition)

In the spirit of Chess vs. Tennis, I wanted to point out the latest chess-themed article from the Financial Times, written by GM Nigel Short and featuring a game/interview he had with top former British football (soccer) star Sol Campbell.  There are some entertaining parallels between the two sports.  One favorite excerpt:

Sol’s king had not escaped very far. My strikers were all over the penalty box and in chess there is no such thing as offside. About three hours after our game began, it concluded in checkmate. Sol, not for the first time, spoke positively about the benefits of chess and how it put him in a different mental zone. One phase of his footballing career may be firmly over but I am sure we have not heard the last from this thoughtful man.

A more fulsome comparison between the two can be found at iplayoochess.com.

Streakiness in chess performance

From "How much does one game affect the next game?" by Michael Richmond

"Streakiness" is the tendency to keep losing (or winning) several times in a row.  It's a well-known phenomenon in team sports, also including individual performances in sports like baseball and cricket where particular results (for example pitching vs. hitting) can be meaningfully isolated from the overall team performance.  Naturally, this tendency to have positive or negative results in streaks also extends to individual sports like tennis and chess.

As with any complex phenomenon, it's nearly impossible to point to a single, definitive explanation for a particular string of results.  I do think a large part of it, however, often can be explained by the psychological expectation or "hangover" that is generated from the previous game.  Winning generates positive feelings - although this is not always helpful for an improving player, if it masks substantive weaknesses.  On the flip side, if you lose, it is common to experience unhelpful emotions such as anger, shame, feelings of worthlessness, etc.  This type of personalized reaction is in fact natural - a lot of time, effort and preparation goes into a serious game.  As a player, you almost always are mentally invested in even a casual match.  It's therefore healthier to experience the emotional reaction and then move on, rather than try to repress it.

So how does a chessplayer break out of a losing streak, which is the most common concern with streakiness?  Most of the time we are talking about a short-term losing streak, but in some cases it may be the symptom of a longer period of stagnation or decline in results.

Substantively, it is important for improving chessplayers to work on all aspects of their game, as it's rarely the case that a specific weakness is wholly responsible for a streak of bad results - unless you (perhaps unconsciously) keep playing into situations where you are weak.  For example, a player may have little knowledge of endgames, but nevertheless tends to head straight for them by exchanging down material whenever possible.  Another common issue is reaching middlegame positions for which you don't know the standard plans and characteristics of the position-types.  These weaknesses can be addressed (or at least better avoided) through candid self-assessment, analyzing your own games, and targeted improvement plans.  Self-analysis will also directly contribute to understanding and avoiding the repetition of the same types of errors across different games.  These long-term practices will tend to boost your overall playing strength over time and contribute to shorter-term success as well.  There is no magic pill for instant short-term improvement in chess skills, in other words.

Psychologically, especially in terms of your short-term performance, it is more important for players to overcome the "hangover" of a previous loss or losses by focusing fully on the game in front of them.  Success in accomplishing this is partly based on willpower and your ability to focus, but is more strongly underpinned by adopting an attitude of mental toughness in all your games.  Getting in the habit of treating each new game as unique, as winnable, and as a stepping stone on the road to mastery goes a long way towards erasing bad vibes from previous games.

Finally, it's important to understand that your opponent "gets a vote" in the result of a chess game - meaning that you may play well and still lose, or alternatively play poorly and still win.  In addition to cultivating mental toughness as mentioned above, for improvement purposes it's therefore better to focus on your quality of play in each game, rather than solely on the final outcome.  You can't fully control the results you have, but you can dedicate yourself to playing with increasing excellence - which is a reward in itself - and that will inevitably be reflected in your playing strength and future competitive results.

How far can you get in one month of training?

By now, the story of the "Month to Master" guy, Max Deutsch, playing Magnus Carlsen has drawn a lot of commentary, as can be seen at the above-linked ChessBase article (which also has the original Wall Street Journal video article link; it's an entertaining watch).

The mastery challenge is an interesting outgrowth and example of the "Personal Growth" movement, which like the older "Self-Help" category contains a lot of good ideas under its umbrella, but also a lot of puffery.  The idea of trying to challenge yourself exponentially rather than only incrementally is in fact one way to achieve personal breakthroughs; Max in fact did quite well at the other challenges, which were all realistically achievable skills (if not easy at all).  His success with them reflected the mechanism of effortful study, while the emphasis on constant learning is, in any case, a great brain health practice.

Naturally Max didn't even come close to beating Magnus, because chess is far too complex an activity/sport/art.  One parallel would be someone who took French in a classroom environment for a few years being asked to win a debate with a native-speaking Sorbonne philosophy professor; it's just not going to happen.  Similarly, an amateur tennis player is not going to suddenly raise their skill level in a month to beat Andy Murray.  This is one of the attractions of chess for me, as a matter of fact - it is infinitely deep and you will never stop learning on the path to mastery.

Play like Sofia Kenin

As mentioned in Chess vs. Tennis, the dynamics of the two sports/games have a lot of similarities, as individuals face each other in an extended strategic and tactical struggle.

Today's victory in the Australian Open final by Sofia Kenin showed brilliantly some of the qualities needed for similar victories in the chess arena. When down and pressured, she would raise the level of play, in turn pressure her opponent relentlessly and patiently, then at the right moment play an ideal shot as winner. She was able to play hard, put mistakes behind her and focus on playing as best as possible in the current moment. Tenacity was a word used often by the commentators, which characterized her play throughout.

Congratulations to Sofia on working hard to be a champion and sporting role model.