Blunders and mental game
The importance of psychological fortitude
Poor Ding Liren. I can only imagine what might have gone through his head the moment he realized he’d made one of the biggest blunders in the history of world championship chess. “I was totally in shock when I realized I made a blunder,” he told Maurice Ashley in the post-game press conference. Indeed, he didn’t even recognize the error immediately. It was only when he saw the smile spreading on his opponent’s face that he understood that he’d gone from a draw to a losing match. He stepped away, played a few more moves, and resigned. And with that, the title of world champion went to 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju, who replaces Garry Kasparov as the youngest-ever to hold that mantel. (Kasparov was 22 when he won in 1985.)
As Ding Liren walked away, the chess world was stunned, to put it mildly. “It was an extraordinarily painful finish,” is how Jennifer Shahade—WGM, former U.S. Junior Champion, two-time U.S. Women’s Chess Champion, and my fellow PokerStars ambassador—put it when I asked her about the match. “The final blunder was horrifying schadenfreude for even those who may have wanted Gukesh to win. The blunder was just so uncharacteristic of Ding Liren. I think of lot of chess players and coaches and fans watching felt something like ‘that’s a move so bad I wouldn’t have made it. Now how can it happen to the best in the world?’” That, of course, is the million-dollar question—or $2.5 million, if we’re being exact, as that is how much the new world champion walked away with.
I’ve long held that the thing that distinguishes truly elite poker players from simply good or even great players is mental game: the psychological fortitude to perform at high levels under pressure, over and over and over, even in the face of setbacks, mistakes, and poor results. The best of the best don’t have some secret knowledge or crazy skill edge that only they possess; they have an intangible mental fortitude that breeds consistency in the face of adversity and takes them to the next level. And while poker is the area where I’m most comfortable making that pronouncement, I think it holds true of high performance in general. Yes, you have to have the skills. That’s a prerequisite. But then, you have to be able to execute.
We’ve all seen the rookie athletes who show tremendous promise burn out in the big leagues—or the musical prodigies who suddenly find they can’t perform under the lights of Carnegie Hall. But the truly perplexing cases, as Shahade hints at, are those when high performers, who have shown themselves capable of greatness, suddenly choke. Blunder. Collapse. When an internal tripwire seems to go off that short-circuits their usual sangfroid. Ding Liren, after all, was the reigning world champion. He had already competed against the best and emerged on top. So what went wrong?
A 2024 review of individual crises in competition—choking, the yips, performance blocks and the like—found that several factors may contribute to an athlete performing less than optimally under pressure (and here, “athlete” includes mind sports like chess and poker). One cluster of phenomena is related to streaks, or runs of bad results. Sure, you may usually be as hardy as they come. But sometimes, negative momentum can get the better of you: if you’ve had recent failure, you may find yourself in a self-reinforcing cycle of underperformance. I didn’t do well, so something is wrong with me, so I am not good enough and not going to do well.
This certainly may have been the case with Liren. After his world championship victory, he went on to a string of defeats and bad results, to the point where he was deemed an underdog coming into this matchup. He had lost 28 classical matches in a row—a three-to-one underdog to Dommaraju going into their competition, according to the odds markets. But it can’t be the whole story. As Shahade points out, “he played a lot of great chess in that match.” It’s not like he came in with a defeatist attitude: he was determined to play well.
A related but more internal concept is the idea of the cold hand—the opposite of the hot hand fallacy—where a streak of failed attempts feels like it will never end. The objective evidence may not be there, but your subjective experience tells you that the world is currently out to get you. In poker, it may feel like you just can’t get on the right side of variance. Every flip goes against you. Every made hand is second-best. The deck is stacked and you can’t catch a break. That perception, too, becomes self-reinforcing: you selectively remember only the hands you lose, focus on the moments where someone sucked out on you, replay the flips that went against you, and feel like the world will never be right, leading you to make mistakes, take gambles you shouldn’t (or not take ones you should), and generally force errors because your head is not in the game.
This does not seem to have been the case with Ding Liren. He went in swinging, with a first game that drew widespread praise for its elegance and forced many observers to recalibrate his chances of victory. (I’m not a chess expert. I relied on others to tell me that it was a beautifully-played opener.)
All the same, we do know that Ding Liren suffered from depression and took time off after his championship win last year. He has been quite vocal about his mental health struggles over the year preceding his failed championship defense. And that generalized background, even on a subconscious level, may have been partly to blame for the break.
