Jan. ’26 – June ’26

On New Year’s Eve 2025, I set a goal: an ELO of 1,850, roughly top 250 in the world at the time. It felt attainable, and in March I got within one win of it three times. I was sure I’d hit it within days. I’d started planning 1,900. Maybe 2,000.

Then I lost. And kept losing.

Between the weeks of March 20 and March 27, I dropped to 1,769. In April I hit 1,737. I finished the week of May 17 at 1,702, a rating I’d already held six months earlier. At one point I dipped into the 1,660s.

This was the most frustrating stretch of the whole experience. Claude analyzed my stats and told me the slump was just statistical variance. But if a single duel loss stings, then a losing streak feels like a referendum on your self-worth.

Somewhere in this stretch, something became clear: this needed to end.

I’d successfully swapped YouTube for GeoGuessr nearly two years earlier. Now I felt pressure. Forty-five minutes with coffee had become a stage I graded myself on every morning. I made myself a promise: hit 1,850, and I’d retire from trying.

Then, in June, as if to set a hard deadline for my goal, GeoGuessr announced—with about two weeks’ notice—that it was resetting everyone’s ELO to correct for inflation. My rank would hold, but “hit 1,850” was about to become “hit 1,175,” a number that meant nothing to me. I wanted 1,850, the one I’d been chasing for six months.

On June 22, nine days from the reset, I was at 1,717. Over the next three days I caught fire. I played 22 duels and won 16. On Friday, June 26, two days before the reset, I had pushed my ELO to 1,794.

Then I left work. The reset was landing at midnight on Sunday the 28th. If I wanted to reach 1,850, I had to do something I had never done before: play on the weekend.

That night, after the kids and my wife went to sleep, I went into our home office and fired up the queue. I played four duels, won three, and climbed to 1,834. What happened next is one of my favorite moments I’ve ever had as a gamer.