What's Holding You Back Below 1000 Elo?

Nothing stops me from having an overall high win rate in online chess games

I am also in the race. I joined in 2023 and climbed up the ladder quite quickly to reach Rapid 1200. Could not play for an year, and since March'2025 have been playing regularly, daily as many games as i can. I am hovering around 950. At 75 years of age, i do commit some mistakes and sometimes major blunders like loosing a queen or a piece. This is of course due to my negligence and not concentrating fully. Now, i feel i should not play more than two games a day, preferably only one game, concentrate fully and try not to loose the game.

Any advise, i openly welcome on my above points.

I am very sincere , ambitious and i want to climb the ladder, not only to my old rapid of 1200 but beyond that too

This guy is one of the best coaches I've had!

Can you explain this more? Like why it happens? I'm in this < 1000 range and it consistently feels like lower rated players play better...

You can encounter some quite good players at lower ratings. I'm sub-300, just lost a game where I played at over 90% accuracy, against another sub-300, because they out-played me decisively with over 90% accuracy themselves. Go figure. Here it is, for the interested:

The ban is coming, I can sense it

Why did you think you were "out-played decisively" / resign? Position is even and you're up a pawn. How could you possibly think that? This makes no sense after you played that.

Bits are dinstinctivly different from the normal player.

I do not see much value in playing against bits. Actually I advise my students not to play against bots.

Mine holding me from 1200 is headaches when I play 😭

I've been able to beat a 1700 rated bot before but my elo is only about 600 to 650 I guess I have trouble with getting a better position or it's stupid blunders from chess blindness

I'm not very good at openings, and I also need to work on my defense. I think I'm much better at attacking, but I lose most defensive situations.

But I'm almost there, just 57 Elo away from reaching 1000!

I’m open to any tips or advice!

I analysed it again later and realised the game had been even from start to finish. I am not a very confident person. I tend to get pessimistic. I couldn't see any way forwards and therefore thought I'd lose. Also I mis-read the position and thought my pawn-chain was about to crumble. But the fact remains, my opponent and I were both languishing in the 300 region and both turned out a 90%+ accuracy rate over a decent-lengthed game, so there are some players down there who aren't making blunders every couple of moves. There are lots of reasons we might be down there: being gloomy and negative, having a self-destructive streak, being the sort of person who feels bad about winning, being the sort of person who gets bored as soon as the end of the game is obvious. I still think that the reasons that hold me back have little to do with my actual chess. They're more down to my psychology. It's a weird. one.

So you're saying you analyzed it after my post and before your reply, and not before that, at the end of the game, before you posted confidently that you'd been "decisively out-played"?
I'm sorry, I can't understand why it takes any analysis to see that end position is even / white advantage +1, to a player who played it.

so true im 700... but can beat 1000s so many times, sometimes even 1100, 1200s... still stuck... and in daily games i even beat 1400s, 1500s rapid

Yup. It's frustrating how good lower level players tend to be at winning with near-perfect play from very clearly losing positions. I always make some subtle mistake and they seem to almost never. How are they training to do this? It's like they don't care about openings or tactics b/c they know they can win minor piece odds or even two minor piece odds in an open middle game end-game.
I can't even understand half of their moves on review. so frustrating. What are they getting that I'm not? I'm pretty sure I will never ever get any better after all this time. Wish I could just understand it though. I'm way better at openings and tactics then they are, so almost always get an advantage, but it means nothing b/c I can convert near zero percent of the time.