It is depressing.

It's important to learn to quit at the right spot. Some people even disconnect after every loss to cool down, analyze the game and understand the reason behind it. If you feel like it's "bad luck", take a break. Otherwise you might end up losing many-many games trying to recover the points you have just lost.

I can see the meetings...

"Hi, my name is......and I'm a chessaholic."

By the by, twelve steps is not a chess opening.

Fantastic post from this member it really made me see just how crazy i get over something so silly. 

Natalia i think your correct in what your saying trying to recover the points is unrealistic when your not feeling it.  I now play less and feel so much better.  Don't get me wrong i can still play for 8 hours straight but know that it is pointless. 

It is quality not quantity now. xx

yeah just had one of those "Downward spirals" today myself.I'm so fixated on taking revenge for a fluke loss that I can't  see anything on the board.

I seriously doubt an amateur chess player could find it entertaining to play blitz/rapid games for more than 2-4 hours straight on the internet on a daily basis to the point where they don't eat/shower/go to work/talk to their family and friends. I could see a lot of people playing online poker for 20+ hours straight because of all the gambling and the rushes involved with winning and losing large sums of money. But seriously, you gotta be a pro to actually want to grind online chess for 10+ hours/day on a daily basis. Y'all are just crazy delusional! I'm sure most ppl. just quit when they're hungry.

Chess is different from other addictive games like Halo, Blackjack, Poker, etc. The decisions in poker/21 come rather automatic a lot of the times, especially if you plan to play multiple games at a time for marathon sessions, i.e. I have 20, so I'm going to stand 99.999% of the time, or I have a pair of Aces, so I'm going All-in. In chess, if you're playing opponents that are skilled enough to win/draw against you, then you have to think critically in a lot of situations, which will make your brain tired (ask anyone who has been enrolled in grade school/high school/university). Even if you win, it will most likely not be an effortless victory. Thus chess is more complicated than emptying a rocket launcher on a bunch of enemy tanks coming your way. I doubt most players have the mental fortitude to keep playing the best moves they can for hours on end, days on end, even if it is just blitz/rapids.

Show me someone who has lost money, their job, their relationship to family and friends, and their health to internet chess, and I'll show you a GM masquerading as a patzer.

 V. Funny. The 12 Step Program of Chessaholics Anonymous. This made me laugh. Hi My name's Jacqueline, and I've been dabbling with main lines of Sicilian Dragon.

if you study a lot of hours and take chess very seriously it should be very depressing of course, if you dont why worry about it

Its a half-empty, half-full thing.  We can either look into the vast expanse of chess knowledge and see everything we dont and cant understand or we can go wooowwwww this game is so rich and complicated it can give me new things for the rest of my life.

Hi Jacqueline.  I was like you - playing out of habit losing many many games in a row - but then I came across a great solution.  I became a paid member and then I had access to tactics training all day long.  So instead of playing matches as soon as I wake up as I used to (and losing because I'm still sleepy, and or play at the end of the day when I'm exhausted - and lose many more games), I started doing tactics traing.  It's great.  I'm not a staff here or anything (trying to push paid membership on you).  For me, this was very helpful and useful.  (I'm learning somehthing, right?)  Good luck to your chess playing!! :)    

I..I did a stalemate in a match I was winning(had won).Then,I tried playing again and again but lost all my points!I was stupid and reckless.