Down 100 elo points from my highest peak

Hey everyone,

I came back to chess after a long break and managed to reach 1570. Since then, I haven’t been able to win much games and my rating is steadily declining. I think I’ve lost around 80 elo in a week now and it isn’t showing signs of stopping. I hate being in the 1400’s again and I’m afraid to playing any games in fear of losing more elo. I’m honestly just confused on why I keep losing now and it’s starting to really upset me. For the record, I don’t really study this game, and have no plans to study in the future. I just move based off intuition and from previous knowledge of openings. Besides that, this decline in rating is really putting me down and making me lose love for the game again. It’s also making it harder to reach my goal of 1600, which I was so close to. I hate all the stress that I’ve to go through to play a single game, just to end up losing again. Should I just quit or keep playing and suffer more losses.

Input would be greatly appreciated!

There was also a single around 3-4 days ago where I lost 50 elo and went back to the 1400’s. Haven’t been able to keep a stable rating in the 1500’s since.

For me personally I took a break for 3-4 months and only played unrated games and solved puzzles/books, since then I have broken my record and am on a steady win streak. Just take breaks in between to study

Who cares? Life is more important than chess.

100 points of fluctuation is really rather small. All sorts of things are possible:

a) It may be purely random fluctuation.

b) It may be that you had reached a rating above your true level. In fact, it looks like you gained quite a bit recently, so it's quite possible some of that was just a good run. After all, sometimes your opponents seem to just give you the game, and other times they seem to be perfect. You can't control that sort of thing.

c) It may be you were paying better attention for a while, and have gotten a bit sloppy.

d) For sure, as you get higher, your opponents play better. That's no surprise, but you have to adjust your style. What works against 1400s does not work against 1600s (maybe).

e) Even though I said 100 points of fluctuation isn't that much, still, the average play at 1600 is quite a lot better than the average play at 1400. They know more openings, more tactics, more endgames--more everything. So you need to as well.

But you are pretty close. What's best to do? Probably study your losses and really try to understand why you made certain bad moves or missed certain good moves. You can do it.