Massive losing streaks

I regularly lose to players under 1000 rapid when playing unrated. I'm obviuosly no great shakes, but find the unpredictability of lower ranked players, difficult to play against. Once players reach 1200 or so, they tend to stick to book moves and predictable lines more. I imagine this changes again for players, say 1600 or so and above; as their game has developed beyond the "learnt" lines.

It's because that's the area where most cheaters are. Especially when you play Tournaments. If I face an opponent below 100 ELO under me, I automatically know I'm going to have a hard time.

"Unpredictability" and "predictable lines" means nothing, it's either a good logical move or a nonsensical one. If you are not able punish nonsensical mistakes it's not because they are unpredictable.. It's just your fault and you should work on it. 

I think there may be some truth in that.

I play the Ponziani opening all the time and a lot of the time players <1100 seem to play the best line against it, which involves being able to attack the F2 pawn with a bishop backed up by knight. It makes me laugh because higher rated (but still relatively rubbish down at my level!) players rarely follow the required sequence.

That's actually how most of them are doing it. You are crushing them, they play like total noobs and then out of nowhere every move of them fits. I think we should stop now talking bout cheaters here or we get banned lol

I think I say as much in my post. It's a major failing in my play.

After pushing back up over 1200, I'm now back at 1015 and in the middle of an 8 match losing streak!

I play pretty much exactly the same lines to see what happens (Ponziani, Stafford) yet between 1000-1100 it seems incredibly easy to lose game after game - a lot of the time to oppenents barely using up the clock. Meanwhile my rating on another site I use goes over 1600...

So what's happening in this goldilocks zone?

What happened here?  The timestamps show that you spent almost 2 minutes before playing d6 and then spent 22 seconds before allowing the knight fork.

I guess that you were under time pressure after spending so long on d6.

In a 5 min blitz game it doesn't make any sense to spend 2 minutes on one move. You didn't find a good move so better play a bad one after about 20 seconds than wait more than a minute extra before playing it.

I am terrible at blitz, so don't take it personally. I just noticed that you can make some easy improvements by managing your time better.

Yeah, I think in this particualr case of this game I went off to make my cup of tea and wasn't looking too closely when I came back. So time here maybe...

But I'm talking in general. I just find it really strange that playing roughly the same strategies my rating can suddenly collapse through a few bad streaks. Somebody above said cheats. Maybe - but I think questioned before whether it was possibly being pairs with bots by the server sometimes? (I don't know if that's done on here tbh)

I was several times at losing streaks. When I lose a game where I had great advantage or dont see some obviois tactics than I lose nerves and if I continue playing then I will lose almost every game. What helped me is to not play chess for some period of time and not thinking about it at all, then return to chess when I am relaxed and focused.

You made a cup of tea...during a 5-minute game?

Making a cup of tea in a fast-control game...is not my cup of tea at all.

Ha ha - Yes, probably not considered a standard piece of play! Although make wasn't probably the correct word. It was already brewing pre-game - was just collecting via removing tea bag / adding milk... But whatever, it probably contributed to that poor game!

Other site ratings don't equate to the same number on this site. 1000 on one site could be 1300 or another. A site could even have a rating of 15,000 correspond to a 300 rating here if it wanted to. 

It's always easy to lose games at any rating you are at. Sometimes it's because you are playing worse, sometimes your opponent is playing better. You may just be facing opponents who are particularly bad or good vs the opening you chose on a given day.

If you think there were actually odd games, you'd need to find them, but ratings are known to be able to fluctuate in the short-term in streaks. 

Yeah I just lost about 200 elo in one morning. I might break my computer. 

its hard

this is an easy game but they're so many people who go god mode

I have the same problem but my losing streaks are around 30 to 50 games in a row, i think that chess.com pairs you with people that are higher rated than you but it dumbs it down so you think its normal. theyre throttling so you don't fly up too fast. i know this bc 800 rated players don't play like they do as soon as i win 10 games in a row. my streaks are usually around 10 games before a loss and then i win another 10 games and then after i will lose around 200 elo in consecutive games and theres no explaining the massive shift in performances from my opponents. i definitely think there is a throttling mechanism 

I am practicing a particular opening. I have played it hundreds of times now. Nevertheless I can clime from 850 to 1050 in days, destroying all before me. Then suddenly I cannot touch 800 ELO players and drop back down to 850. It is a system I am playing. The lines are very predictable for me and tricky for opponents, and yet... I think the matchmaking is putting peopel on streaks up against each other, or finding oppoennts who play the correct lines against the system after awhile.

Sometimes my opponent is just better but then sometimes I stupidly play when overtired and don't realize I'm wandering around the board making stupid blunders.