I am NOT improving!

This week I am feeling especially STUPID! I played some games (here and in other sites) and lost a lot of them...I am not a great player but I really used to play much better than that. After a game I lose because of some blunder or unsound sacrifice, I just sit down and wonder: "What the f**** is happening to me?" and I know exactly what the unfortunate moves were, but it's too late.

Please notice that I am studying tactics (diagrams: forks/discoveries/deflection...), and in every game I can't fight the desire to sacrifice a piece for a "better" position. I know a sacrifice must be deeply calculated, but...again, I really don't know what's happening to me. May be I am just an idiot and I have to stop playing chess right now. 

Yes, 'fish' is the proper term...

Everyone has good and bad spells. Personally I find taking about a week off of chess altogether helps me recover well.

I know I am dramatizing the situation, may be too much. Anyway, thanks guys.

If you are making the same mistakes over and over just analyse what it is about your thought processes that is getting these errors. You gave a hint by saying you are concentrating on tactics at the moment, people always say study tactics to improve but the danger is you do so many 'white to play and win' problems that you think that every position out of the opening has a 3 move combination lurking there. Heres some breaking news - most chess positions have no tactical opportunities at all, if your opponent has played solidly.

Stick to as limited an opening repertoire as you need (or can get away with) and really study the guts out of those few systems, its better to know 3 or 4 openings well than a dozen where you only know the moves, but nothing about the strategic ideas for the middlegame. Don't burden yourself with multiple plans, stick to short term attainable goals like preparing a particular pawn break or trying to exchange off a worse minor piece. Once that mission is accomplished, look for another stress free way of improving your position and only look for tactical shots if your opponent makes what looks like a bad move.

Simple Chess by Michael Stean is a great (and concise) book to read to get an idea of this style of play. I'm sure your results will get better if you stop trying for brilliancies and just play solid chess..

It is possible to put too much pressure on yourself, when you probably should take a break. Even if you obsess over chess and want to really push hard to be good, you have to remain conscious of the fact, you are a human being, not a machine. You have other needs, that if aren't met, you will find yourself all out of wack. Try taking a break, if more chess study/play isn't getting you anywhere. Then maybe you will see what you were missing to help you improve otherwise. It could be a two fold problem.

Do you study the computer analysis of your games and look at the variations they proposed could take place?

Have you considered the possibility that you have been cheated on other sites? I know I was cheated on yahoo. Go play in person. It will be one less thing on your mind.

Besides, if it is ratings that you are using to decide your progress, you are probably forgetting it is just a number. I have two ID's on my Chessmaster game. One 1984 and one is 1335. My ratings on here for live and correspondence  1403 and 1563 respectively. The tactics trainer rates me at about 1280 to 1380 and the Mentor says 1775. In the end the are all numbers. All are somewhat manipulatible and subjective. Stop worrying about what others think of you, or what they might think of you, take a load off, and when you are up to it. Go have fun and play some chess.

@ Vease: Yes, I see combinations eveywhere, unfortunately! I already have Simple Chess, and I am going to read it. Thank you.

@nameno1had: I think that taking a little break isn't a bad idea. And yes, I often get my games analyzed with Chess master. Thank you for your empathy!

Maybe you've got Tactics brain. I had Tactics Brain once... I still get occasional episodes.

You do a million or so tactics problems and you develop this deep-seated belief that in every middle-game position there's a killer knock-out punch that requires you to win brilliantly, if possible by sac'ing your Queen, etc.

Tactics brain... Fear it.

I don't know if I have Tactics brain, but yeah, that's the point! I certainly have to study positional play, but I don't know if it's a good thing for me. May be some crystal clear and "simple" positional games will help!

 Yosriv, while I sadly don't feel like typing up everything I know about chess, I quickly reviewed many of your games and I found a few re-occuring errors; incuding re-taking after an exchange with the wrong piece (you often take with a pawn which messes up your pawn structure and leave your pieces on bad squares rather than taking with the correct piece), going for non-existant attacks which include sacrifices for no compensation, trying to go for very simple threats which if responded to correctly by your opponent leave you in bad positions, trading pieces for no reason, wasting to many tempos for the bishop pair when the situation does not call for it, moving your king to much, and failing to realize opponents 1-2 move threats.   

I hope you take all of this to heart as I just told you what a chess coach would tell you after charging you $150 over hours of private lessons and game reviews.

I will right the next post on how can you help stop, or at least minimize, these bad habits.

Yeah, been there... You have to *know* the risky combination is sound before committing to it. Tactics problems don't (so much) instill that.

Check out Dan Heisman's A Guide to Chess Improvement; it's very practical, and I found it refreshing. He's great at putting priority on Safety First, and doing the deep calculation when it's needed (and only when it's needed).

Of course, Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess is one of many good books that lay down the foundation for a more positional approach to any given chess position.

Best of luck!

Dunno if this will help but

Sometimes I get the feeling before playing a move that goes something like "I know this is wrong but..."

It could be I'm too tired/lazy to calculate it again or do some double checking.  It could be the move is what I usually play in similar looking positions (but not sure about the current one).  Maybe the move is just flashy and cool and I want to play it.

