Massive losing streak - asking for advice for future

Hi!

Please try to be positive in this forum. It would really help me personally.

• In the past seven days, I have lost over 100 ELO (116 as of this post), and my emotional investment has never been higher. More than a few times, I start screaming (IRL) after making a game-losing blunder in a winning position. I have hurled my iPhone (sometimes I play on my iPhone, but mostly on my laptop) twice and cracked both the front screen and back glass (still works tho). I swear out loud that I will never play chess again, only to play the next day. Yes, it is a devastating addiction.
• I admit that I do not have the discipline to analyze my games. I guess it is because I am impatient. I think it is also because I know I used to be playing better (just about ten days ago, I would have no problem beating people up to about 1500 ELO (I was ~1550). This evening, I lost to several people around ~1430.
• I ask this next question specifically for higher-rated players (of course, anyone may chime in). How do you motivate yourself to spend lots of time studying chess? I believe I am at the point where I honestly don't think I could play much better without devoting lots of time. Is it possible to seriously improve while only doing ~30-40 puzzles daily? I do not have much time as I am heading into my senior year of undergrad.
• I own several free courses on chessable, which did seem to help... up until about two weeks ago. On the puzzle note, I have never really been in the habit of doing them. I am not sure why. I know that puzzles are helpful, which is why I mentioned them.
• Another general question is how do you recover from terrible losing streaks? I try to take at least 12 hours off, but that likely isn't enough. It's the addiction!
• Now onto the final summarizing question. What do you think is the highest realistic chess.com ELO the average (club?) player can attain while only devoting a few hours a week max to chess? As I mentioned, I do not have much time as I am preparing to graduate. The bad thing is I have linked my self-esteem to my ELO, which I know is the worst thing one can do. I am stuck in a vicious sunken-cost fallacy.
• As a final note: I would not consider myself depressed, and most of the time, I am in a healthy mental state. But when I play chess, I feel like a black hole consumes my mental energy and positivity, and I get frustrated with myself easily. (Help! ) And while I have been on losing streaks before, it has never been this bad.
• Thank you for your feedback.

LOL Australia has no chill

I empathize with the anger after I lose or make a blunder... Best advice I can give on that would to "schedule" yourself games whenever you know you can give them your full focus. Im at the point where I only try to play a few rated games a day to make sure I can learn from them. If you find yourself wanting to play chess without the rating stress, you can always make a lichess account or play anonymous/ unrated games.

Chess rating can be a roller coaster. When you suffer 3 consecutive losses, call it a day. Play the next day.

Whenever you lose a game, stop playing and analyse it first.

If you loose too many points and get frustrated, you start a new game hoping to win your rating back. Because you are already angry for having lost a number of times and because you are being paired with people far below your real ranking, you pay too little attention to the game and you loose more. Then you get even angrier and more frustrated and want to avenge your lost rating points even more...

It is a vicious circle. Don't follow this pattern.

What seems to be working best for me is just quitting for the day, having a good night of sleep and trying again the next day with better (not so vengeful) attitude. Rebuilding rating usually takes more time than loosing it, but eventually it works.

maybe if you quit after your first win then you won't have a losing streak

you're welcome

This is something that a lot of people here experienced.

I can only tell you what I often do when I think I simply cannot play chess.

1. Stop playing for a while. It can be one week, two, or perhaps longer. If chess is not something enjoyable, try to find something else that will bring joy in your life (for example, studying chess is an option).

2. Focus on studying something that you think will help you. How to defend is a topic that people usually do not pay much attention. Most people like to make puzzles, and they are certainly important, but undeveloped defensive skills are really bad. You can be able to mate in 4 moves but regularly miss your opponent mate in one.

3. Before you go back to play, write down on a piece of paper how many games you plan to play, and commit yourself to this number and to analyzing every game. Write down, really, don't trust yourself!  At least try to find out which was the first blunder in your game. If you do this, you are not really trying to improve immediately your rating, but you are trying to improve your game. There is a difference between both. You can fall into a trap in the opening (GM can fall into such traps sometimes against a 1500 online player), and this is annoying but not the end of the world - IF you learn something from this game.

4. Commit yourself to a certain number of games. If blitz or 10 minutes rapid: five games. If longer games: 1 or 2.

5. There is a podcast where a player explains how he got  2100 in blitz in chess.com in four years. He basically watched John Bartholomew's series Climbing the Rating Ladder (and other guys). I knew this series, but I didn't know that this could be so effective (passive learning!), but it seems that it works.  In my case, I deleted several opening books in Chessable and began to watch these videos.

After I did a break from chess I was doing what I wrote before, and when I came back to the game I won easily 150 points! I found my 1500 opponents incredibly weak!! Then I forgot my whole new approach and began to play like a madman again, with no analysis, like a junky, and I drop all the points again. 

I am trying to restart again with my previous good chess habits.

Anyway, good luck with your journey and keep us updated. 

just quit. You'll be happier. This game just brings misery to life.

A fluctuation of 100 isn't unusual. In the last 25 days my Rapid rating has gone from 1020 to 1424 then back down to 1240.

If you're getting that mad, I suggest therapy.