Studying more, playing worse

Okay, so as you can tell from my rating, I am a total amateur and pretty much suck at chess. Yet, for some reason, I am determined to get better.

I follow the general current of advice on this site (do lots of tactics, study openings, play lots of games), and instead of improving, my rating plunges. I make more and more boneheaded mistakes and lose to lower and lower rated players.

The more frustrated I get, the harder I try, and the worse I play... ad nauseum.

What gives? Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, how did you overcome it and actually make progress?

When i am playing really really bad for a week or so straight what helps me the most is just to get away from it for awhile. Refreshes you. I also like to review my losses and see if i am make mainly the main types of mistakes over and over. Also remember that progress takes time. Most the players here have been playing for years if not decades. Usually improvement takes a good amount of time.

Yeah, this happens to me too.

The best advice i can give you is forget about live playing for a time, and start playing online chess, that way you can have the time to use all the knowledgment you have acquired by study.

You should post some games, otherwise you're just going to get "study tactics!" over and over again. I can definitely tell you not to play when you're angry though; that's just asking to lose you points. If you're angry, stop, do something else, come back and do some tactics trainer, and then try playing again.

sirrichardburton:

I'll definitely be reviewing some of my losses. Despite my frustration, I can't step entirely away, so that seems like a good "chill out" step.

granitoman:

I haven't played online chess at all. I'll have to give that a shot. But yeah, you're right: live chess is not doing me any favors right now.

New_Member24:

I've definitely been playing while angry. It hasn't been working so well. "More tactics" is always good advice. I won't post any games, though. Partly because I'm embarrassed, and partly because it's pretty obvious even to me what I'm doing wrong.

roi_g11:

Makes sense, and is reassuring. I'm googling it now.

Thanks for the responses, all.

@KingInTheNorth101:

Yeah, I just verified... don't play any more live chess for a while. Only makes it worse.

Another part of my problem is physiological. I've been drinking a ludicrous amount of coffee and it makes me irritable and impatient. All hopped up and overly aggressive. Bad cluster of symptoms for chess.

Have you read any books? Perhaps one on tactics and one on endgames would be helpful. Definitely do not spend your study time on openings.

take a break! go on a little vacation and stay away from chess for that time, when you come back you will have a new mindset and will be able to improve.

If your really determined to become best to play very slow games (not 5.0 all the time) 25.0, 45.0, 60.0, 75.0 chess is not a race.

Study chess systematically slowly the right way then you'll see the game as a harmonious complete whole ignoring the endgame, cherry picking the fundamentals, studying a bit of this and a little bit of that,  solving tactics for only an hour, jumping into very complex subjects before your ready isn't going to get you results.

I see. I have this of experience before. Don't worry, keep on making mistakes and keep on losing. It will become less and less as the time goes by. Then suddenly your rating will be 1500+. And you wonder what you have done to improve so much. I tell you what you have done is losing and losing, and making more mistakes.

If you don't get 1500+, then something is very wrong. I don't mean your studies or your loses. I mean you may not have what it needs to get to 1500+.

I had the problems once I studied chess 24 /7 I tried to learn as much as possible.

videos, chess mentor, TT, books, web sites. I was overwhelmed by knowledge.

I got the advice to only study one book and forget all other sources of knowledge till i had studied this book.

hi jpbent,

stop learning openings. You can still do the tactics trainer/chess mentor but for the most, you have to play chess a lot.

while you play chess concentrate on tactics, can he win material after the move i want to play? can i win material right now?

keep in mind that there is some luck involved at the low ratings, in a lot of games, its just about who starts dropping material first.

try not to become frustrated, take some deep breaths, relax, it doesnt matter its just one game.

by the way, little tip on tactics trainer: never guess the move it'll make your actual play worse instead of better. you need to learn to paciently calculate every variation.

I had that problem, just stop trying to improve and start trying to have fun. After that, your chess skills will take care of themselves.  I would say that chess enjoyment is 98% of chess improvement.

From what i've read, chess progress often comes in steps. You don't progress for a while and then you suddently take a big leap. That is if you continue to train effectively ofc, some good advices are in this thread that should be followed for this purpose.

The first sign that such a strenght leap took place is often that your oponents seem to play weaker, not that you feel playing stronger yourself. So you sit there and don't say to yourself "wow i just made such an awesome move, my chess strength has increased !" but rather "wtf why did this guy make such a bad move, this is weak because .... and it allowes me to play ...".

The big majority of people put time in the wrong study.

I believe that tactics and endgame should make up 90 percent of your study. Limit opening study to finding some systems that you like and checking up on them after your games.

how long have you tried studying?

@ chesshole:

Maybe a week, two weeks...

Two weeks is nothing.  If you studied 2 hours a day for 2 weeks, that is only 14 hours.  I have spent probably 200+ hours studying Spanish and am still at an intermediate level.  It takes 10,000 hours to be a master at something.  When I was at 14 hours of studying Spanish I still could not understand more than 90 percent of the spoken words e.g. I could not write them out or make out the sounds.  If you study an hour a day for the next three months you will see a big difference in your level of play.

I don't mean to revive a dead thread, but I just read through it again and there's a lot of solid advice here. So thanks, everyone.

For anybody having similar problems, the two most helpful changes I made were: 1) slowing way down, even when the best move seems obvious; and 2) doing more tactics problems.

Anyway, I'm officially out of my slump! Thanks again, all.