The fractal nature of the imp

I had another chess debacle last night, shedding 36 points off my rating and returning to midnight on my chess VCR (the same number of wins as losses). The imp of the perverse went fractal on me, or I should say, revealed its fractal nature, which it had actually possessed all along. What do I mean by this? To explain, I'll first need to describe what fractals are. One caveat - I have only a layman's understanding of them. Essentially, fractals are mathematical entities with the bizarre but very beautiful characteristic that they resembles themselves at every magnification. One analogy I read somewhere is that fractals are like very special coastlines. When you zoom in on any section of such a coastline, what you see in your microscope is the same thing you started with. The fractal is basically telling you, "Your microscope is no good here" :-)

Why do I say the imp of the perverse has a fractal nature? Simple, really. When you're under the spell of the imp, you make bad decisions at every conceivable magnification. At the level of magnification of a single game, you make a series of bad decisions in that game. At the level of magnification of a chess session, you make a series of bad decisions in that session. The worst thing you can do at the chess session magnification level is to keep starting a new game, loss after loss after loss; that's what the imp will make you do. I know, because I did it last night, losing 6 of my final 7 games.

neostreet: 1200 (165-165-19 (349))
monvieux: 1367 (357-291-16 (664))