How I became a GeoGuessr champion while raising three kids under six

In the summer of 2024, I had a bad habit. Every morning when I got to my office, I'd watch YouTube while I ate breakfast. When I finished eating, I'd watch for another 20 minutes. Then I'd start work. That's about 45 minutes every morning lost to the Internet.

During one of these binges, I came across a WIRED video of GeoGuessr player Trevor Rainbolt explaining his guesses. If you're not familiar: GeoGuessr drops you into a random Google Street View image somewhere in the world and asks you to guess where you are.

I've always loved geography, so I paid the $1.99 subscription fee and swapped YouTube for GeoGuessr.

Two years later, I had risen to become the 354th ranked player in the world – out of roughly 40,000 – and 33nd in the United States.

That in itself isn't that impressive. The tier above me — the nerds headed to the GeoGuessr World Cup in August — could easily beat me. What's impressive is that I got there while running my own consultancy and raising two young kids, with a third arriving right at the end of my run.

This is a story about how I used forty-five minutes before work to close the gap on Gen Z geography nerds with all day to practice.

It's also a story about what happened the night I finally hit my highest ranking — and why, a few days later, I quit trying entirely.

The Rise: June ‘24 – Dec. ‘24

You can get pretty good at GeoGuessr without ever competing. You just play for fun. Competitive GeoGuessr is something else entirely. In a duel, two players face the same location at the same time and both guess where it is. Closer wins the round. Do that over several rounds and someone gets knocked out.

Like a soccer pyramid, everyone in competitive GeoGuessr starts in the lowest league and gets promoted or relegated based on their standing at the end of the week. I entered at the bottom, Bronze I (there were only 10 leagues when I started), thinking that I'd earn a promotion or two at best.

But I climbed the pyramid fast, promoted five weeks straight. I'd study in the morning and use a second window from 4:30 to 5pm — right before I picked up my kids — to play a few duels. I never played on weekends. With kids, that wasn't an option.

I had a good system. After every duel, I'd examine my guesses and check Plonkit.net, a community-built site with country-specific guides, to see if I'd missed a clue. I built a Keynote where I'd paste in screenshots of my misses next with a note to myself. Here's a few for Denmark.