Bluejay, whenever I spiral down a losing streak and can't seem to play consistently well, I take a hiatus from chess.
A complete break for perhaps a day/s, week/s, month/s, then return back to start afresh. Before I dive in and play games, I prefer to look over memorising and understanding the opening games I play and then quickly look over the most recent losses and try to identify where it went all wrong. After I am confident and have established what I was doing wrong, I'll practice my openings again and then start off with unrated games (online) with people considerably less in rating than me.
Once I get the 'happy hippie undefeatable feeling' I slowly push upwards and challenge opponents closer to my own rating. Any games I lose or feel was a close-contest, I pause and review the game until once again I understand what exactly were my flaws and did I oversee any great plays.
Hope that helps.
Hi all,
I play usually at a 1500 level, but recently I can't seem to play any better than a 1000 player. I always hated losing, but now I just don't care. I hate seeing a game that I used to enjoy playing becoming just too frustrating to bear. Any suggestions?
Thanks