So, You've Lost a Lot of Elo

Recently I managed to achieve the single New Year's Resolution that I set myself for 2023: to reach an Elo of 1000 in Rapid Chess. Having started the year with a rating of 471, I knew I had a fair way to go if I wanted to reach it. But I was determined. After months of improving my play, studying tactics, trying to ditch bad playing habits and analysing my games more or less every day I managed to break the 1000 ceiling and eventually achieve a peak rating of 1034, something which I am immensely proud of.

And then I had a string of losses and I lost over 100 ratings points in two weeks, tumbling from 1034 back to the low 900s. A position which at time of writing I'm still in.

There are a myriad posts from people on the Chess.com forums from people who have lost a lot of Elo in a short amount of time, making them doubt their own abilities or feel like they want to quit chess entirely. And it certainly does suck to put a lot of effort into something, like your chess performance, only for something bad to happen making it feel like all of that effort was for nothing. But it is not the end of the world, and you shouldn't be doubting yourself.

If you've lost a lot of Elo in a short timespan, like 100 points or more, this is for you. I want to list a few things you can do to help deal with a loss of Elo, and some positive psychological reminders for when this happens to you.

1. If You Are Upset or Angry, Take a Break

Losing one chess game usually isn't enough to upset someone. But when you lose lots of games in a row, you can enter a state of tilt: where you let your emotions control how you play and you perform at a standard that is much lower than what you are capable of. Often in this state, people will play more games and play more aggressively or riskily, desperately trying to regain the rating points they have lost only to lose even more in the process.

When you hit an Elo milestone, for example, and you see yourself dipping below that, it is very easy to start beating yourself up over how much of a "bad player" you are, or go into a state of rage where you have to prove to yourself that you can get your points back. But this won't help you at all, and even you likely know this. Which is why the first thing you should do after a large Elo drop is know when to stop playing for a while.

If you are tilted, or you can feel yourself entering this state, stop. You're chasing your losses and playing recklessly won't help you. Step away from chess for a bit and take a break. Go and do literally anything else: go for a walk, have a coffee, read a book, play an instrument, practice mindfulness or do breathing exercises. Just do something that will calm you down and take your mind off chess for a bit. Even if you don't feel like you're tilted, playing too much chess anyway can burn you out and still affect your performance, so still take a break.

Only come back to chess when you are in a mentally clear enough position to do so. Doing this will mean that when you are ready to return to chess, you will play at an equal or even slightly higher level than before, and not lower.

2. Actively Look At Your Mistakes

You've probably heard the saying "practice makes perfect". This, in my opinion, isn't strictly true. Practice is necessary to become better at something, but if you don't practice in the right way then it can slow down your improvement or even jeopardise it. 

In the case of chess, you obviously need to play a lot of chess to get better, but simply playing isn't enough. If you are making the same mistakes over and over again without actively doing anything to remedy them, you make these mistakes a part of your core chess performance. A better phrase to use here, then, is "pracitce makes permanent". Without identifying the areas where you are weakest, you won't get better at the game (or get your lost Elo back). If you find that you aren't improving, or you keep losing Elo and regaining it back to a certain point but no higher, this means you have hit a skill ceiling that you need to overcome.

There are two parts to doing this. First, if you regularly play on this website, look at your Chess.com insights for an overview of your performance. This gives you a lot of useful information about the areas where you are doing well, and the areas where you aren't doing so well. It may even highlight strengths and weaknesses in your play that you weren't aware of. Then make a list, physically or mentally, of the areas where your play is weaker, and actively focus on improving these weaknesses. For example, my Insights show me that I am very good at spotting checkmates in either one or two moves. However, there is a noticeable dip in me spotting checkmates in three or higher. This is an area that I know I need to improve.

Also, look at the results of your game by game shape. Why are you winning or losing your games? Do you have a lot of wild games where you only win because your opponent makes the last blunder? Do you have a lot of giveaway games where one mistake ruins everything for you? If you know the common reasons for why you win or lose games, you can also identify where you need improvement. For example, having a lot of giveaway games means you keep throwing away winning positions.

Second, once you've highlighted the weaknesses in your play, start doing exercises to improve them. YouTube has plenty of resources about chess technique that you can use which are easy and fun to watch, and websites like The Chess Journal also have plenty of learning resources. If you have a membership with Chess.com*, you can do an unlimited number of puzzles each day and tailor them based on your learning needs:

• Do you keep missing tactics? Select puzzles that deal with forks, pins, skewers, etc.
• Are you missing quick checkmates? Select puzzles that deal with checkmates.
• Do you keep losing in endgames? Select puzzles that deal with common endgame patterns.
• Are you getting lost in middlegames? Select puzzles that focus on middlegame technique.

Another good thing to do is to go back to your games that you have lost (or won) using the Analysis tool and replaying situations with the intention of finding the best move. Repeating this process will help to improve your chess technique and begin fixing your mistakes.

