For puzzles you get tired after doing some.
For games it is also fatigue, but also mental imbalance: being groggy after a loss.
The fix is to stop playing after a loss and analyse the lost game first, so as to learn from your mistake while the imprint is still fresh and channel the negative emotions of the loss towards a positive goal: improving.
There's some weird psychological phenomenon when I play chess that causes me to either win or lose in streaks. I alternate between these winning and losing streaks with little deviation in between (ex. WWWWLLLWWWLLLLLWWW). This happens in ALL time controls as long as I'm playing people within my rating range, and it also happens in puzzles. In puzzles, I win in streaks of 4 or 5 very often, but as soon as I hit 5, my brain apparently goes into sleep mode. In games, the streaks are usually of 4 or 5 as well. It's like there are two separate people inside of me who take turns every few games. One is probably 1600 rapid, and the other is 1200. The 1600 side is where all my tactics training goes, and the other side makes mistakes I would never make during my winning streaks. At first, I thought that if I take breaks right before my losing streaks occur, I can avoid them, but I either haven't been able to determine exactly when they will occur, or that's not the issue. Does anyone else have this problem?