Chess Anxiety?

Hey all, does anyone else suffer from chess anxiety? I love chess and have played off and on for 25 years or so. I love watching GothamChess and BotezLive and feel confident in playing after watching videos. Yet when I boot up chess.com I end up playing the bots and analysing my games with them. I struggle to play online games with real people and I have no idea why? I don't know of I'm scared to embartess myself, I don't know if it's just me being over anxious? I think when I analyse my bot games and I see glaring mistakes that I've made that I'm simply not good enough to play real people. Does anyone else suffer with this or has suffered with this and how do you deal with it? thanks!

I do know what you mean yes - I have prolonged periods of not playing as I kind of underestimate myself and overestimate my opponents and feel like if I'm not playing my absolute best chess I shouldn't play live games. When really at my level (~1500) players make frequent mistakes, my opponents like me aren't Grandmasters and I should just relax and play more. Like you I tend to play bots more than people. I am also being more active with clubs lately, mainly Tigran Petrosian Club but I did also make a club specifically about this problem ('Chess and Anxiety') it's not very active but have a look there if you like you'll find a few other members who understand that feeling. I find that daily games I have begun playing in the club are a nice way to get back into playing as there is no time pressure. Also bizarrely I quite like bullet games - they are so quick there isn't time to think about anything just move some pieces around. BUT they are probably terrible for improvement so I don't recommend bullet games as a way to improve I just found I stress about them less than rapid games so maybe you'll find them useful for that.

Thanks for the replies, yeah I tried a bullet game once and I thought my head was gonna explode, never again, just pure panic lol. I only really play 10 minute games now so I'm not In a rush to make a move. I did just read a reply from someone in another thread that I should learn 1 opening for white and 2 for black against e4 d4, which makes a lot of sense. I think I'm going to continue to work on my London, improve my caro and find something as black against d4 (london). Maybe having those 3 things will help me at least begin a game as I'm so damn nervous to even start one lol

Try playing daily games ie one move per day, and see whether u feel anxiety in those too, if not then the problem is fast time controls, your chess thinking is not suited with blitz so you can focus on rapid and classical, if u feel anxious in daily games one move per day then the problem is not of time control but u have fear of losing, that problem is easily treatable, start regarding each lost game as a free chess lesson , analyze and look at each loss even for a few minutes and see where u blundered and try not repeating the same error again , regards

There's a stand-up comic routine I enjoy about people taking "offense" in the modern era, and it goes something like "When you get offended, so what? Nothing happens. It's not like you overhear someone say something rude, and you get offended, and wake up the next day with leprosy. Nothing actually happens?!" - the relevance here is that when you lose a game, or lose some artificial 8 rating points - nothing actually happens, you just lose a game. No one knows who you are, no one is looking at your games and nothing changes in your life when you lose a game.

I would say to get over rating axiety, just rename your account name to something anonymous, but it already is anonymous, so you can play, win lose or draw, and no one anywhere will ever know - so no need to be embarrased.
Another way to shift the mindset is to appreciate your losses. Treat every loss like a learning experience - a good case study to understand why you lost. You WILL learn more from your mistakes vs from only making good moves. 
I used to HATE playing with black against 1.d4, but then I learnt an opening, and then my mindshift changed to actually wanting to play 1.d4 to use it as a training ground.

I think we all suffer from a bit of spotlight syndrome from time to time, eg. overestimating how much other people actually care about what we're doing, who we are, what our rating is, etc. Just reminding ourselves that it is just a game we play for fun - and again, if your account name is anonymous - even better.

You will learn more from playing humans btw over bots. Humans play differently to bots. Humans can get emotional, fall into traps, etc. So I'd 100% recommend shifting over to it.
If you really need to, you can play 'unrated' games to avoid any rating change, and still experience a human game that you can still analyse afterwards.

Setting yourself a rating goal of 100 points higher than you are will also motivate you to continue playing vs keeping steady on a rating you have right now that will be unlikely to change if you're stuck in this cycle.

One of the best ways to learn is to loose and analyse slow paced games. So the key question is: are you able to that, loosing games?

It really helps if you do it a lot and you might consider wearing a huge purple hat during the online games.

most ppl are bots ngl

Thanks for all the advice, just played my first game in a long time, went well. Nerves are there before I even hit play, missed 1 obvious move, but rest was pretty smooth :). I seem more confident as white, black scares the hell out of me still if they don't play e4. Homework to do I guess!

@Ata, yeah I domt mind losing, I'm 38, I understand you will some you lose some, what bothers me is when I do glaringly obvious mistakes and it demoralises me. Once I start a game and I'm a few moves I'm I tend to settle the nerves, it's just hitting play and worrying about doing dumb things in front of another person which worries me. I guess I over think it too much.

If chess is not your prime career choice, there is no reason to be attached to it in any way whatsoever.

The mind is a survival machine - use chess to improve it. It's a tool, nothing else. Until you start to earn a living from it.

I’m a spurs fan, but I’ll still help you out

 One thing you could try is playing unrated games. This lowers the stakes and allows you to not worry about losing rating or anything if you lose. I would also try to find a friend to play with. You guys can analyze your games afterwards and talk over your thought process on certain moves. When I do this with my friends we usually learn a lot from each other

Lol cheers mate. I don't have any friends that play chess tbh. I sent mind lose rating, I just want to get better but struggle to actually start the process.

Kane to UTD in the Summer?

Think about it: Supposing you play a game of chess and you lose it. What will happen? Nothing! Or, better than nothing, you will learn something and get some experience. That's the worse thing that can happen. Every strong player has lost hundreds, if not thousands, of games in their chess journey. And so will you--if you stick with it. Every game starts with a clean slate, It doesn't matter if you won or lost the last one. This is a new opportunity to learn and grow as a player

Think about watching Man City instead of the Gunners. 4 titles in the last 5 years = no anxiety.

I am a bit like that too. Before I click the button to play with a real human I make sure to be well rested etc to reduce the amount of blunders, because it's embarrassing to hang a piece (and the opponent thinking "how he did not see that" about me). Playing against bots does not have that. I get crushed by Catspurrov a few times until finally beating him and it does not matter.

And yes, I know that it does not really matter if I win or lose, I am not betting money on the outcome and every loss is an opportunity to learn, but when I see my mistake half a second after moving (before my opponent moves) it's embarrassing.

Ha ha I do that too......move and think "thats a blunder"........obviously if I can see that before I move it is avoided but still doing it. I guess it comes down to self-discipline, but throw in a bit of time pressure and that seems to go out of the window.

Same

:)

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