Overly stressed when playing - why ??

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TitanCG

Try slower games. You need time to get used to the new skills you are learning. 

Time4Tea

Why don't you post a couple of games and maybe people can give you some advice?

varelse1

Because you're a tactical pkayer who loses his games pisitionally. Nothing more frustrating.

Win positionally. Lose tacticaly. You will consume far less aspirin that way.

SirDonM

I think the answer to the stress you are feeling is pretty clear: You need to win some games! There is no doubt that one learns a lot from the games that are lost, but it is also true that constantly losing is no fun and makes one question why they bother playing at all.

Totally contrary to advice given to you above, I believe that one of the chess apps or an electronic chess board would be very helpful. Start with one of the Fun levels, beginner levels or Ply-1 levels and start winning a few games. A chess app that I have found very helpful (although there are several others) is Shredder since you can start playing it at a very low Elo and it will keep up with you as you improve. It also has a helpful guage/meter that will evaluate your current position at any particular time in the game.

An electronic board that you might enjoy that is cheap and readily available on eBay is the Saitek Olympiad (the levels start at 1-ply and go up from there) or the RadioShack Partner 1680X catalog 600-2428A which has nice easy levels to start with. Both these boards have the same form-factor with a nice large LCD and LEDs on the squares.

The benefit of doing the above is that winning a few games will build self-confidence and using an app or electronic board will give you an idea as to what your skill level is. That can be used in deciding what players to play against. IMO, it is better to play against those that you have at least some chance of winning against rather than (what I think has been happening) playing against those that are far better than you.

SirDonM

Yes. The posted games only reinforce what I posted. Perhaps you didn't understand my post.

bean_Fischer

The best is to get a good mentor.

PlanetBaden
aloishudal hat geschrieben:

Maybe you are stressed since you even end up losing games where you are a Queen ahead...

Oh yes, this was a hard game to take for me.

PlanetBaden
aloishudal hat geschrieben:

Heres one at 3 days each move:

Thanx for looking into this game :-)

PlanetBaden
bean_Fischer hat geschrieben:

I think 1. e5 is not suitable for your style. Change it to a calm game, step by step progressing, positional play with 1. d4 or 1. c4. Note: although the game is closed, but can do fireworks.

This is an approach I will dig deeper into. For me I often cannot stand higly aggressive opponents - therefore my openings have to be more rock solid.

PlanetBaden
Time4Tea hat geschrieben:

Why don't you post a couple of games and maybe people can give you some advice?

Will do this. Please feel invited to do so in the analysis section.

PlanetBaden
bean_Fischer hat geschrieben:

The best is to get a good mentor.

Tried this once at a local chess club. It was quite horrendous and countereffective with all this players around saying: Lern the lines, dig into opening books - then come back. This was my impression of message they send me. There were no time at all for dealing with patzer players like me because they all wanted to practice for their future tournaments (for sure a lame excuse).

najdorf96

Heh. Besides all the myriad of various great advice, maybe you could invest a little time and money in some books of Master games (im talking inch and a half thick) with annotations, anecdotes and analyses. Some tactical puzzle books (ie Neishstadt's Test your Tactical ability Your Move!; A. Livshitz's-heh. His name always makes me smile-Test Your Chess IQ; Pandofini's Chessercises: Checkmate! etc). Any I. Chernev books. Reuben Fine's Middlegame in Chess. Silman's Endgame course. Seirawan's Trilogy. Blah blah. I could go on and on. Point is, for you...you need to do some homework before playing. Heh. And try switching to decaff, ok? Best of luck.

bean_Fischer
PlanetBaden wrote:
bean_Fischer hat geschrieben:

The best is to get a good mentor.

Tried this once at a local chess club. It was quite horrendous and countereffective with all this players around saying: Lern the lines, dig into opening books - then come back. This was my impression of message they send me. There were no time at all for dealing with patzer players like me because they all wanted to practice for their future tournaments (for sure a lame excuse).

So, these player actually make you stress. If I were you I will avoid them at this moment. And learn solely from a good mentor. You need to tell the mentor how and what you want to learn. And ask for their suggestion.

