Almost 3 Years of Atomic: I'm Taking a Break

My friends have long told me that I am addicted to chess. I would say I'm not, but it is easy to see why my friends think that. As of writing this, I've played over 10000 atomic games and reached almost 11000 tournament points.
Last time I opened an online chess website to play some games was about two weeks ago. As you may have guessed, I'm taking a break.

"Oh, ekulxam, just take your break! Why make a blog post about it?"

Firstly, I'm more involved in the community this time, so I think some people will wonder why I'm missing. I'm still alive ;)

Secondly, I want to talk about a few things and why exactly this break started.

Tilting

If there is one thing I'm good at aside from memorising openings, it's losing a ridiculous amount of rating points in one sitting. I play mostly bullet and blitz atomic, so it's extremely easy for me to spam at least 40 bullet games in an hour. Sometimes, I gain rating, and other times, I lose a lot of it. Then the tilt kicks in, and I'm playing badly, but this is worsened by the fact that I know I can actually gain back my rating. This is usually solved by going to sleep and then playing the next day to regain all the rating I lost, but it's hard for me to tell myself in that moment that I should probably stop for the day.

Even when I'm playing well, I still lose rating due to how Lichess tournaments work. For example, let's look at https://lichess.org/tournament/v2a6C4xV. Previously in the tournament, I lost to @THANOS1991, bringing my rating from 2105 to 2095. I decided to keep playing, as it was a bullet tournament after all, and about 15 games later, I had successfully clawed my way back up to 2101. Then, I promptly lost 11 rating points in one game due to never playing the first move.

This happens to me quite often because I usually leave one tab to look at the arena and a separate tab for my current game. When the current game tab is closed but the arena tab is not, Lichess still thinks I'm ready to pair and play.

I then proceeded to lose the next three games in a row. Losing rating due to things like this, obvious blunders, or disconnections really affects my mindset for the current session. I don't want to stop playing, because I need to gain back my rating, but I need to stop playing, otherwise I'm going to lose more rating. But it won't matter if I lose a bit more rating, because I know I can gain it back today (I've done it before). So I fall into this cycle of "I must only win and never lose," but that's not possible, because I'm human (and humans make mistakes), and I'm playing atomic (which is not a balanced variant).

Rating Is Only a Number, Right?

Last time I took a long break was from February to June 2024, about 4 months. Somewhere between June 2024 and now, part of my self-worth became determined by the arbitrary value that is my rating. The weirdest part about all of this is that when people look at this from an outside perspective, the amount of effort I put into maintaining my rating makes no sense. Why would I care about a number next to my name on an online chess website that supposedly tracks my level in a chess variant, not even standard chess? Who even plays atomic in real life? How is playing atomic going to help me in real life? Why do I care so much?? And I can't really answer that question. A few years ago, I would say I play atomic for the love of the game, but I don't know if that's true anymore.

Chess Websites, Stealers of Time

Since stopping online chess, it has been extremely obvious to me how much time I gained back by not playing, especially in the first few days. Before this, it didn't actually occur to me how much time I was spending on playing atomic. Now, I finally have more time to devote to other activities I enjoy. I think this is the biggest reason why I decided to take my break, as spending a copious amount of time on atomic was probably not good for my health.

It Doesn't Feel the Same

I'm getting bored. Every tournament I join, people always spam Nf3 e3, Two Knight's, Atomic's Wayward Queen, or some weird d5 variation I always lose to. The variation of openings that most players with white use is very limited, and that's annoying for me, because when Lichess pairs me against the same person with white, I already know what opening they're going to play because (usually) they just play the same opening that they played last time, unless I make them do something different. (I'm aware I'm also guilty of this sometimes.)

There have been some proposals on how to make atomic a more interesting/balanced variant. The main one I remember is Rookie Atomic, where the Queen's moves are limited to Rook or King moves for its first move. Rookie Atomic practically doesn't exist anymore, and I haven't seen it around since its initial creation. I also remember someone suggested that we should host tournaments and have players start from fixed positions that are around 0.0, but no one has done that yet.

Improvement

I've been playing 1. Nc3 for a while now, but I think I'm ready to move on to another opening. However, I don't want to memorise yet another opening. Atomic isn't as fun for me as it was two years ago, when I was still learning theory.

I've hit a wall. I don't think I'm improving. My intuition is still the main thing carrying me through most positions, and it's obvious to me that it's not enough anymore. If you look at my rating graph for the past month, I feel like I've reached every integer rating between 2100 and 2160 (exaggeration).
If I were improving, the peaks would probably steadily grow over time, but their heights have stayed relatively constant.

I also don't really know if I want to improve anymore. It's been a good run, but I'm considering retiring from atomic altogether. I probably won't, but I just don't have enough time to memorise another 30 lines of openings. I'm in the realm of diminishing returns, so I don't think the effort I put into atomic will actually make a difference in the long run. Atomic is an interesting game, but at the end of the day, I must remember that it's a chess variant and I could actually learn a new skill or go touch grass instead of spending time on this.

Where Did Everyone Go?

Throughout my time playing atomic, I've seen and interacted with many players. When those players disappear, it's slightly disheartening for me when I notice their absence. For example, I believe the account of @Jmilie was recently deleted. I don't know why, but I do know every arena will be more boring without Jmilie to play c3 and win every game by utilising the a1-h8 diagonal.

Another player I haven't seen in a while is @NimzoCanadian. I know Nimzo is still around, but is just not playing atomic anymore.

Of course, I couldn't include this section without also mentioning Jujettine from chess.com.

I'm not exactly sure how to articulate what my idea is here, but it's strange for me to be playing one person and then the next day seeing them gone for the foreseeable future. They have all probably realised much earlier than I have that they need to take their own breaks from atomic or retire altogether. I understand everyone has a life outside of atomic, and now it’s my turn to disappear for a while.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading about my disorganised thoughts. I probably did a lot of nonsensical rambling. As a reward, here's an atomic puzzle study: https://lichess.org/study/6agxFuXD.

I’ll see you all around sometime.
- ekulxam / SkyNotTheLimit