How much do you *forget* chess?

And how can one forget it less the next time (assuming the next hiatus is as equally long as the previous one)?

I know that it's like flexing a muscle. For example, as a violinist, I can attest to the fact that over many years, one can gain a certain skill floor one then never really goes under again. I might be downplaying it because I still play in a band, but that's so low-effort compared to my classical training that I never end up feeling like I lack a significant amount of skill. Even if I've been out of action for months, it only takes me a couple of days to get back into shape. Maybe a week or two if it's some really challenging classical stuff.

Compared to that, my chess skill experiences an atrophy if I don't play for a couple of months, and then it takes me more than quite a while to regain my positional understanding, my tactical awareness, even my opening theory. Whatever I fall back to, it seems to be too low.

What do I do? I'm tired of always having to relearn chess. It's way too taxing, even though I try to make it so easy for myself.

(On an unrelated note, do any o' y'all think that having more than 1+ comments on a post serves as a sort of a 'social proof' that the topic should be viewed at all? Asking for a friend.)

For context, I've studied from various books and videos (and a really old chess mentor app that Chess.com's own chess mentor programme is directly based upon), and in terms of playing strength, I achieved my personal top rating of around 2150 (rapid) on Lichess a few months ago, only to unfortunately tank it back to mid-2000s after my most recent return a few days ago.

My problem isn't really learning - it's actually relearning, which is necessarily preceded by forgetting. 😆 I have no idea how much of my studying needs to be spent on rote repetitions of exercises, but I feel like I might be memorising too much and understanding too little. (I can provide you with some examples of that if you want.) Either that, or chess is just objectively hard and I'm being unrealistic about the minimal effort I'm required to put in.

P. S. I love your profile pic!

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Over time, the more you reinforce fundamental concepts (endgames, patterns, general principles), the higher your permanent baseline becomes. With more effort in targeted areas, your chess atrophy after a break will feel less dramatic, and you'll recover faster.