My rapid rating is 100, I think something is wrong with my head

I've been reading around and it seems like the consensus is it's almost impossible to genuinely be this bad, unless you're a 6 year old beginner.

I'm not:
 - Sandbagging
 - Going extremely fast
 - Not actually trying to play
 - 6 years old

I'm much older than 6, and definitely not a complete beginner, I play often with some friends (and yes I have never won). What exactly is going on here

I'm pretty sure I don't have any sort of learning disorder either, I do really well in school in almost all subjects.

Looking at your games, it really just comes down to protecting your pieces from being captured by your opponent (for no equal exchange in material). You’re giving away your queen for free in a few of them. Sometimes players at this level think that dropping a piece here and there isn’t really a big deal, but as you learn more, you realize that even giving away a single pawn without compensation is unacceptable and you have to spend your whole game trying to make up for that one little mistake. So keeping your material safe is important! Before you make a move, go through this checklist:

1). Are any of my pieces threatened by my opponent right now? Can they capture my piece in their next move if they wanted to?
2). If they capture my piece, does my piece have defenders so that I’m not losing material for free? Or should I move the piece to a safe square so they don’t take it?
3). Once you feel that your own pieces are safe, start looking for other things. Can I check my opponent’s king or can they check mine?
4). Are any of my opponent’s pieces hanging with no defenders and can I capture it?

At this level, I’d really just focus on making sure your pieces aren’t captured for free. See every move as a transaction between you and your opponent where you don’t want to get the short end of the stick. And if possible, I’d really suggest watching John Bartholomew’s Chess Fundamentals and Climbing The Rating Ladder series. He’s a really down to earth person who explains concepts in a straightforward way, and watching him consistently helped make chess “click” for me and get my rating to 800+. Hope this helps!

I looked at your last 3 losses and I agree with Square. Hanging your Queen was a pivotal blunder in 2 of them and in the most recent one you resigned after going one pawn down. If you fix these things your prospects will improve. Many of us struggle with blunder checking but if we can blunder less often and less dramatically than our opponents then our rating improves. After each match, analyse it to establish where your blunders were and try to improve your checking process in order to minimise them in future.

 

 

 

 

 

I believe in you brah 🙏

There are lots of terrible chessplayers.  He should be happy to be in the majority.

I looked at a few games, and you're making the common mistake of attacking with only 1 or 2 pieces off your back rank.

In the starting position your pieces aren't organized... and if you spend 5 moves to send 1 or 2 of them across the board to attack, it will be 2 pieces vs half of your opponent's pieces. It will never work. In other words the first 10 or so moves of a game are devoted to other goals.

 - Place (and usually maintain) a pawn in one of the 4 center squares
 - Bring your knights and bishops off the back rank quickly
 - Castle (ideally to a side where none of the 3 flank pawns have moved)

After that you can attack.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-principles-of-the-opening

Also, as others have said, try not to lose anything for free (not even a single pawn).

If you can do that then your rating will go up.

Alright thanks all

Well, I'm not that new to chess, I play quite a few games on lichess as well and sometimes I just don't log in here