What's Holding You Back Below 1000 Elo?

I think what I meant by "outplayed" was that I couldn't find a single weakness in my opponent's play, and couldn't see any way I could possibly win. I still can't, but looking more calmly now, I can also see that my opponent has equally no obvious way to win, and I had no obvious weaknesses to exploit. The game was totally balanced, and I could reasonably have offered a draw. But resigning in a huff was bad behaviour on my part.

... more generally, when I look at my losing streaks, they usually start with one genuine hard-fought loss against a better player (see, I'm a bad loser!) followed by a mixture of early-resignations, extremely careless blunder-fests, and draws offered when I had mate in 1 because I didn't think I deserved to win. This isn't great. But it makes the point that the thing holding me back is psychology more than chess.

I go through phases. I will get despondent and self-destructive, and play terribly or resign early, and have a huge string of losses. Then I pull myself together and play as best I can, and get a long string of wins. It's not cheating, it's just being a bit of a psychological mess when it comes to competitive games, and I can only apologise and say I'm working on it!

It's simple... Any one of us can just sit down and cram through chess textbooks, watch tutorials and play the game religiously for 10 hours a day and within a few months, we would be at 1500 at least.

The problem is that most people are simply casual players. There is a certain level where you need to not only devote your time and energy but devote your mind to the game, where people don't just memorize the theories but understand the core mentality behind each play and feel the game on a subconscious level. This sort of understanding takes tremendous practice, effort and frustration. At least in my case, that sort of devotion just doesn't come easy =(

I hope that makes sense... There's obviously nothing wrong with being a casual player, it's just that past a certain point, even people who have a lot of potential often just can't give it their all.

I keep making simple blunders.

"1) not knowing enough opening theory. 2) Trouble converting a winning endgame. 3) Getting a good position out of the opening but then having no idea what the plan is. 4) or something else entirely?"

Definitely 1 & 3.

I actually don't have that much of an issue with 2, trouble converting a winning endgame. Once I'm at around a middle of the game, I can usually figure out a strategy to win. I usually lose solely because of blunders in the early or mid-game. Basically, I know one basic opening, which I always play with some variation depending on the opponent's repones. Then, I just try to survive mid-game and I can usually figure out a checkmate eventually. Sometimes, I find a checkmate in the mid-game, and other times, I can only find one after we've both lost a number of pieces. At this point, it really feels like I lose whenever I lose focus and make blunders.

There is also, of course, the-knowing-zero-strategies-and-openings. That's just because I'm new and a beginner. I plan on expanding my knowledge, but I keep procrastinating that.

Absolutely not. I've tried it, I've done it, spend hundreds of hours studying, nothing helps, can't break 1000. If you don't have the particular neurology to do the thing, you can't do it.

may be not analysing my common mistakes

can somebody teach me chess, or be my freind in chess.com

... and "chess intelligence" doesn't seem particularly closely-linked to other sorts of intelligence either. I used to be a member of a real life human chess club. The club's chair was a retired lawyer, incredibly knowledgeable about a broad range of subjects, perceptive, analytical, very clever problem-solver, but he was fairly weak at chess. One or two of the members were from unskilled professions, thoroughly uninspiring to talk to, struggled to operate a chess clock without help, but were utter super-demons when it came to playing chess! There is definitely something in some people's internal wiring that makes them predisposed to be good at chess. I don't doubt we all get better with practice, but I do think some of us have internal limits because we're not wired for it, and we're never going to be GMs no matter how well-coached or how much time we spend on it. But provided it's fun, it doesn't matter. Lesser mortals still have a right to play chess.

it's mainly the fact that i'm bad at chess

Wow

Well, resisting the temptation to be negative, resign balanced/won games and go all self-destructive has made a huge difference to me. I'm grateful for this thread. I'm now sticking at my games (apart from one burst of self-destruction a couple of days ago) and not resigning unless I see a truly huge material imbalance or an obvious mate. It's more than doubled my current rating, but it's also made me care less about ratings and more about the fun of the chess. I've gone from fun games in the wilds of the depths, through a layer of blundered queen games, and emerged into a layer of quite tricky opponents where really interesting things happen. I suppose I'll probably have a relapse and sink into the depths again at some point, but I hope not so badly.

I don't play as often, because I'm scared of losing rating. I only play when I'm fully awake and my higher brain functions are sufficiently active that I think I can play a decent game without too many blunders. I'm at 950 rapid, SO CLOSE, but it's slow.

My sanity keeps dropping into the red. If I can ignore the voices I might be able to reach 500.

NohJay, if you're worried about playing humans because of the rating situation, remember you can always play unrated games. If you care about rating, it's definitely not a good thing to play when you're tired.

Meanwhile, I'm quite happy. Somewhere up-thread I posted a game where I felt I'd been comprehensively out-played by my opponent, so I resigned, despite the fact that the position was actually completely balanced. The same thing happened today, a game where I knew I'd messed up two bits even without the review, and arrived at a position where anything I did would weaken my position, but my opponent hadn't got an obvious win either. I felt he'd played well, outplayed me. At the time I thought substantially better play than me, though afterwards the review engine reckoned only slightly better. But I didn't resign. Instead I went into king-shuffle mode as every other move looked outright bad, and a few moves later we ended up with a draw by repetition. On review, I think that was the best outcome I could have hoped for from the game. So I'm proud of myself for not reacting badly to a couple of errors, and instead grabbing a fair and sensible draw. That 4th factor, "something else", in my case psychology, does make a big difference. Here's the game: