How Chess is Played at Every Level

Chess is hard. This can be summed up best by a game I played the other day, where my opponent and I blundered our queens a total of seven times, and neither of us saw any of the blunders. To make sure that games are being played by evenly matched opponents (like those who always blunder their queens), and not make it too hard for someone, chess uses an Elo system, where you gain or lose Elo based on whether you won or lost. The lowest chess Elo possible is 100 Elo, probably because they don’t want people going into a mental health crisis (like starting to cheat or closing their account or punching their computer) when they achieve negative Elo, while the highest anyone has ever gotten is 3400 (on chess.com). It’s a big range, so I’m going to show you how chess is played at all levels.

100 Elo: Oh no! White blunders their queen, and in response, Black takes the que-, nope, they blunder their own queen. Ah, 100 Elo’s. They still have a long way to go.

200 Elo: Black sacrifices their rook for no reason, and then they sacrifice their bishop for no reason, and then they get checkmated. Don’t know what Black was doing there. Maybe they were throwing the game so they could go have dinner earlier. Maybe they’re actually a cow who is learning how to play chess from scratch. Maybe they were playing chess blindfolded. Who knows?

300 Elo: White blunders a pawn, and Black, instead of taking the free pawn, makes a random pawn move that doesn’t accomplish anything at all! How exciting!

400 Elo: White and Black play an evenly matched game with few blunders… but they trade so much they only have pawns by the 20th move. Then White makes random, useless king moves and lets Black promote a pawn and then… Black doesn’t know how to mate with only a king and queen, and stalemates.

500 Elo: And before any commentary is necessary, the game is over because White won with the Scholar’s mate/the checkmate in four. Nice. What a game.

600 Elo: Both sides trade a bishop for a knight, which isn’t good because bishops are better than knights. Haha, horsey. You’ll never be as important as the humans.

700 Elo: Why do they keep trading bishops for knights?! It’s a bad move!

800 Elo: STOP TRADING BISHOPS FOR KNIGHTS!

900 Elo: White pins the knight to the king with a bishop, making sure the knight doesn’t move. But then the bishop is attacked, and then, oh no, the bishop is trapped and White loses a bishop. Great! We love panicking and losing a bishop.

1000-1200 Elo: Average chess. Meaning that the five brilliant moves they made are counteracted by the five queen blunders.

1300-1500 Elo: Chess players at this level think they’re really good at chess and start making up their own openings and… are losing on move five. Guys, there are centuries of knowledge surrounding this game. You don’t need to make your own version of the Whatever Gambit, but worse. Stick to checkmating immediately like the rest of us.

1600 Elo: “Are you telling me a 1600-rated player hung a piece on move six?!” —GothamChess, Chess YouTuber

1700 Elo: Black sacrifices their knight to open up the king’s defenses and finds the mate in seven. Oh finally! Pieces are being sacrificed for a reason (unless you count needing to go have dinner earlier and throwing the game as a reason)! And no blunders every five moves!

1800 Elo: Oof, White lost a pawn and… resigned? What? They’re down one singular pawn, and they resigned? What an amazing, exhilarating, and exciting game of chess!

1900 Elo: They play 20 moves of theory on the Sicilian Defense?! Why are they memorizing 20 moves on the Sicilian Defense?! Come on! Learn something more useful, like 20 uh… oh, there’s nothing that you can learn 20 of that’s useful.

2000-2900 Elo: Incomprehensible chess. Random pawn move, random rook move, random bishop move, and suddenly White’s winning? What? Nobody’s even blundered anything! And Black resigned! They haven’t even made a trade yet!

3000-3400 Elo: White sacrifices their queen for some seven-move tactic, and in response, Black counter-sacrifices their queen for an eight-move tactic!

GothamChess playing chess: “And he sacrifices… THE ROOK!”

Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura (world No. 2): *premoves checkmate*

Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen (world No. 1): *plays one of the worst openings because he is world No. 1 and can do whatever he wants*

Me: still blundering my queen at 800 Elo *sigh*