dealing with tilt and wanting to give up

most frustrating feeling in the world to slowly be grinding my rating up day after day and then suddenly just start losing like 6 times in a row and then like a week of grinding suddenly goes out the window almost instantly. what makes matters worse is the demoralization this causes just leads to more losses and the next thing i know my rating has dropped like over 50 points. it makes it almost impossible to tell if I am improving at all and makes me want to give up. seriously, how many years of constantly studying chess and endlessly doing puzzles does it take before I can expect to play well consistently? do you have to start playing at like age 5 to have any hope of being anything but a hack? or is this just indicative that trying to get good at chess is a waste of time/unrealistic goal for me?

the higher you rank up the stronger the opponents become. remember that if you're playing someone with equal elo you both have 50/50 chance to win or lose. my advice is to treat each game independently of each other regardless of losing 10 or 20 games prior. take a break, watch a movie, go for a stroll and then play again with a fresh mindset. I've lost 200 elo in a day but got it back after dont give up!

One thing coach Dan Heisman points out is that ratings never represent your true skill. For example after you lose a game are you a worse player than you were an hour ago? Of course not. Rating only shadows the true skill. Sometimes it goes higher, sometimes lower, but your true skill is fairly constant.

Improvement does take many years, and many hours a day. Are you reviewing every game you play? At the very least, after each game, compare the opening to a database to see who left book (or common moves) first.

Even better is to identify  your biggest mistake. It can be something concrete like "I blundered a tactic" or something abstract like "I got into time pressure even though the position wasn't tactical." There are two important things associated with this:

1) You write down you main mistake because over time this allows you to see your most common mistakes... this shows you what you need to work on

2) You come up with solutions to not repeat the same mistakes again and again. It's possible to play hundreds of thousands of games an not improve https://www.chess.com/member/PeaceMyFriend

But if you consciously make an effort to fix your mistakes then you will improve.

A similar method can be used for tactics. Retry your failed puzzles... and not only retry them, but think about them. Why did you fail? What will you do differently next time? Was it sloppy calculation? What kinds of moves were you missing. Did you miss a check? Or was it a new pattern you'd never seen before? What will you do to ensure you remember that pattern? Will you review it a few times over the next few weeks?

etc.

Bottom line is, improvement takes work, and you're required to change. If you do the same things over and over you'll only stay the same... and watching your rating go up and down week to week has nothing to do with anything. It's a complete distraction.

"Worry about what you learn, and your rating will take care of itself"

But if you worry about your rating? Then you might get stuck forever.

i think the problem is i switched from playing rapid to blitz in an effort to get my rating in blitz a little bit closer to my rapid rating of 1200, but I can't even get to 1000. since switching to blitz i longer really benefit from analyzing my losses because it's always just the same problem over and over, something along the lines of: "I don't have enough time to fully evaluate my position so I picked a bad move". I just don't know how to learn anything from this problem. it's becoming incredibly frustrating but at the same time I don't want to be restricted to only playing rapid games, particularly because blitz seems to basically be all anyone cares about anymore in the chess world.

I started playing chess 2 years ago and I’m OK, so you don’t have to “start early to have hope of being anything but a hack” (in your words)

The best way to deal with tilt is to take a break - sometimes up to a week. It helps a LOT

Blitz only gives you enough time to play the ideas and patterns in your long term memory... you don't get better at blitz by playing blitz. You get better at blitz by playing long games and studying. That's what gets ideas and patterns into your long term memory. That's why the best blitz players in the world are GMs (a title you can only get by playing long time control OTB tournament games... some games last as long as 7 hours!)

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But playing blitz can pump up your blitz rating a few 100 points due to becoming accustomed to the speed. Some players even develop separate opening repertoires. One for regular games and one for blitz. That's why the top 20 blitz list is not identical to the top 20 FIDE rating list for OTB long time control games.

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Also, ratings are not an absolute measure. In fact the rating formula works perfectly with negative numbers. In other words when websites (such as chess.com) use the rating formula, they're free to set the average anywhere.

Additionally, the average is moved by elements outside of chess.com's control. For example a cheater who wins a lot of games and is then banned permanently deletes rating points from a pool. A new player who joins chess.com to try it out, loses a few games then quits forever, has permanently injected rating points into the pool.

The point of this is that 1300 blitz is never the same as 1300 rapid. For players near your rating your blitz is always lower... so don't worry about making them equal, they're two different things.

“you don't get better at blitz by playing blitz” is honestly the most true piece of advice I’ve heard when it comes to getting better at blitz. 

I think it's because your focus is on improving your rating so the losses become tough.  I'm kind of the same way too but do gain enjoyment out of chess if it's a close game and I still lose.  If the losses stack up I usually stop playing and do something else. 👍

I started at 3

I can relate to this. I've been aiming for 2000 rating for pretty much the past 2 years. I keep fluctuating between about 1750 and 1950. Just when I think I'm getting close, I'll start going on a huge losing streak and drop 100 points. It's so frustrating.

I think the solution is to take a break from grinding when you find yourself going on a losing streak. Instead, analyse your losses, watch videos and solve puzzles. Then go back to the grind when you're feeling better, so you don't damage your rating too much.

where did you get the idea that the chess world only cares about blitz? Try not to conflate the chess media and forum posts with the chess world. Blitz is loved by many young players and the online chess media is often aimed at this group as they are very active online, but all formats are equally loved by millions of chess players. Personally, I dont play blitz because I'm too slow, blunder everything, and dont enjoy the format.

i think what gave me that idea is as you said, the "chess media". whenever i watch chess tv or anything of that nature (with the exception of pog champs) it's exclusively showing something along the lines of 3 minute speed chess. literally nothing else ever gets shown or covered so I have just come to assume that blitz is the only form of chess considered to be relevent by the chess community.

people only play blitz on chesstv because no one wants to watch a long rapid game (ok, i do, but in general, people dont find super long games entertaining)

Yes, every time I get on megatilt I feel really depressed. And especially since I play 10 min games for months and then wipe out all that progress because I got too antsy and played 3 min games.

i would much rather watch one rapid game than several 3 minute games. it is more interesting for numerous reasons

I can't focus on the screen for too long because my brain just doesn't work that way, so I enjoy the three minute games more than rapid games, and I enjoy watching bullet more than watching blitz.

and that kind of brings me back to my original point that all anybody seems to care about anymore is blitz. i don't know, i really find rapid games a lot more interesting to watch because I can actually keep up with what's going on, but i guess nobody else sees it that way.

If you go to a tournament no one cares about your online blitz rating (or any online rating). In general OTB ratings are much more respected, it's just the flood of noobs from social media are giving you the wrong impression.

And also there is coverage of "rapid" games. In the link below they're playing 25 + 10 you might enjoy watching something like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NkMlfw9ncQ

Kevin, I think you know the answer. You prefer rapid and enjoy the games, blitz gets you down and you're only playing it because it appears popular. Most great blitz players honed their skills on longer time controls. Ditch the blitz and play what you enjoy. You can always come back to it later on.

i definitely really want to get into otb but cannot because my chess club has cancelled all tournaments for months now because of covid