No progress – what should I do?

I guess I am not the first one to be frustrated by the lack of progress but it doesn't make it easier: during last year my FIDE rating dropped from 1700 to 1600, I didn't win even a single OTB game in a year and in recent rapid tournament had worse results than a year ago.  I do tactics and study endgames, occasionally work on strategy and master games, play OTB for a club (1-2 games per month) and rapids on FICS,  used to play CC but recently stopped for different reasons. Yet no progress – just on the contrary.

I can see 3 possibilities for the future:
1) drop chess altogether
2) convince myself that the result is not important and just enjoy playing and learning
3) invest more time in chess but I am afraid it will interfere with my work and family life

I will appreciate any comments and ideas.

Choose nos.2.  Maybe is the opening, ever work on that ? Why not start posting your games here for some analysis ?

I notice from your profile that we are very similar in age (you are five weeks younger). We are now middle-aged and cannot expect improvement to come easily (if at all).

I think you need to relax, accept your lot (as have I) and just enjoy the game.

me too was born 65' and I have no otb rating  oh well nevermind  But also I see in your profile  you have not play any games here (turn based nor live chess)

Vintage year. 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqu69_rolling-stones-get-off-of-my-cloud_music

Grooovy, maan!

prefer the 80's

Late disco? or shoulder pads, make up for men and bird's nest haircuts?

no way, just the music is fine with me lol 

kco (circa 1983):

How many serious (slow) OTB games do you play per year? You need a decent amount to improve.

Invest less time in chess (stop your studying of tactics, strategy, etc) and instead play through your games of last year, trying to find out what went wrong.

Why are you not winning games? That's what you need to figure out. It's no use to start cleaning and fixing every little part of a car when the problem is a flat tire.

Get into the habit of writing down the clock times after each move, it can sometimes help to figure out the problem (not spending enough time on some moves, spending too much on others).

For general improvement I'm a fan of Dan Heisman's Novice Nook columns ( http://danheisman.home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Articles/Novice_Nook_Links.htm#subjectorder ), but read them sparingly -- it's too easy to fall into a trap of too much study vs not enough serious play.

Like you I suffer from the same problem. Studying different topics and when I play I don't see any improvement at all.

I am not sure if it was in the book "Chess for Zebras" that I read about the problem: The author says that if we only study books, we try to play moves and a style above our rating, making our game even worse.

I just started focusing a lot more on my own chess and not just how an author tells you to. Take a look at my recent post: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/studying-the-right-material-and-the-right-way

I don't know if you already train like that, but I regret that I focused to much on theory and not like this earlier.

You are right - openings do pose some problem for me due to poor memory. So I play them mostly according to general guidelines. It works OK, but in OTB game that means that more time is spent than if moves were played from memory.

And here is my last OTB game (I was black):

You went up to as far as move 6 as the book move (correct me if I am wrong) which is pretty good to me.

That's what I mean saying that following general principals usually works - the only thing that I have in my memory is that c4 can be met by e5.