When you’re losing, the rules feel unfair. That feeling is not evidence.

Losing produces a sensation that arrives dressed as an insight. Suddenly the format is wrong, the officiating is biased, the conditions favoured them, and all of it feels like analysis rather than the feeling of being behind looking for somewhere to go. Occasionally the rules genuinely are unfair, and the test is whether you would still think so from in front.

When the grievance shows up, write it down and look at it the next day, when the score is not live. If it still holds, raise it properly with somebody who can change it. If it has evaporated, you have learned something about your own instruments.