The Three Verdicts Sorter.
A free reflection tool after a loss.
A companion field tool for the chess player who has just lost. Fifteen questions, six minutes, one printable summary. Built on the first essay of Lessons from the Board as a self-reflection prompt, not a diagnostic.
The Three Verdicts Sorter
The tool is live. It is the field-tool version of the first essay of the Lessons from the Board series, namely The Same Board, Three Verdicts. The essay argues that a single chess game produces three verdicts within minutes of the final move. The tool helps the player who has just lost to sort the loss into those three verdicts before they collapse into one.
The three verdicts.
The structural argument is short. After any rated game, a competitive player receives three different judgments at almost the same time. They look like one judgment because they arrive together. They are not one judgment.
The result and the rating change. Bounded, public, useful. The cleanest of the three. It says what happened to your number.
The engine’s accounting of the moves played. Useful, low-risk, instructive. It says what happened on the board itself.
The silent question the player carries home about what the game says about her as a person. The dangerous one, namely because it has a habit of absorbing the first two.
The structural intervention the chess world rarely names is the boundary between the second verdict and the third. Defending that boundary is, in the long career of any serious player, the work that determines whether ten years of competition produce a stronger person or a slowly damaged one.
The tool is a structured way to defend that boundary on the day of the loss, when the boundary is at its weakest.
What the tool does.
The Sorter asks fifteen questions about a recent loss. Five questions per verdict. Each question is a short prompt, namely a sentence to react to rather than a complex diagnostic. The answers stay private to the device. There is no sign-up. There is no email gate. There is no scoring algorithm that produces a label. The output is a one-page printable summary in three columns, namely the three verdicts the loss generated, separated.
The tool takes about six minutes. It is best used in the first two days after a loss, namely while the loss is still close enough to be honest about, but not so close that the third verdict has already absorbed the first two. The tool is not a substitute for a postmortem with a coach, for a serious engine review of the game, or for any kind of clinical mental health support. It is a structural prompt for the kind of self-reflection the framework argues is worth practising.
Read the essay this tool is built on.
The tool is short. The argument behind it is longer. The first essay of the series is the place to read it.
On the psychology of public failure in standard chess and the structural reason a defeat over the board lands with disproportionate weight, namely the danger of the identity verdict absorbing the official and technical ones. The argument the tool is the field version of.
Read the book the tool sits beside.
The Sorter is the free, public, six-minute version of the framework. The seven-essay series is the free, public, scholarly version. The book is the long-form version of the same argument extended through the working life of a competitive player. The Human Move, the first book in the Lessons from the Board series, is now live on Amazon. The argument behind the tool is the argument the book opens with.
Chess After AI, Pressure, Engines, and the Player’s Decision. The first book in the Lessons from the Board series. Get it on Amazon →
What the tool is not.
The Sorter is not a diagnostic instrument. It does not claim to measure psychological harm, to score competence, or to predict future performance. It does not collect data. It does not retain anything beyond the current session. It is not a substitute for a real postmortem with a coach, namely the engine review of the game itself. It is also not a substitute for clinical mental health support. The tool is a structural reflection prompt. The structural argument it sits on is a public-academic one. The structural argument has been peer-conversation tested across the seven essays of the series, not formally peer reviewed.
The tool is independent. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by FIDE, the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency, any national federation, any chess platform, or any chess publisher.
See the position. Set the piece down. Stay the author of the move.
Kerim Demirkol is a competitive chess player, swimmer, triathlete, Certified Fitness Trainer and Instructor, and author of the Lessons from the Board essay series and the book The Human Move. He writes about chess, sport, pressure, discipline, identity, and the psychology of competitive practice.
Independent · No federation sponsorship
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