The Psychology of Tilt and How to Climb Back

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Hey everyone I know you were expecting the '10 Ways to Improve in Blitz' but I prefer to make improvement posts when myself am at my best and due to my large tilt I've chosen to write about this instead, thanks for understanding.

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I also want to make a Q/A post so if you have any questions write them in the comments, each person is allowed to write up to three questions each, hope to see many!

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Anyway back to our topic of today, TILT. This post is aimed at helping you understand when you are in tilt and the best ways to get out of tilt, please enjoy.

1.

Symptoms of Tilt

The most common sign of tilt is a large drop in rating, although there are many more signs of tilt which are

• Less accurate games
• Finding it hard to concentrate
• Failing to do tactics
• Unable to convert winning positions

Although most of these do lead to overall tilt it is possible to have one and be on a minor tilt.

2.

Things You Shouldn't do During Tilt

Tilt takes advantage of itself, if you are playing less accurate simply trying to brush it off and keep on playing is the worst thing to do, if you keep playing all you will end up doing is depressing yourself which is not what we want to happen.

Tilt consists of two aspects

• Psychology
• Play

Each one affects the other, if your morale goes down so does your play and everything else. Morale/Psychology is something that must be kept up, no matter the cost tilt is costing you morale must be kept up, if you let yourself fall into the tilt trap then you will find yourself going down a hole rather than just down the stairs, and trust me once in the whole it is very hard to climb out.

3.

Is Tilt Really Bad?

I know a lot of people are upset when they are in tilt, as explained above, but what many don't realise is that tilt isn't just here to crush your chess dreams but it could be to improve you in the long run. Let me explain.

When you tilt it's because you're not seeing things you used to see, you are not playing those great moves you used to play, why? Because your brain is rewiring itself, it has detached itself and is moving all that knowledge and writing it permanently in your brain, so basically after tilt you will never get as low as the rating. The thing you have to do is rewire it, in which I will explain in this next section.

4.

Re-wiring

Now coming back from tilt relies on two things,

1. How fast your brain is working
2. How much it is writing permanently in your brain

If you've learnt a lot and you are on another level you've probably just learnt a lot and so the more you are copying permanently in your brain the longer it can take, now in these cases you want to try and sit back for a while, you are not going to know how long it takes but rest, relaxation and sleep is good way to speed up this process.

But let's say you've done that you're rested, your playing better but you're not at your previous strength, this is easy, it just means you have to activate it and chess.com has everything you need!

Here are the things you should do to get back in shape!

1. Tactics, focus hard take your time
2. Puzzle Rush, getting all that pattern recognition back
3. Drills, connecting all those wires on how to mate, how to attack and how to defend!
4. Lessons, remind yourself of those important games
5. Openings, go back into your openings and remember all it's traps, weaknesses and strengths!

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it is really important to re-connect all those wires! And doing all of the above, you should be back in shape!

Finishing it off.

Remember this is my way of recovering from tilt, it will not necessarily help you all, but hopefully it will help most of you!

Remember the Q/A everyone, remember the worst thing you can do is get upset so stay positive!

You can all expect the 10 ways to get better in blitz and rapid once I have recovered from my tilt!

Stay safe, have fun

Yours

@destroyer8470