I know the feeling, I tilted 90 points 3 months ago.
I worked with a coach on a plan (chess wise), added mental and physical health as well to turns things around.
It was very recently I got my confidence back and playing well again.
Also talk to friends, family and fellow chess players. It’s important that you enjoy life outside of chess.
Congratulations on discovering Chess is hard…
Levy is an amazing teacher and getting some books is not a bad thing. What is a bad thing is expecting too much. Play the game, enjoy the game and that’s all you need. Puzzles are ok but don’t be too bothered about them; 25 a day is enough. Puzzle rating is fantasyland.
Lichess and Chess dot com are different animals with Chess dot com users saying that Lichess is ‘easier’ and the ratings don’t line up.
Here’s what I got told.
Play lots of games but avoid too much blitz. Chess bots are weird and are not ‘human’ in the way they play. Playing humans will improve your game more than playing bots.
Analyse everything.
Make full use of the lessons.
And (This was a shock)
Play 1 game of ‘Chess 960’ on Chess dot com every day.
[Chess960 or ‘Fischer Random’ takes away the opening theory and gets you enjoying playing creatively.]
Remember…
King Safety & Checkmating your opponent is what this game is about (that’s as simple as it gets)
Hope you feel better about how you progress with this game and your enjoyment is the main goal. Chess should bring you a lifetime of happiness.
Dear Patrick,
I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.
You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.
In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career. 
Good luck with your games!
Dear Patrick,
I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.
You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.
In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.
Good luck with your games!
Great. I post an important, emotional post and it is immediately jumped on by people trying to sell their business. This is what I mean about chess being full of vanity narcissists.
Tell you what, how about you coach me for free? Better yet, why not just go away? Thanks.
Dear Patrick,
I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.
You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.
In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.
Good luck with your games!
Great. I post an important, emotional post and it is immediately jumped on by people trying to sell their business. This is what I mean about chess being full of vanity narcissists.
Tell you what, how about you coach me for free? Better yet, why not just go away? Thanks.
Dear Patrick,
I didn't say that you should take lessons from me, it wasn't an advertisement, I just told you the truth and wanted to help you, because as I experienced with most of my students, the biggest problem - as a beginner - is the lack of a structured study plan and the right thinking method (tactical and strategic). So, I think it's not so correct to attack me because of that.
Take a break. All the information you’ve been taking on will sink in given time… so long as you don’t overload yourself some more.
Try playing only unrated rapid and analyzing for say a month, then come back to rated and give every game your all.
That’s how I passed 2200, maybe it’ll work to get you back in top form 
I've gone on 3-4 100-150 point tilts. I usually just take a break and come back later. Weather it be a day or a month, I come back when I feel like I can play. Btw, starting at 1500 is essentially impossible. Most people will drop from that rating. Most people struggle to get to 1000 after 2 months of constant grinding. I'd stop and take a break.
Great. I post an important, emotional post and it is immediately jumped on by people trying to sell their business. This is what I mean about chess being full of vanity narcissists.
Tell you what, how about you coach me for free? Better yet, why not just go away? Thanks.
Yes, that @Bgabor91 is really annoying with his advertisements. And he's even saying: " it wasn't an advertisement" LOL!
@Bgabor91. That forum is full of your spam. Full of your advertisements. Full of your lessons for 70 USD/hour?! LOL?! Your max should be 20. You're just a regular FM!!! Cmon! Come back to earth! It's easy to find an experienced GM for 30-40 USD/hour!
And, please, stop spamming the forum!
@PathOfNerd Maybe I'm just a regular Fide Master, but it doesn't mean that I cannot be a good coach and I cannot have useful advices. Take a look at the notes on my profile or my forum ( https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-lessons/feedbacks-from-my-services ), and you can see how many players are grateful for my private lessons.
And again, I post these general things because a lot of players just don't think about this structured study plans and with the help of that, many players sent me kind direct messages for my advices even if they didn't take private lessons from me. And that's more important to me than the messages, like yours.
Throughout my chess journey I've always had setbacks. But whenever I took a step backward, it always led to me taking two steps forward. Sometimes failure in life leads to improvement. Learn from your mistakes and try again.
Its a troll
To the OP:
LiChess and Chess.com use the Gecko-2 and Gecko-1 ELO rating system respectively. The difference between the two systems is that Gecko-2 has a velocity brake, this means your rating once stable will not fall or rise as quickly as with Gecko-1. Chess.com lacks this, so given the high number of games you play each day you should expect your Chess.com rating to yo-yo far more than on LiChess.
Frankly if the game is making you ill you should stop playing.
If you can't do this have more than one aim which you can switch between. For example, hitting 2500+ on puzzles or beating Bot-X/Y/Z ten times in a row or just play the full range of chess formats - long game formats are much less stressful.
Patrick, you gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. Time for you to fold 'em.
Hi Patrick,
Everyone who has achieved great success in the chess world can relate to your frustrations. It seems that a lot is bothering you, hence its important to take a step back and calm down for a moment. As a kind human being, I want to try and help address some of the problems you are dealing with, and no its not for personal profit.
Playing "every day for 3 years" on Lichess certainly demonstrates your passion for the game, but of course it doesn't translate into being a good player. To improve at the game, you need a properly structured training plan. This is something you can arrange yourself without the assistance of a coach.
