My playing has deteriorated

I was fairly pleased by how I was playing, felt I was making progress and my rating was going up, and most importantly I was having fun. Now my rating has gone way back down and I keep losing. No fun.

I've been playing with the bots a lot, thinking that would be a good way to practice and I wonder if that could be a contributor. I win too easily against bots with 3 times my rating, so perhaps that's made me complacent?

What I know for sure is that I keep losing. No fun.

Last couple months, my blitz rating has steadily gone off a cliff. I was wondering if this was happening to other people too. I used to avoid the tournaments because you have so many people obviously sandbagging and trying to game the system, but now, it feels like good players keep getting pushed lower. Just lost to another sub 1200 player who played over 92% accurate in a tough game. It's constant. But yeah... losing tons and tons of points regularly to lower rated players who play like 1400-1500 players used to play.

There's an obvious explanation but we're probably not allowed to say what it is for some forum rule or other. If I had to guess how many people are trying to give themselves some kind of 'aid' to win games, not for every move, but somewhat? I think it's ridiculously high.

Actually, no... I'm sure it's just me, I'm sure it's normal for sub 1200 players to play mistake free chess without even any inaccuracies right?

That all sounds exactly right to me.

everyone has those moments, just keep playing!! Also you are not reviewing your recently lost games, constructive criticism from the website is very important to improve!

Do not play weakened bots.
They err, but in a non-human way.

I don't know if this will work for you. Whenever I feel that the game I am playing is going stale, I watch Chess Engines Play each other. I chose the one with the higher ranking. I guess all of it's move before it make it. That way, it motivates me to improve because it reminds me always that I have more to learn.

Just so you know, if you play in tournaments, there's always a handful of players at the very top of the boards with 700-800 ratings mopping the floor with 1800 players. You can pretty much see it in every tournament. I guess they go out and purposely lose between every tournament to keep their rating low? Or they're infinite new accounts? Or they're all streamers doing a rating climb. But test the theory, join a tournament and see if there aren't a handful of super low ranked players on a 5 game winning streak at the top of the board.

No, they are just winning faster against their lower rated opponents. The tournament format pairs you with the most similar rating, and those 800s just win faster in general. So if there is someone who is even slightly better than their rating, they will be at the top of the leaderboard!

think this is a way of ches.com trying to find your real level. it first pumps you up then beats you down.. in order to see how high you can jump and how hard you can endure..

it will stabilize after some amount of games.

And i also need to tell you, rating climb is NOT a linear progress, you can not go up and up as you keep study and play. there is a curve, it will have to slowdown and eventually stop.

advanced tip: there will be some points where you will have to 'forget' what you have learned and re-learn the game in different ways.. in order to keep going.. it's called hitting your plateau. but you are too young for that, still just keep this in mind.

*todays class concluded children!! leave the door open please*

Imo

What is no good is playing against too weak or too strong opponents (I'm not talking about elo display but about strength of opponent. For grotesque example a bear is stronger in judo than a human even if the bear is wearing a white belt) and the fact that they're bots doesn't change (ok it can be special with bots because bots can play with inhuman abilitiess and if the algorithm of the chess program is strong, even if the bots make more or less errors, inaccuracies etc., they are never really weak because their algorithm is strong).

Since bots can create another reality with chess gameplay, it's important to watch the Gms games we can follow on chess24 ( chess24 - YouTube ) and thanks to evaluations of the strong bot and the comments or analyses of the Gms during the games, we understand that even if being very strong Gms, they can make mistakes, inaccuracies, they can have difficulties to win (and sometimes they end up losing or drawing) in positions established as winning or very advantageous by the strong bot and there are the factors of physical tiredness and of the psychology that are really at play with humans.

Try to guess all of the moves of one of the chess engines. It is very difficult, but it reminds me that I have a long way to go.

I am using my weakness as a strength... Whenever I see engine moves, I see pain. Because of that, I try to learn to mitigate that pain.

But do this only, if you are bored because your games are becoming predictable... Such as predictable losses and such... Sometimes, you need to spice things up...

No I meant what do I have to do to watch two chess engines play each other?

There is Computer Chess Championship on this site... Just Click More... Click Computer Chess Championship... And there you go...

Yes

There is another interesting one related to watching games that we can do on chess.com, it is watch game with GM or IM in rapide (we can do it in blitz too) :

We go "watching" (it's displayed in French for me) then we'll see "playing" then we click a GM or IM then at the top right we click "games" then just a little below we click "watching" then just below we click on rapide time (or blitz time) then we choose (and if we missed the start it doesn't matter because we can put back the starting position and advance manually)