Coping with a bad loss?

Suppose you are up material, have a good position against someone lower rated than you and you must win this game to get a shot at some prize but you got swindle in the end and lost the game.

How does one cope with a bad loss? You have to play the next game on the same day. You need to clear that game off your head but you can't.

What kind of strategies does one use?

You could try flagellation. A cat-o'-nine-tails fits into any luggage, so you could always use it.

Your just annoyed at yourself when that happens.  Take what lessons you can from the defeat, then forget it and move on.  I usually find I come back stronger each time that happens to me, so in a way its good to have the wind taken out of your sails every now and then. I was undefeated for 18 months until recently where I played a really stupid move on move 6.  By move 10 I was looking at checkmate. I haven't been beaten like that since I was a pup. It wasn't nice but I had to laugh because there was nothing else I could do.

Get angry with myself, look at it for a moment in disbelief and then say to myself "i have to let it go until later"  "Then i will go over all my games and take notes until then i have to exact my revenge on my new opponent" hahaha.

Meh, play enough games that individual games no longer stand out and chess.com just becomes looking at a series of unrelated positions.

It's easier said than done. When this kind of thing happens to me I'm always aware that I'm not supposed to get mad about it, but it's often still too hard not to, if it and the next game are only a day apart.

Your opponent didn't beat you, because there is no opponent.  He is just you in another form.  You beat yourself.   Disconnect the opponent from the equation and just play the board.  Works for me.   

My strategy for coping with a bad loss? Let's see...

You know that scene at the end of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith where the broken body of Darth Vader is encased in a robotic outer layer and he asks Palpatine what happened to Padme and Palpatine was all like "you killed her" and Vader went mental with the force, destroying the medical facility and letting out an anguished roar of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That's my strategy for coping with a bad loss. But without the force bit. Or the robots.

Aron Nimzovich, author of perhaps the greatest book on chess theory ever written, who, upon being defeated in a game, threw the pieces to the floor and jumped on the table screaming, "Why must I lose to this idiot?"

It depends on how annoying the loss is. If you feel that you played better but made some random mistake at the end, probably due to time pressure, I'm sorry, but I can't give the opponent as much credit for that compared to outplaying me from the start. Sure it's still my fault, but not as much if I never had an advantage, and I guess that just takes away confidence from me. Some losses I'm totally fine with (as long as I played well) but some I'm absolutely disgusted with (and these games tend to feature elementary blunders). At least it goes away in several days no matter what.

A loss is a loss.  Try to learn from it, then move on to the next game.  Somebody has to loose in chess.  lol

Mark 9:47 has the right idea:

"And if thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out: it is good for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell"

My interpretation of this wisdom caused me to smash up a few keyboards in the early days. I've found more balance recently, instead I jam pencils up my nose and into my brain, I care a little less with each loss. 

Usually I log off the website and decide I'll continue with any other games once I have done something else.  Infact I am in a game right now where I have lost a huge advantage and will probably lose.  (Its still ongoing though, so I can't post details to this forum yet, nor am I giving up yet!) 

Its happened to me loads of times, however I have also won games where I have been down a large amount in material, those are the best type of wins you can have. 

Resign by hurling your king into your opponent's face.

Or, actually, my set's queen has a very sharp coronet...

Good grief!  Take it to the religion forum already. 

No sense in hurting keyboards and thyself.    Yeah, it is just a game.

 Phew got a draw out of it.  Which was just enough to get me through to the next round of the tournament I am currently in. 

Not like this http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/a-message-to-flaggers

Depends how you lost but loss is inevitable, even Carlsen loses horribly from time to time. I had a game recently where my opponent was not only weaker than myself but i had a clear 2 pawn advantage and a passed pawn. My opponent had only a few seconds left to not lose the game (set number of moves within a certain amount of time) and despite having 15 minutes more myself i just totally over looked a basic tactic and he one the exchange followed by my Queen. He won the house because I didn't double check and assumed he was 100% lost. Lesson to be learned? Always take into consideration your time and if you have the time doube check and never assume as there are potential tactics everywhere in chess some of which can spell game over regardless of how much material you're up or how how much weaker your opponent is. Chess can be cruel like that especially in a long game.

Yeah I can be dismissive during games. I miss stuff a lot. Not always a loss of a piece but little things that I shouldn't miss. Sometimes I guess I'm just too busy looking at my own plans and end up overlooking my opponent's. I need to get over that hump. All the studying in the world won't help me if I don't figure it out 

Edit: I just noticed this thread is 7 years old lol

you are slow, lol