consistency!

Is it just me who has a massive problem with consistency?? In a good state, I can produce a batch of games at 80%+ accuracy, and then I produce something like this gem of a disaster:

Hardly a well-thought move from start to finish. I wish I could claim I were tired or something, but some days stuff like this happens. How do good chess players keep consistent???

Well, the first step is to realize what happened.

Here, after 10. O-O-O, you could have won a rook with 11. Bg5. (If black were to play Bb4 after that, c3 would counter-attack the bishop and stop them from stopping your skewer.)

Instead, you played 11. a3, which would normally be an OK move (I see you were trying to prevent the dark-squared bishop from developing w/ tempo) if not for the fact that it missed the skewer.

Of course, 16. Rf4 was the "disastrous" move that solidified the game (Rd5 was best), but you still weren't losing that badly. The final position is only -0.9, so you definitely still had a chance.

Additionally, you should understand you're not going to play like a beast all the time. Everyone plays an "embarrassing" game occasionally — sometimes multiple times in a row. Be sure to notice when your playing is not optimal and stop for the time being so you don't go on a downward spiral.

Yes, that's typical of me. I get brain-fog and can't see through a sequence of moves. I considered the skewer, but when I looked at the possible response Bb4, attacking my queen in turn, I got in a panic about how I would keep my queen safe while continuing to protect the skewering bishop. I mis-read where the c6 knight was, and had all sorts of nightmares of it swinging into action and attacking my queen's safe squares (which of course it can't), and was also panicked by the undefendable pawn on d4, and the thought that if we ended up exchanging rooks on d1, my king would be left on a white square with my opponent's light-square bishop still on the loose. With all that going on in my head, and very, very limited board vision, the chances of me making a vaguely appropriate move were near-nil. I see it in my opponents too: a complicated position, in which there are several possible moves, and they think for ages before hanging their queen in a move they almost certainly discounted straight away, and then chose again a few minutes later because it suddenly felt like redemption compared to the possible disasters they've calculated for all the responses. Chess is too darned difficult!!

Welcome to my world. I have an overthinking mind as well, and it causes me to mess up a lot too. It also causes me to take way too long to make moves, so I ultimately get "low-time brain" and start playing ridiculously awful moves while my opponent is chilling with several minutes left.

I'm definitely one to talk here, but I do my best 😬

Thanks loads! And you're right about stopping when a downward-spiral is looming!