The reason that cold hands and negative momentum are so powerful—and the thing they share in common with depression—is that they foster negative thought cycles that get you too much into your own head, creating patterns of stress and anxiety that lead to decreased focus and, as a result, bad performance. One review found that the heightened anxiety we see in moments of choking, like Ding Liren’s blunder, are often the result of multiple underlying psychological tendencies. There’s increased self-consciousness (your metacognitive awareness of yourself and how you appear to others grows); intrusive thoughts and ruminative tendencies (you replay mistakes or other negative moments over and over); perfectionist tendencies (you constantly strive for some ideal); and a hypersensitivity to changes in emotion (especially when it comes to feeling higher distress after bad experiences or poor prior performance). And finally, it all comes to a head in one missed decision or misplayed action. After all, every slump, every cold hand, every streak of negative momentum began with a single moment. The first choke. The first missed putt. The first epic chess blunder.
We don’t know what else may be to blame. That’s between Ding Liren, his psychologists, and his coaches. Whatever it is, I’m willing to bet it ain’t cheating, regardless of some accusations to the contrary—and this is coming from someone writing a book about cheating and currently steeped in conspiracy theories and ulterior motive discussions. In his interview with Hawkins, you can see the pain on Ding Liren’s face, despite his champion-worthy words. This is not a man who wanted to lose.
At least not on purpose. But what about on a deeper level? What if it just took everything he had to get to that match, and at some point, he just wanted it to be over? I asked Shahade if fatigue could have been a factor. “Maybe, but still not a satisfactory explanation because the blunder is so odd at that level,” she said.
But perhaps it’s a fatigue that goes deeper than sleep. Here’s one major difference between this match and Ding Liren’s prior matchups: he wasn’t defending a world championship title before. Now he was. And expectations matter. When you win your title, it’s incredible. But then you are the champion. And the world (and you) expect more. The end of that match, however it comes about, may almost be a relief; even if it ends in failure, it’s over. A release of all the tension and anxiety leading up to that moment, however much of it may have been subconscious.
Shahade has a more technical take that seems to echo this thinking, that she’ll be writing about on her Substack shortly. I won’t spoiler it, but it does have to do with the desire to simplify decision-making—something every exhausted athlete can understand. I’m tired. I feel at the end of my rope. Please, just limit the variables I have to consider. Just make my decision process that much easier.
When I first read the headline about Ding Liren’s blunder, I couldn’t help but relate it to my recent (far less dramatic and important) run in the PokerStars NAPT Main Event, where I finished in 14th place. I’m someone who usually prides herself on an above-average mental game—but here, the day before the final table, after playing 13- and 14-hour days for a week, I was exhausted. My resources were depleted. It was late in the day, with 20-something players left, and my ability to think through complex game trees was not at its peak.
I found myself in a crucial hand. A player in early position raised. The player to my immediate right called. And I called as well from the button (the best position in poker) with a medium pair. The small blind—eventual NAPT champion Nick Marchington—jammed for all of his chips, some 15 big blinds. The original player folded. And the player to my right re-jammed for 20-something big blinds.
I had a commanding chip lead at my table. And in that crucial moment of mental math and odds and thinking through the implications of my decision, I blundered. I miscalculated (literally – I did the math wrong) and made a fold in a situation that was a clear call, the miscalculation likely fueled by a combination of exhaustion and emotion. Had I called as I should have, I would have won the hand, knocking out both players and changing the trajectory of the entire tournament. Generally, I’m proud of my play throughout the game. But that is the one hand I keep coming back to. A butterfly effect of blunders.
Sometimes, it’s impossible to pinpoint just why a mental short-circuit happens. The best we can do is recognize that it did, and then, try to figure out how to avoid something similar going forward. And on this point, I believe in Ding Liren’s ability and self-awareness. Let’s remember that Ding Liren won his championship title while already struggling with depression. After his win, he recognized he needed help. He took time off. He got therapy. He was candid about his struggles. And he dared to come back. That takes guts—and immense mental game.
Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter the giveaway for paid subscribers for the Wynn World Championship! Here’s a recap, in case you missed it:
As a thank you to all of you who choose to become paid subscribers, I will be entering every paid subscriber to The Leap in a 1% freeroll of the $10,400 Wynn WPT World Championship Main Event. What does this mean? Before I play, I will randomly select one paid subscriber to receive 1% of any profit I make in the event. The winner will be announced on December 14th, Day 1A of the Main.
If you’re already a paid subscriber, you will be entered automatically.
If you’re a Founding Member (or become a Founding Member between now and December 14th), you will receive a bonus entry into the drawing (and all future drawings).
For every 100 additional paid subscribers, I will create one more 1% freeroll giveaway to another event during the WPT Wynn World Championship series (and potentially give away an additional piece of the Main Event).
And if you don’t win this time around, I will also be doing 1% giveaways for every major series I play in the foreseeable future. All you have to do is remain a paid member.
Was the winner announced somewhere? Maria is doing well in the tournament so far
I think you're being too hard on yourself. What pair did you fold??