Drinking is never good for your chess. Also, stop multitasking. It will never get you inebriated.
If you have, for example, two evening of binge drinking and partying, and then don't drink anything for a week, do you think those two evening would still have a significant effect on your play? And how long do you think in general the effect of a party weekend would last?
"do you think those two evening would still have a significant effect on your play"
Yes, it would slow down your development. No one imagines a monk binge drinking. However, do you want to sing chants or mantras all your life? There might be a hot looking nun giving you the wink.
I see. Nevertheless, I can't imagine that a few parties are responsible for such a big fluctuation in my rating and for such a long period of time. Moreover, I sometimes play well even after a hard night and sometimes play worse even after living healthily for a while. Based on my observations, it definitely plays a role if you have been drinking, but it can't account for the whole phenomenon.
Greetings!
I am a 22-year-old chess lover, who learnt the game from his father at a very early age, but has played more or less intensively on Chess.com only for the last year. I have never played professionally or trained in a team, so my knowledge of openings or established strategies, for example, is limited and obtained mostly by experience and experimenting. I would describe myself as above-averagely intelligent, although not a genius, and fairly creative. Since I lack the nerves, time and long-term exhausting concentration for games longer than, say, 15 minutes, I am playing only blitz games, mostly 10 min, 5 min and 5|5 ones, sometimes experimenting with even stricter time control or bullet games.
At the beginning about a year ago I managed to reach a 1200 rating after some struggle and practice and was able to keep it. Later for some reason I started a new account, with wich I was able to keep a rating between 1200 and 1300 without a problem. My general question to the forum is related to the major fluctuations I have in my rating from time to time. With careful game I am able to approach or reach 1400 and keep it for a sufficient amount of time. On the other hand, I sometimes sink bellow 1100 and struggle to float up again. In such periods I can hardly surpass 1200 for many days. Since I play only blitz games, it is normal that I play 10 or more games per day, which with enough losses means up to 100 points rating fluctuation, so it is easy to lose a few hundred points in a week, if you lose often.
I have tried to look for some patterns, for example if I have slept well, if I was playing while multitasking, or if I have been drinking in the recent days. While some patterns seem to be statistically significant, others are completely random. Moreover, this lower rating remains sometimes for weeks even if I adjust my lifestyle in that time. I am just wondering what makes me miserable in chess in some periods of time and rather good in others, especially with such big differences in the rating. Does anyone have similar problems and how do they explain them? I believe it means I become less concentrated and intelligent for a long while, so I am searching for the reason. Would you have some advise how to prevent this? I would be glad to hear some opinions on reasons and prevention of the issue.
Thank you in advance and have a successful play!