Frustration while losing

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Avatar of Arcsine26

How can one cope with experiencing intense frustration or anger on losing streak in chess ?

Avatar of Verkaley

Accept your losses, learn from them

Avatar of Antonin1957

Chess is a game. It is absurd to be angry about a losing streak in a game. Have you been diagnosed with cancer? Has a loved one been diagnosed with dementia? If your answer to these questions is "no," you are a very spoiled person and you have no idea what "intense frustration and anger" is. Get a grip.

Avatar of tygxc

Whenever you lose a game, stop playing and analyse it thoroughly so as to learn from your mistakes. This channels the negative emotions of the loss towards a positive goal: improving.

Avatar of medelpad
It comes down to maturing as a chess player. I used to get really frustrated when I lost, now I don’t care nearly as much as I know that I am statistically gonna lose more than 50% of my games.
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Avatar of Arcsine26

Thanks for the advice , guys! I will work on applying it and hopefully see some improvements.

Avatar of Culture_of_India
A losing streak is caused by a tilt, that usually starts with a game where you were in a convincing winning position, but somehow end up making silly blunders (that may even include missing a mate in 1 opportunity), that eventually cost you the game. You must have worked really hard in earning the winning position previously, but now that the little silly mistake ruined it all, starts creating the frustration in you. You basically start losing confidence, because you start thinking that even if you manage to obtain good positions, there is no guarantee that it will end well. That destroys your concentration and eagerness to play, and culminates to a long losing streak. I agree this can be extremely frustrating and cause a lot of anger.
What you need to do, is to stop the “play just another game” thought. Remember that chess is just a game (however beautiful and magical it might be), so unfortunate losses and bad performance streaks are unavoidable in it, just like any other sport. Give it a rest for a couple of days, and let your mind forget all the negative feelings and gain back the confidence once again. This time, believe me, when you manage to create a good position, you will slowly and sharply crush your opponent.
Avatar of LightningStorm_07

After losing so much, you just kind of become numb...

Avatar of Omed

If you get hot headed just take a break for a couple of hours or even days

Avatar of Caffeineed
Lies
Avatar of TheGalaxyGirl253
Caffeineed wrote:
Lies

your a lie

Avatar of tygxc

The idea is not to relieve anger and frustration,
but to channel those negative emotions towards a positive goal: improving.

Avatar of Caffeineed
GalaxyGirl253 wrote:
Caffeineed wrote:
Lies

your a lie

you're

Avatar of TheJobavaSicillian
Arcsine26 wrote:

How can one cope with experiencing intense frustration or anger on losing streak in chess ?

If you get too mad, you should probably stop playing. If you want to keep playing, playing a pattern recognition based bot. There are some available on lichess. The "lazybot" plays purely based on pattern recognition and does not calculate. You can learn a lot like you're playing against humans. 
Beyond that learn to meditate. Meditation will help you keep your cool in these types of situations.

Avatar of Gottfried94

Depends on the game, usually when I get quickly demolished by someone far stronger than me or I fall for a clever trick/tactic I don't mind at all, I am happy to resign when there's no point continuing and then I jump on analysis. But hey when it's equal or I am doing better most of the game and then my opponent get's a lucky move he didn't even plan, or generally when it's very close I get angry as well. At that point it's better to stop playing and calm down. I personally if I continue playing angry I'll end up losing everything and being frustrated even more.

Avatar of TheJobavaSicillian

Yeah I mean the answer always is if you can't handle it stop. If your throat vein is popping out, that's not the moment you try to reframe your mindset. Like other people were giving good advice about that, use it to learn, know that it's because you weren't good enough, know that you will continue to get better. But in the moment that your vein is popping out of your neck, thinking about those things will only make you not believe them. And that is dangerous.

Avatar of magipi

The Magnus Carlsen method: hint that your opponent is cheating, leave the tournament.

Avatar of Clockwork_Nemesis
Sledgehammer to phone
Avatar of Gottfried94
kezzerdrix wrote:
Sledgehammer to phone

With Nokia 3310 no problem that phone can withstand anyone's bad day