facepalm I forgot a very important part of the query: row_count = Goal.update_all "completed = true", ["player_id = ? AND completed = false", player.id] If y

facepalm I forgot a very important part of the query: row_count = Goal.update_all "completed = true", ["player_id = ? AND completed = false", player.id] If you update where completed = false, the rowcount will only be 1 when the update works. (I've updated the blog post.)