*As a sidenote, if you don't have a membership, Lichess also has a very good puzzle selection.

3. Look At How You Approach and Play Chess

There is such a thing as chess psychology, and it is to do with the state of mind a chess player has before, during, and after a game, and it is immensely important to doing well. You can know a lot of opening theory, tactics, endgame strategy and so on, but if your mind isn't in the right place, you won't play as well as you otherwise could. This can also be exploited by your opponent to give themselves an advantage.

When you lose a lot of Elo, it can really get to you mentally. You see the number next to your name lower than what it once was, and it makes you feel like you are a worse chess player. If you hang on to this mentality throughout your games, it will negatively affect your performance, meaning your Elo drops further, and it creates a negative feedback loop. If you find yourself in this state, you need to improve your chess psychology.

First, stop treating your losses, or a losing streak, as a sign of abject failure or worsening of performance. If you do this, you will carry your negative psychology into subsequent games and you once again run the risk of tilting hard. Chess is a game with a winner and a loser: someone has to win the game, and that won't always be you. Losing one game does not mean you suck, and neither does losing ten games. You should approach each loss as a learning experience not just for your technique, but also for your psychology.

Second, look back at games that you have lost and try to recall how you felt before, during, and after those games. Were you in a confident state of mind when you began the game, or were you tired or stressed? Did something happen during the game that startled or upset you? How did you react once the outcome of the game was more or less decided? Try to list some common emotions that you felt or still feel when you play and highlight the negative ones.

Below are a few questions to ask yourself about different situations you might find yourself in when playing a chess game:

• How do you approach games against players with higher ratings? Do you keep a cool head and play the best you can based on your ability, or do you let the nervousness get to you and miss easy moves and overthink positions?
• How do you approach games against players with lower ratings? Do you treat them like you would treat any other opponent and still play your best, or do you get arrogant or relaxed and start making risky moves hoping for an easy win?
• How do you react to having a winning position? Do you stay calm and press on to win the game, or do you get too excited and end up making a sloppy move that obliterates your position? Or, do you get too nervous and start playing inactively or start missing the necessary moves you need to win?
• How do you react to having a losing position? Do you forget any mistakes you might have made and focus solely on ways you can save the game or complicate things for your opponent, or do you let those mistakes get to you and end up more or less handing your opponent an easy win?
• How do you handle surprises during a game, like a move you didn't see or a sudden piece sacrifice from your opponent? Do you focus on the position and properly evaluate what has just happened, or do you get startled and nervous and lose your concentration?
• How do you handle a decisive game, like one where you are about to hit an Elo milestone or in a tournament? Do you treat the game the same as any other one, or does the pressure to win get to your head and you start making mistakes or risky moves without much payoff?
• How do you act when you win? Are you confident and proud ("I did my best and that's why I won") or are you arrogant and full of yourself ("the other guy sucked and that's why I won")?
• How do you act when you lose? Are you humble about it ("I did my best, but my opponent got the best of me") or are you angry and self-destructive ("I absolutely suck, I should quit this game")?

Once you have an idea of your actual chess psychology, you can work on improving it in the weaker areas. For example, if you find yourself getting flustered when a higher-rated opponent makes a surprising move, try to focus on the position itself and not on your opponent's rating. Or if you find that you constantly throw away winning positions because you get too excited and make a blunder, remember to keep your concentration on finding the moves you need to win, not on your excitement.

4. Remember to Look at the Bigger Picture

The final thing to look at here is arguably the most important. Many people who play chess tie their identities to it and treat each victory and loss as deeply personal. Which is why after a large drop in Elo, those same people feel like abject failures not just as chess players, but as people. It should go without saying that losing Elo does not make you a failure of a human being.

Improving at something is not a straight line: there are periods of elation where skill ceilings are cracked and new techniques are learned, and there are periods of stagnation where new skill ceilings are hit which require more understanding and tweaking of one's performance. Even after you do the things mentioned in this post, you're still going to have peaks and dips in your performance as you continue to improve at chess. It's also important to remember that your value as a person should not depend on how good of a chess player you are. Having a long winning streak doesn't make you the best player ever, and having a long losing streak doesn't make you the worst player ever. 

Chess is, at the end of the day, a game. And like any other game, it should be fun to play through the ups and downs. If you aren't enjoying the game, why else are you playing it? You need to enjoy playing chess as well as the process of improving, otherwise you will just be miserable, and that's no good! You're no doubt going to have another drop in Elo at some point, and it's important to remember that it not only happens, but that it's also okay for it to happen.

You will have days where you play your best and get good results, and you will have days where you play as if you hands are tied behind your back. But if you're playing the game regularly, practising well, working on your psychology, and overall enjoying the game, then no amount of lost Elo will prevent you from becoming the chess player you want to be.