how am I getting worse?

Hello, 

New to chess and so far I've noticed it can be a very streaky game. Sometimes you win a number of games straight and other days you can't think clearly and make a lot of mistakes. In the past week I've started studying chess with Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess, Pandofini's Universal Guide to Chess, analysing some of my games, and YouTube. However, I noticed I'm actually getting worse and not seeing things I would see last week. 

Has anyone found new knowledge to cloud their mind? Or, do you get into slumps for a week or so? 

Yes to both.

It's a common complaint

Don't worry, the more you play the more successfully you'll incorporate the new knowledge and skills into your play. 

And everyone has good and bad days.

It's chess' frustrating way of reminding you, you have too much on your mind.

What about good weeks and bad weeks?

It depends on your life.

At one point in my life I was getting about 3 hours of sleep a night for a month. To say my chess was bad during that month would be an understatement.

In general the factors are sleep, food, mood, and willpower. If you have those 4 things then you'll play well except on an occasional bad day that are sort of inexplicable and probably due to "hidden" factors. For example how the body fights off disease all the time without it ever getting to the point we feel sick, and how males (just like females) have hormonal cycles.

OH MY GOD YES! sorry to yell, but an emphatic and resounding yes. I have began studying, puzzles, lessons, and videos. Trying to learn a few openings, and my ratings just keep dropping. 

Yes. it's a sign of growth. When you learn new strategies you tend to want to try them out. however you will be less familiar with how the new moves you are using work and subsequently not be able to see all negative outcomes.

Analyse your game against Undertale2012, without engine, and we will talk again. Just you let you know right now: rooks love open files, and if a king is at the open file and there are not defenders around... well, you are going to checkmate your opponent, especially if you can put both rooks and the Queen into the attack. You should never forget a simple lesson: if players are going to castle in opposite sides, you will often give even a whole piece to open files against the king. If your opponent open the g file voluntary with his king on g1, he is begging to be checkmated.
Something else. If you play the Scandinavian with ...Qd8 I recommend you two books on Chessable. John Bartholomew’s course, or Alex Colovic’s “The simplest Scandinavian”. Especially the second course is very short, I think with only 17 lines, and you can use it to get a game.

For white there is a awesome book in Chessable for free based on 1.e4, which is based on the Vienna Game and the Morra Gambit against the Sicilian. It is called Basic White with 1.e4. It is for free.

If you want to get sharp in tactics you should purchase the book Common Chess Patterns. This is perhaps the best book on tactics which you can get for your level. You can get however a lot of free books on tactics in Chessable - use them!

Yes I know the feeling...

Thanks for the info brasileirosim. I joined Chessable and started out with 'Basic chess patterns' since it's free and still getting my head around Chessable's system. When I get some time I'll try out the others your suggested. 

I looked at the game I had with Undertale2012 and understand what you mean. I'm wondering if my rook doesn't have an open file when we castle opposite sides, is it a good idea to just sacrifice a pawn to make an open file? However, I know that game there was an open file.

You can almost always sac a pawn to get this open line, and sometimes you sac  even a quality or a whole rook for a pawn to get to the king. If there are not defenders around things can end very quickly.

Basic Chess Patterns is from the same author of Common Chess Patterns. My nickname there is Torrubirubi.

sometimes I have bad days, where I just go down a hundred points, and sometimes it's weeks.

Very sad.

I big problem is that we are not able to stop when we see things are going bad. Two losses in a row: stop playing, analyse the games, study tactics or openings and play again in the next day.

So true. When I lose a couple in a row it makes me want to play even more. I feel like I need to get back those losses. However, if I write it in my daily scheduler "only play 3 games of chess today" that helps my self-control.

Yeap... improvement is a weird thing. You can study for a month and play slightly worse while feeling you know more. Just keep at it and things will become natural.

Dear Novocastrian4,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck for your chess games!