I can say this for a fact because that's what I did myself. I am a self trained master who got the NM title in just 4 and a half years of playing competitively, starting from a complete novice who didn't even know how to move the pieces. Getting to 2000 was very easy for me, but once I reached expert level, I was hit with a brick wall that I couldn't seem to easily pass.
The key is to having your goals written down on paper, and then preparing a dedicated plan to help better your game. For example, say you want to reach 1600 OTB, try doing 10 tactics a day & watch 1 game analysis video per day from a famous youtuber. I personally acquired a tremendous wealth of chess knowledge just by watching some of kingscrusher's (Gavriel Tryfon's) older videos on games from some of history's greatest players (Fisher, Tal, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi, Alehkine, Topalov, Kraminik, Anand, Carlsen etc.). While his radio shows are also instructive and entertaining, I recommend you to try and look at his older videos of the above players that are specifically between 15-20 minutes long. He goes through each move at a relatively slow pace so amateur viewers can digest explanations, while also giving you chances to pause at critical moments so you can try to find the best continuation. Tryfon himself is far from a world class player, but the way how he pitches his game analyses videos is much better than most chess youtubers out there IMO. The best part about it is, that its completely free on youtube! I could almost say its thanks to him that I got my title, therefore I do feel somewhat guilty and will probably give him a donation eventually.
Even if you think you "don't have time" to do the above plan, in reality YOU DO. Time management is absolutely crucial! If you are a full time working employee like I am, try waking up earlier or watch the video on the subway to work/lunch hour.
For the tactics part, make sure you carefully review each problem you got wrong. Since you have a chess.com gold membership, you should have access to a fair amount of features that this website has to offer. Although I personally do prefer the chesstempo tactics training software, which I also pay an annual gold membership for (despite having a free lifetime diamond membership on chess.com). It has a better database of OTB games played, and hence is better for preparing openings.
Not everyone might agree with me on saying this, but I also recommend refraining from blitz chess. Aim for slower time controls. if there is a competitive OTB club near you, try registering for weekly meetups for 90+30 ECF rated games. We remember much better the games that we played on longer time controls, especially our errors.
Afterwards, analyze with your friends at the bar or whatever social meetups that you usually go to.
***You are deeply influenced by those who you surround yourself with, so try and find like minded people with similar goals, and I can guarantee that such people exist. These are your rivals. They will hold you accountable, and push you to be better. For me in my hometown Ottawa, Ontario, it was FM Zach Dukic, Adam Adriaanse & Francesco Dune.
We travelled to tournaments together, triumphed together, failed together, studied together and clashed against one another on several occasions. Think about Naruto, who initially sucked as a ninja and was ridiculed by his peers for being different. Despite his shortcomings though, he gradually overcame adversity by not giving up. I'm pretty sure Sasuke, Rock Lee, Shikimaru & Gara had huge roles to play as rivals who pushed him to his limits. Each of those kids all had common goals of becoming Chunins then Jonins, with Naruto eventually becoming Hokage.
Improvement is certainly not a straight line up my friend. It is a long bumpy road with many ups and downs, but failure consists of the building blocks for success. I got embarrassing scores of 1.5/8 at the 2017 Canadian closed chess championship and 0.5/5 at the 2017 Ontario Open. In the former tournament I was on a six game losing streak and couldn't get off the bottom board after round 4.
All GM's have had similar experiences in their journey's, but they succeeded by persisting. That's because their passionate. When I win a long hard fought chess game, it brings true euphoria. But even if I lose to a stronger player, it feels bad at first but then I get inspired and constantly want more chess. That's why I too succeeded.
Never give up on your dreams.
Evolving as a chess player can be done for free, but I believe that spending money is important regardless of how reluctant some people might want to. I have a library consisting of over 30 bought chess books that I have mostly read (and I still have much more to learn ). Some people spend lots of money on playing sports like hockey or stupid destructive vices like dozens of cigarette packs per year. For me its chess books and tournaments, because I simply love this game!
If you want Patrick, I can give you 4 free 1 hour lessons of chess coaching, no strings attached.
I hope you feel better after reading this.
Be blessed that you are in a free country where its easy to play OTB chess, because I don't have those same privileges right now.
Sincerely S M
I am 1850 puzzle rating, I have played chess every day for 3 years on Lichess and recently moved here. I bought premium, I analyse all of my games, I watch GothamChess, John Bartholomew and more on Youtube, I even bought a couple of chess books. All of this effort has achieved precisely nothing. I began as a 1500 on this website and I have been on a steady losing streak ever since, plummeting all the way down to 1200 has been so depressing for me, I have actually been struggling with my mental health because of chess. How can so many people be better than me, despite all of my hard work? Why am I so incapable of becoming better at a simple board game? I think about chess night and day, obsessed with how I can improve and nothing ever helps. I am so done with this game. It is full of people memorising stupid opening traps and trying to charge you lots of money to improve, there is absolutely no sportsmanship in chess, it is all about narcissists trying to reach the top. My life has taken a serious hit because of this game and it is going to take me a while to recover. I am 33 years old btw so not young or anything, but I have never failed at anything so hard in all my life. I just wondered if anyone else has gone through this - did you see a counsellor, quit the game, or something else? This game has been keeping me awake at night recently and my ego is shattered.