So this goes along with what deepgreen said about ultimately superficial reasons for choosing a move.  Taking time off helps because we can lose some of that auto-move mentality and are more or less forced to go back to actually examining moves in each position.

Or basically just stop being lazy about the moves you chose :)

Thank you for taking a look to my humble games 9ll_Elite_9ll, and also for the good advice!

You are right, I usually make too many useless moves, I think it requires a lot of work to fix that.

@DeepGreene: once again, thank you!

@waffllemaster: "I know this is wrong but..." I don't know why this sentence is always in my head

@Yosriv

Do you have the Chessmaster version with the interactive Chess School? That helped me a good bit to go from 1200 to 1350. I tend to think of it, being a lot like this place except you have the benefit of forums, live human opponents and you have a cross reference of information, between the two. I would try to take advantage of them both.

One other thing that could help, I would be willing to play you unrated, any style, to give you any tips that I think would help you, in a more direct manner.

@nameno1had

I have the Chessmaster 10th edition, I think it contains the interactive chess school feature.

And about playing some unrated games against (with) you, why not! Thanks man

-You can improve how you 're-take' after an exchange of pieces by noting how the 're-take' may 1. hurt your pawn structure or improve it (isolated pawns, doubled pawns, backward pawns*if you don't know what these pawn structures are I can tell you in another post* 2. how it may misplace a piece or improve a pieces activity (activity as in how many places the piece can move) 3. If re-capturing with a certain piece, note if it will leave any holes in your position 4. If re-capturing with a piece, note if it will leave any of your pieces undefended

^you can specifically train on which piece to re-capture by going over games of strong players* and after an exchange of pieces you can take 30 seconds in your mind and predict how the strong player will re-capture after an exchange, then check how the strong player actually re-captures and correct your thought process if you came to the wrong conclusion. *by 'strong player' I mean anyone over 2000 rating, even turn based games on chess.com of any player over 2000 would work great. 

- Going after non existant attacks by sacrificing material is a bad habit that will keep you weak forever. It should be noted a master giving up a pawn for a highly strategic advantage in a complex opening is completley differant than a 1100 giving up a bishop for a couple of checks.  At your level it is best to usually only go for attacks if you do in depth calculation and see obvious material gains (or a checkmate).  

^From your chronic use of these bad sacrifices, until you get stronger I suggest you train this by avoiding them completley in your games unless you are pretty sure you see concrete lines that give you a solid material advantage. 

- Playing 'hope' chess, going for threats that if responded to correclty will leave you in bad positions, is a bad way to play chess and will also keep you from improving.  You can avoid these by only going for threats if your opponent can not defend the threat without making his position worse (making his pieces less active, leaving his king less defended, ect).  And before making threats you should calculate many moves ahead if your opponent has any counter attacks to your threats, and if you see they have a good response DONT play the move. 

-Trading pieces for no real reason also is a bad habit that habituatlly will often make your play dull, often weakens your position, gives up the initiative, and often lowers your chances of tactical possibilities.  The only real reasons you should trade pieces are if your winning by a substantial amount of material and bring the game to an endgame, are in a highly cramped position, or want to get rid of your inactive pieces.   

^ you can also go over strong players games and see what they do instead of trading pieces is various positions, but also remember sometimes trading may be correct, you can only learn from practice

-Wasting to many tempo for bishop pair, often in closed positions I saw you using 2, 3, and even 4 knight moves dont to trade your (surprisingly active or at least equal) knight for a bishop which was not doing much. 

^Only trade your knight for opponents bishop if 1. the position is very open (not that many pawns) 2. your knight is useless 3. your opponents bishop is a super power (believe me these are rarer than many people may think)

-Your kings only move early on should usually be to castle, and only in the endgame when the queens and off the board and almost all the pieces are off the board should your king start being a player, If possible use other pieces instead of your king for simple tasks

-Failing to realize 1-2 move threats, this pretty much haunts everyone to differant extents all the way up to grandmaster level when we see Kramnik missing mate in 1s against super computers, but it can be easily avoided by looking after every move your opponent makes 1. Why he made that move 2. What pieces is he directly attacking 3. What pieces he can move for a discovered attack 4. any forks he can do with his knights 5. Is he now threatening checkmate some how.  And after you decide a move and calculate various responses check that you are not now 1. leaving any pieces undefended 2. making holes in your position 3. missing opportunities to gain material 4. putting the piece your moving on to a square it can be taken.

^Also I found as a developing player (while it does not work in blitz) it helped in correspondence and longer time conrol (at least 25 minutes a side) once every 5-10 moves to look at every piece on the board and see what they defend, attack, and possible squares they can go to in the future; doing this you may even realize you and your opponent missed a tactic for many moves.  If it is a non correspondence game I suggest you do this mostly on your opponents time though as to avoid time trouble. 

Hope this helped a little bit...

No, this helped me a lot, actually! Thanks for taking so much time to enlighten my judgement!

 Allmost all the games you played (and lost) was against opponents ranked several houndred points higher than you. You are supposed to loose quite often then. Set the search interalval to +-50 points to meet someone with the same ranking as you to get your confidence up.