MASSIVE Losing Streak - Help needed!

A terrible losing streak is currently devastating a good friend of mine who is a National Master (FIDE 2079) and exceptionally strong player.

We can't figure out what's happening to him right now, but his rating keeps dropping, so I hope you can offer some advice on what may be going wrong.

lol

Could the problem be the opening itself?

Interesting , with your rating I thought you would just tell him , as a lower ranked player , higher than my rating , wont explain , he just looks too aggressive , he is an attacking player like me , and looks like he just needs to spend more time watching out for how dangerous his opponents plan is and his own king safety , His opponents are just waiting until the end game advantage when he has weakened his position and lost material in the opening trying to gain an initiative , which has been endured , then the opponents position just becomes better when the attack dies out.

Just my two cents , also opening can be an issue , I have been playing the Sicilian for years , but just find too oftern I get in trouble , so as an attacking player I am changing tact and trying the Caro Kann , maybe even the French , leaving my attacking to white piece games

I've tried telling him but he won't listen to me. I also don't think that I'll be able to find it all by myself which is why I appreciate other people's opinions on this.

He is definitely an attacking player like you, but also very cautious, usually. So you agree that the tumbling starts in the opening? The engine doesn't really identify any of his beginning positions as a known opening, so what is he doing there?

I only skipped rapidly over a couple of the games at a glance , I will have a good hard look tomorrow at all the games and give you a better answer , though I am a lower rated player I can still know a lot of theory and can perhaps add something another eye.

Its late here in NZ I will have a look tomorrow

What's the time usage in these parties? 

Does your friend always get into time trouble? 

Yes and what is a loosing streak ? How many games ? , we can expect to lose near half at our own rating level

Yeah, "streak" may be a bit strong, he obviously wins games in between as well and absolutely crushes those opponents, if I might add.

Currently the worst losing "streak" was 6-7 games straight I believe, but even off and on it's just been very bad atm.

His time usage is great, he plays very quickly and accurately as you can see, but it's apparently just one little move that messes things up later on.

He doesn't think much of opening theory and likes to do his own thing which has served him very well in the past because nobody could anticipate his moves, but lately it's just not been working out.

Could the competition simply have grown that much stronger at the 2100 level?

tell him to stop blundering and making mistakes

it works really well

It is quite possible it has , people are studying openings a lot , and theory changes regularly in some openings , lines get refuted new ideas created , openings is not chess , he has the right idea , however , he could be falling into traps even if it is just for a worse end game

It may be burn out.

I know when I'm burning out on chess I start to play quicker, I fixate on my rating/results instead of playing good chess, and I calculate much less and rely on intuition much more. 

A couple of days off tends to set me straight. 

A lot to be said for not blundering at any rating level

The 4 losses are at the same day. Tell him to take a break after 3 consecutive loss. Fatigue or just having a bad day like many of us. After 2 consecutive loss, i stopped playing live chess for the day. 

My personal theory is that in recent days, I've been looking at games of a friend of mine, and his extremely low level of play is seeping into my games. For example:

Probably the best course of action for me is to study games of stronger players and stop enjoying the car crashes that this player calls chess.

lol

My personal theory is that there's nothing special going on here.

First of all, these are blitz games. Blunders will happen. If you look at the guy's rating graph for the past 30 days, it's pretty much flat. Worrying about a bad day or two is like watching the tide coming in for six hours & worrying that the world will be flooded in a few weeks. Well, it won't be. Just keep doing your regular thing, let some time go by, and you'll see the tide will go out again.

Streaks happen. If you flip a coin 100 times, there will almost certainly be a streak of 7 heads or 7 tails in a row somewhere in your data set. This is natural and means nothing, the odds for each coin flip were still 50-50 every time.

I'm not mad 😌, everbody makes mistakes at any rating level.

I just wanted to help out a friend, honestly.

Didn't expect that tbh, but fine be like that, Jimbo.

@Bramblyspam:

I agree, the higher you get the more difficult it becomes to keep your odds of winning leveled, especially in Blitz.

Your example of a coin toss is actually spot on, because it rly feels like that to me sometimes.

Any singular wrong move in the opening could ultimately seal your fate.

Do you play Blitz at all?