Why do I suck at daily chess?

oh welp I feel bad

I suggest to play as many tournament games as your free time allows you to and also to get a decent coach to help you guide and show what your mistakes/flaws are in your game.

hope this helps! I wish you all the best

what type of tournaments?

Brianjapan EpicPlayer is right. You are everytime playing with Mainframe.

Simply stop playing it. Quoting Nigel Short: Correspondence chess serve no purpose.

Ironic, since Nigel "Falling" Short's entire career and body of quotes/statements have served no purpose.

I am not Short fan, but this quote is IMO very right. I don't want play game that might take years and waste hours for analysis that can be refuted for milliseconds by any engine.

Maybe it's not irony, but serendipity?

So don't play and get off my lawn. Time spent doing chess analysis is never wasted.

Is there a guide somewhere for Explorer?  I'm not sure how to use it?  Does it only ever take you to so many moves? Is it OK to use as you are playing a daily?  Once you've gone as far as you can - to 5 moves or whatever it lets you go to - do you then have to look at all the games?

Yes, you may use it during correspondence games ("daily").

Open explorer, click on the moves that interest you. Eventually, individual game links appear below the stats. Keep going, and the stats will be replaced by game links.

Thank you.  Do you have to input each move - so in effect you recreate the game as you are playing it?  There's no shortcut?

The moves listed next to the stats are clickable. I reached the position in the image by choosing the most popular move every move until game links appeared.

Thanks - I think I know what to do.  Out of interest, do you use this tool very often?  How often?  I know I'm meant to learn something from every game - but  that would take a long time?  Not to get to the position you want but to then look at all the games?

I rarely use it because I have lots of books and ChessBase.

Once or twice, I have looked at every game published in Chess Informant that reached a position I had in a correspondence game. I regularly go through whole games.

Last week, preparing to play an OTB opponent who plays an offbeat line of the Dutch, I looked at every game that had reached a position I thought we might reach in our game. He must have anticipated that I prepared, because he played a different line of the Dutch (something I prepared against more than fifteen years ago). We both made errors in a complex middle game and ending, but I won.

Wow.  Well done on the win - good effort rewarded.  What's chessbase?  What's chess informant?  Are you just a player for fun?  Can I ask what your chess ambitions are?  Thanks for taking the time to reply - I know I'm pushing my luck a bit with all these questions - I'm waiting for someone nasty to jump on me soon....  

ChessBase is database software https://shop.chessbase.com/en/products/chessbase15_premium_package

Chess Informant is a periodical https://www.sahovski.com/Chess-Informant-140-p143247080

My only chess ambition is to play well. I had other ambitions until a few years ago. I would like to win my city's championship, but once again this year I placed second in the qualifying tournament and so will not be playing a match against the current champion. Likely, my best chance was in 2013. I've played in the championship three times, but lost every time.

I coach young players, run youth and USCF rated tournaments, and play in a few OTB tournaments every year.  The next one I'm TD for is in three weeks. The next time I'll play in a tournament is September. I won that one last year.

I enjoy playing and enjoy studying. I'm at an age where hard work is needed to slow the decline in my abilities.