Losing the desire to play

I don't know if I want advice or just to scream into the void or what, but I've been feeling this way about chess for a while now and want to make a post about it. Whined inwardly to myself enough, so now it's time for me to whine to strangers on the internet about it. Apologies if I'm posting in the wrong place. 

It feels like the majority of my chess games are lost by the person who played worse, rather than won by the person who played better. To put it more clearly: when I win, I don't feel like it's ever really because I've come up with some genius idea or spotted something clever and played well, but more that my opponent has blundered something stupid or, at best, their position has just fallen apart. A lot of my wins still contain loads of inaccuracies, missed wins and blunders and most of the time when I do think I've found something clever in a position, the engine finds a way to refute it. Likewise, when I lose, I rarely feel like my opponent played well, but more that I played like garbage and made mistakes that I shouldn't have. 

I know that I mostly play 3 minute blitz now, and that likely has something to do with it, but I also don't really find it's any different when I play 10 minute games (which I tend to when I have more time). 

Is my rating just too low to play "real chess" still or is this just how the game is? 

I'll still probably play for a bit but I think I've completely lost my desire to study the game or really try to improve since I kind of feel like it's likely going to be a shifting standard of what constitutes "playing like garbage" for myself. 

be happy to help anyone get through a hard time like this send me a message i have loads of ideas to keep you interested

just take a break then. Maybe you are just burned out?

Something tells me that unless one is a grandmaster, almost everyone is generally dissatisfied with their game. It’s normal, I guess.

It's a question I asked myself some time ago : once you reach your maximum level beyond which you can no longer go ( because sooner or later we all stop improving ), what happens ?

I think I have already reached that critical level ( and it is much lower than yours ): I practically always play the same way ( and badly ), I don't see substantial improvements, I make the usual stupid mistakes, and like you I am aware of my "garbage chess". Yet I continue to enjoy it a lot. Chess continues to be an interesting challenge, a great puzzle to be solved together with the opponent of the moment.

Maybe you just need to stop playing for a while, to regain enthusiasm.

no sorry i disagree with this find a way to make it fun find a way to bring back the fun 1500 rating is super

so now you have loads to show others try teaching someone even if its free there are so many people that want to learn

or make some friends try some new openings

joins a few new clubs

if none of that works then i guess there is always take some time out but really 1500 rating really that is amazing your way above most people on the world that play chess i most likely will never reach 1k but still find it fun helping others stay focused

The first possibility is to take a small break.

As for the second one... I see you are talking about longer 10 minute games. Realistically that is still a very fast game. If you wish to come up with something better (sometimes it will still be wrong), why not trying longer games than that, like 30 minutes per side at least or more (1 hour per side, there are people at least up to 1 600 rated there, though less and less beyond that). I see you are playing multiple games per day, so you probably have time for one such game instead of bunch of shorter ones. You don't even have to play them every day.

As for the feeling that you won due to a mistake, that is somewhat of a philosophical discussion. Every game is won due to someone not playing the best moves, as if they both played the best moves, it would be a draw.

You should look at it differently. Unless it was an obvious blunder, if you had a better position, and then won, you should say that you've put pressure on your opponent and in the end he made a mistake due to that pressure.

I would love to look at your games and tell you exactly what you are doing wrong and how to fix it. Chess requires a lot of patience. Hit me up if interested.

I don't know if taking a break is something I really want to do. I do still enjoy playing to an extent but I just find the games themselves to not be satisfying.

@ChessMasteryOfficial, it isn't that I don't know what I'm doing wrong, although I'm sure you could point a few things out I hadn't noticed. It's usually very clear to me why a particular move was a blunder or an inaccuracy when analysing after the fact, or even when being punished by my opposing player during the game. The real issue I have is that I'm making mistakes that in hindsight seem like obvious mistakes. If I were to analyse a game, see I'd blundered and thought "why? I don't see any issue." and then only after deep analysis do I see an issue, that wouldn't be too much of a downer on my enjoyment of the game.

I've certainly been given a few things to try here, though.

Sadly I don't really have the time to teach chess, or more accurately, I don't have a rigid enough schedule where I could block out certain timeslots to teach in. Joining a club (assuming you meant an in-person over the board club) does sound appealing but also falls to the lack of time, and also the fact that there aren't any in the city I live in to my knowledge. Maybe I could try and start one, but I don't know about that.

Maybe I should try different openings. I've got a pretty limited opening repertoire and that could breathe more life into the game, but it won't really fix this issue, just maybe excuse it.

I might give longer time controls a try if there is a playerbase for them. The thought of committing a whole hour to an online game of chess is a little daunting, though, let alone more than that.

Thank you to everyone who has commented!

If that's the case, stop after making a move and think about what would happen after you make that move. That is one tip that can eliminate a lot of blunders.

As for 30 minutes per side, there are people at least up to 2 000 rating playing there, sometimes you might have to wait a few minutes, but it is not too bad.

As for it being daunting, well, you can't have it both ways. Either you will play longer games and play it to the best of your ability, or you will play shorter ones where you will play a class (or so) below of what you are capable of. That is the nature of shorter games.

That is why I actually prefer longer games, when I played 15|10 a few times I had a feeling that it is not enough time considering the complexity of the game. So the feeling is a bit different. 
If you decide to give longer games a go, it might take a few games or a bit more to get used to time control.

People start playing in 2022 and expect to be good in 2023… Says a lot about how people have gotten too used to getting things fast and without much effort in these modern times with fast internet and so on.

Pretty much NO ONE is going to be good at ANYTHING in a year. Yes there are some prodigies, but that is very, very rare. Chess takes time, just like everything else, to get good at. Maybe play for a decade or two and then get worried if there is no improvement.

That is what I plan on doing.

By the way… I have been a drummer for two decades and still got no idea what I am doing with those things… 🙂

I really don't think the OP started playing in 2022. When he signed up here he had a minimum score of 1322, then in a month it went up to 1500... I guess he's been playing chess much longger.

In my opinion, the problem is another: "much effort" means a lot of time, constancy, well-organized work; if you can't have these things, you realize that you can't go very far.

Like saying: it's not that one doesn't want to put effort into it, the problem is that one can't. 

It seems pretty normal for a 1500 to make many inaccuracies and occasionally blunder. Even GMs blunder. I feel like it's not always about having a perfect game, but whoever "gets the last word in". That's only my thoughts, you don't need advice from a 1200 though ig

Played a couple of 30 minute games yesterday. Honestly, it did go a lot better in terms of "stupid" mistakes.

Hoffman is correct that I am not as new to chess as my chess.com account suggests. I first learned to move the pieces at the age of 5 or 6, and I am 29 now. I would say I'm fairly new to taking chess seriously, though. It's been a few years since I've really started trying to improve at the game, actually studying openings, doing puzzles etc, although this has been on and off. It could still be fair to say that I'm expecting too much too fast for the amount of work I'm putting in. At the same time, as Hoffman says, it is very frustrating that I don't really have the time to put the work in that would be required to get me to the level I want.

@Habanababananero Yeah, to be fair, it's taken me nearly three decades to learn how to be a functional human being, so maybe mastering chess will take a bit of time as well.

Honestly I don't know if there's much more to be said here. The longer time control games are enough to rekindle my interest, at least for now, and the bottom line is that if I don't like the game any more, I should take a break or quit. Once again, thank you to everyone who has commented.