I could have written half of this post for myself. I often wonder, what is the point of my studying chess and learning if I don't even make a good effort to apply what I learn?
Why I Lose Chess Games (Besides Being Outplayed By Better Players, I Mean), Part 956,241
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So, I did the hard thing and went back and looked at a bunch of my losses, and I think if anybody else ever did that (look at my losses) I would be banned on the grounds I do not deserve to sit down at a chessboard! My ratings have careened wildly from close to 1700 down to below 1400 so that is my target audience - and then only if are talking about wanting to improve over time, which I still pretend to do - if we are just playing for the fun of it that's great!
Anyway, I keep a little journal and made these notes today, and if they helped anybody in the slightest, great; otherwise I am just blabbing. Maybe we all have to take this journey alone. (PS this is in a blitz context, and I know for sure that you can't LEARN very much with any depth from blitz, but you can try to use it as a laboratory to apply what you study elsewhere, true?)
* First, I often am just playing addictively and compulsively too late at night when I am bleary and capable of dropping my queen on any given move! How many times have I said, "okay, I should stop now, but just one more," then gone on a multi-game blunder-fest that dumps a ton more rating points and ticks me off and keeps me angrily playing more and more and staying up too late!
* Second, "opponent blindness" where I am slinging my wood around, out of the corner of my eye seeing an enemy knight or pawn push floating around the queenside, but ignoring it, and all of a sudden, I am getting forked or pinned or torn up. Given that some of my preferred openings are based on expansion and pressure, rather than slashing attack, opponents have a chance to muster up stuff that can be effective if I disregard it. More prophylaxis, even in blitz!
* Third, down at my level there are plenty of "junkyard dog" street fighters (and I mean that as a compliment, perfectly good tactical players who don't play conventional moves so my ego tells me I am supposed to "refute" them) who will open 1.h4, 1.e3 and so forth, their early moves pre-loaded, moving instantaneously to throw you off (and I am the PERFECT psychological sucker for that - when they move fast, I want to move fast too, I guess just to show I can't be thrown off or shoved around - sheesh!) - they are more familiar with their patterns than you can be over the board, especially if you just throw your own pieces out in what seems a "natural" response. All of a sudden, the guy sacs a bishop or even a rook on f7 and your realize his oddly played pieces are going to mate you after all.
* Maybe most troubling is my tendency to want to get to an ending - ANY ending - and then hope I can "figure it out," even if some forethought would have told me what I was getting into, such as a terrible bishop versus a powerful knight, an opponent's pawn majority I cannot defend if I take off all the pieces, an exchange that ends up giving the opponent the remote passed pawn, etc. It would be better to lose more games on time, but feel that I was trying to play with recognition and evaluation, than to lose the same games on a misplayed ending with 40 percent of the clock time left.
Best wishes to all!