Unable To Think Right

This is going to sound weird, but my biggest problem on the chess board is not my knowledge of the game or my capability to play it. It's that I can't keep my thoughts on track while I'm playing.

My ranking history is a clear sign of this. I'll regularly be playing fine, and be at 1100 even 1200 or higher level. Then something in my brain will glitch. When I sit down for a game, I won't be able to think about it. Sometimes I'm able to figure out what's going to happen in the next 3 or 4 moves and see how the board will advance with each move I make for the long term progression of the game. I have no problem with this. Then sometimes I won't be able to even think a move or two ahead, and end up just kind of guessing. It's not that I'm familiar with certain positions, sometimes I can play amazingly in openings I don't know and positions I've never seen, and then other times I can be completely unable to think about the board in my most well played lines.

What in the world is wrong with me? The strength of my chess playing isn't dependent upon how much I know about the game, it's just however well I'm thinking at that point in time. One week I'll drop 200 points, the next week I'll climb 200 points, and back and forth forever. It's really starting to get frustrating. I just want to get a better grasp of the game, but there must be something fundamental I'm missing because I keep getting a stronger grasp and losing it.

And what's most absurd is the best I've played in a year was when I tried streaming. The first couple days of streaming I was taking down 1200 rated players with ease (on a new account for streaming purposes). Then I stopped being able to even talk about the game while I played. I was going on and on before explaining the nuances of the board and then after a few days it was "Uhm... wait no... I think... uh...." I couldn't figure out anything going on. I wish I had been recording the stream because the difference would be so shocking. It's the exact same problem I have in general.

Has anyone else faced this problem? How did you get past it?

Do you have adhd? Maybe try to drink caffeine before playing and see if you can get hyper focused. Or find techniques on the internet to improve focus if you don't wanna try stimulants like caffeine, nicotine etc..

Sometimes over stimulation can be the problem though. Do you already drink lots of caffeine? Not to get into your private life, but maybe consider your sleep schedule, if being stressed effects your game, etc.

Hmm. Not really feeling like a good place to get help. I’ve been meaning to check out my local chess club, maybe someone there will be able to help me or maybe I need a teacher. Thanks for trying to help.

if you read between the lines there was a lesson to be learned here, guilt-tripper. 🙂

Ok, I’ll bite. What’s the lesson?

i have been there its hard brother :/

SOLVE PUZZLES TO IMPROVE!!!

Is it do puzzles? It could be. I'd say that too. 

The other thing is you mentioned the idea of familiarity with openings. I don't think this can be underestimated as a cause of this phenomena of sometimes being able to read a position well, and sometimes not. I get the same thing, and I generally find that's exactly the problem. In some ways chess openings are like rock, paper, scissors. Certain combinations of openings leave one player with no plan, and no good moves. For example, if you play 1d4 as white and your opponent plays a Benoni (early c5,) and you take that pawn, you will not find too many good moves for however long the game goes. There aren't any. It isn't a failure to find them. 

I’ll try puzzles. Thanks.

@XaxosCore it will take a while for the benefit to be obvious. Stick with it.

i'm 3600 puzzles pb i know for sure.

I know exactly what you mean, I think we all experience it. It's all part of the inconsistency of us lower (>1900) rated players... I'm 1500+ rapid and somebody just hung their Queen against me on move 5, other games feel like I'm playing against an engine.
Burnout is real too. Maybe just take it easy and play more puzzles!
What time format do you play?

I play rapid almost exclusively, only with the occasional variation OTB. I've been pretty much solely doing puzzles since this thread. What I'm finding is the puzzles are simply reinforcing the way of thinking about the board the way I think about it when I'm playing my best. So I feel like a better way of summarizing the problem now, is occasionally I can play with the concepts that you learn from puzzles, but without the reinforcement of the ideas I have trouble holding onto that play. So with time I tend to forget what I should be doing on the board. It's a really weird phenomena. For example I said when I started streaming how I could explain the board well... I've noticed me failing puzzles on things that I would have explained in the early streams and forgot in the later streams. So me being able to solve the puzzles seems to be the same thing as me playing at my best. So yeah, I think the process of just reinforcing these ideas via puzzles might be the key to stability? Even though I can play what the puzzles are teaching me *occasionally*? That the puzzles will beat in the ideas and I'll play them *almost always*? I don't know, it's weird but I'm optimistic.

puzzles train you to always search for the best move & to carefully blunder-check.

The puzzles definitely introduced some new skills I hadn’t thought about before (namely forced moves) but I think I figured out what the problem I mentioned was. When I try and plan ahead and predict what my opponent will do, I get foggy. What I need to do is make my decisions based on the current state of the board. So instead of trying to figure out how to get any of their pieces through some complex chain of possible futures, I identify a weak piece or an upcoming trade, identify pins, examine pawn structure, etc. The best way I can summarize it is “analyze the board as it is”. Hoping to see the increase in rating soon to match this insight.

puzzles also sharpen visualization.