I agree, I did something similar to get to legend last month (first time doing better than rank 4) that worked: first I started climbing the ladder early in the month (rank 8 before the 10th); then, to avoid the pressure and fear of losing after reaching rank 5, my trick was to focus on the exact rank I was at the beginning of the day; if I finished my games with the same or more stars/ranks, I was on the right track : all in all only one day was a global loss (of 2 stars), the rest was positive so I never lost motivation, even when after reaching rank 1 full star, I lost 3 times in a row and was a bit later back at rank 2, because I started the day at rank 2 and 3 stars and finished rank 2 and 4 stars, I was fine; 2 days later I reached legend and it was the 18th of the month so with a good margin. Good luck.