Her Name Is Wendy
652 games against bots, 26 against humans, and the 1500-rated opponent I keep coming back to.
Sep 29, 2026 · 2 min read
I don’t really play chess the way most people do.
My chess.com profile says I’ve played 652 games against bots and coaches: 358 wins, 40 draws, 254 losses. Against actual humans? Twenty-six games. 18 wins, 3 draws, 5 losses. I know how that looks. But ranked lobbies never pulled me in. I built my own arena out of silicon opponents, and I keep going back to the same ones.
Let me tell you about Wendy.
She’s rated 1500 and she owns me. 235 games: 64 wins, 5 draws, 166 losses. A 28% score rate, and I keep queuing up. I played her six times yesterday and won once. Most people would take the hint after fifty losses. I took it as a training plan. There’s a fine line between dedication and stubbornness, and I crossed it somewhere around game 100.
Maria is the other side of the coin. Rated 1000, and I beat her like she owes me money: 154 games, 110 wins, 14 draws, 30 losses. When Wendy breaks me, I go see Maria. She reminds me that I actually know how to play this game. Then I go back up the mountain.
The rest of the roster fills in the gaps. Martin has eaten 62 losses in 72 games against me. Sorry, Martin. I’ve got a winning record against Coach Hikaru, 51-7-21, which sounds great until you hear the actual Hikaru bot has beaten me twice and never dropped a point. And then there’s the footnote I try not to think about: Judit, at age six, has a draw and two wins against me. A six-year-old. A prodigy, sure. But still.
Here’s the thing, though. I don’t look at the loss column anymore. I look at the game counts. 235 games against someone who beats me two times out of three isn’t a record. It’s a relationship. You don’t get better by winning. You get better by having someone, or something, that refuses to let you win, and showing up anyway.
Her name is Wendy. And I’m not done.