Which rating? It looks like you are most active in Online Chess and Blitz and both of those ratings have dropped recently because of a normal series of a losses, with no precipitous unexplained losses.
Rating Reduced Before Making a Move
it was Online Chess, with 10 losses recorded in the blink of an eye :-(
Oh I see now. Actually, it was 8 losses with 0 moves.
This comes from "Tournaments Help":
How do I withdraw from a tournament?
You are allowed to withdraw from a tournament at any time using the Withdraw link located on the right hand side of any tournament homepage. However, withdrawing from a tournament while you have games in progress will automatically cause you to forfeit all of the tournament games on time which will negatively affect your timeout % ratio and your rating, even if no moves have been made.
Adding to what @notmtwain wrote: If the next round has been triggered, the new games are in progress even if no moves have been made.
yes, but in the past I have seen people withdraw without making a move and it having nil impact on their rating
You have to withdraw with no games left in the current round & prior to th next round starting in order to not lose rating points. The other option if the next round has started would be to allow all your games to time out. If less than four moves a loss does not drop your rating. The downside is your timeout ratio will increase. I would not get hung up over ratings. You will return to your true rating quick enough.
While it really stinks, the reality is in 20-30 games it will no longer matter much. Your rating will quickly go back to its true strength.
If you qualify for the next round of a tournament and say that round is only 85% complete, thats usualy a good time to withdraw, as you get excluded before the next round starts and there is no penalty. Unlucky!
I get hungup on ratings. Sad I know but a lot of people do. I have the Chess Scotland spreadsheet and put every OTB game on it as soon as I get home, no hanging around on the CS online grading system getting updated for me :)
You can timeout with no rating decrease. If you withdraw it's treated as a resignation so you lose rating points.
I have a chance of reaching what is the holy grail for many of us (2000) but I'd need to improve a lot in honesty. It is surprising how difficult it is to get that final 100. I will probably get there on chess.com but its the OTB rating that is the real achievement. Interestingly my OTB is 1687, about 230 lower than chess.com
I withdrew from a tourney before making a move in any of my games and was under the impression that may rating wouldn't be altered. However to my shock my rating was reduced by around 60 points. Has anyone else had a similar experience?