Question

Is there a preferred way? There are currently 1640 rows in the game table to go through and will be adding about 1200 every year.

SELECT `date` FROM `game` WHERE `date`<'2009-11-09' ORDER BY `date` DESC LIMIT 1;

0.0004 seconds

SELECT MAX(`date`) AS `date` FROM `game` WHERE `date`<'2009-11-09' LIMIT 1;

0.0006 seconds

The speeds were for the first time this ran. Each time after was 0.0002 for each.

mySQL:
Server: Localhost via UNIX socket
Server version: 5.1.37

PHP (shouldn’t be relevant):
5.x

Answer 1

Apply MySQL EXPLAIN and check the query plans. The second example may well have a cleaner plan, which is nice as it looks cleaner to my eye. (Once you remove the limit.)

A noddy test locally shows (no indexes).

Query 1:

EXPLAIN
SELECT  datex
FROM    TABLE_X x
WHERE   datex < "2009-10-20"
ORDER BY datex DESC
LIMIT 1

Plan

id select_type table type possible_keys key  key_len ref  rows Extra
1  SIMPLE      x     ALL  NULL          NULL NULL    NULL 2    Using where; Using filesort

Query 2:

EXPLAIN
SELECT  MAX( datex )
FROM    TABLE_X x
WHERE   datex < "2009-10-20"

Plan

id  select_type table type  possible_keys   key     key_len ref   rows Extra
1   SIMPLE      x     ALL   NULL            NULL    NULL    NULL  2    Using where