I learned with a mentor who was good enough for me for a month. I learned basically no theory just practice. I practiced with him 2-5 games a day, 30 min each a game. Well, he moved fast. So he changed it to 30 min -10 min odd. I told him to beat me up. Yes, I lost almost all my games. Well, some draws and a few win. I was a pathetic patzer. And like you, those players made fun. But, nobody does that anymore with me. They got serious and they told me to beat them. They like to be beaten by me. GL

Time4Tea
PlanetBaden wrote:
bean_Fischer hat geschrieben:

The best is to get a good mentor.

Tried this once at a local chess club. It was quite horrendous and countereffective with all this players around saying: Lern the lines, dig into opening books - then come back. This was my impression of message they send me. There were no time at all for dealing with patzer players like me because they all wanted to practice for their future tournaments (for sure a lame excuse).

Sounds like you haven't found the right mentor, if these guys weren't willing to give you much time ...

Time4Tea

Game against mythuuun:  you made a couple of tactical errors - obviously you hung the knight on move 8, which put you in a bad way, although I think you could have won it back on move 18 (he hangs the knight on b4).  It looks to me like most of your moves are pretty reasonable, but you're making the odd tactical error here and there and it's those that are letting you down.  I'll check out the other game later on (don't have time right now).

Also, it looks like you're playing against players who are rated quite a bit higher than you.  That's good for learning, but maybe you could play against people closer to your rating if you want to reduce the stress and increase the winning chances a bit?

akafett

I'm willing to play an unrated game with you. After you play Lucidish_Lux and gain some good chess knowledge, send me a message. We can play a casual correspondence game, message one another the moves. Forget about time control. No pressure. And maybe I will learn something new as well.

royalbishop

First i start of with listing those books so we can tell you which to read and in what order. Keeping them around is going to be constant reminder of you not getting the results that you know is possible.

Second i do not know anybody that had serious improvement without practice. Need to spend some time to understand the fundamentals then practice them till it becomes 2nd nature so if you feel some stress it still surfaces what you know.

I suggest you identify what initially triggers it and work on reducing the influence on your game. Maybe your sensitive .... your eyes sensive to screen and etc.

PlanetBaden
royalbishop hat geschrieben:

First i start of with listing those books so we can tell you which to read and in what order. .

Hm, maybe a good point - but I read so many in the past that I feel overloaded with principles and approaches. Tend to be saying that this could give me stress on the board - the overweight of theories, lines, sublines, do`s and dont`s.

EscherehcsE
PlanetBaden wrote:
royalbishop hat geschrieben:

First i start of with listing those books so we can tell you which to read and in what order. .

Hm, maybe a good point - but I read so many in the past that I feel overloaded with principles and approaches. Tend to be saying that this could give me stress on the board - the overweight of theories, lines, sublines, do`s and dont`s.

Hi PlanetBaden! I'm sorry to hear that you're stressing over your chess games. I'm guessing that the reason for your stress is because you don't have any idea why you keep losing and can't seem to win any games, and reading more books doesn't seem to help.

I've looked over all seven of your live standard games, and I think I've found the problem. Of course, both you and your opponents are making tactical mistakes (this is expected of us novices), but you're making more and larger tactical mistakes. I think there are two reasons for this:

1) I noticed that sometimes you make simple counting mistakes when you enter into a series of exchanges, which results in a loss of material. Here's a great article for learning the proper counting technique:

http://www.chess.com/article/view/counting-vs-counting-material

2) Many of your tactical mistakes seem to be because you're not looking for either your or your opponent's checks, captures, and threats. Dan Heisman refers to this kind of chess as "hope chess". This article explains the difference between "hope chess" and "real chess" :

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/real.pdf

I think that if you learn these two concepts and practice them, you'll see a huge improvement in your chess games. Good luck!

Somebodysson
duck29 wrote:

take some deep breathes 

this is good advice. deep breaths have a direct and immediate relaxing effect on the body. play some games where your goal is not so much to win as it is to relax. Practice relaxing as you play.