Picking up chess again, having problems

Hey all.

So when I stopped playing about five years ago, I was going up and down between low 1800s and high 1900s rating-wise. After happening to stay in a hotel where a chess tournament took place over Christmas, I thought "hey - I miss this stuff" and re-registered at my old chess club in January. 

I just got back from the fifth round, and I don't remember ever playing a worse game. I've tried being patient with myself and expect it to take time to get back into the swing of things but... blergh :D I did the math, too: after five rounds, my performance rating is 1601. That's... just... a lot lower than I'd have hoped for.

So. Patience? Advice for improvement? Or just accept that I now-a-days suck even more than I did five years ago and find another hobby? :D I hear good things about collecting bellybuttonfluff.

Is this your first tourney in 5 years though?  Surely you're going to have some tourney rust, just playing blitz at the club wont solve that.  Plus performances go up and down anyway.  1600 may be a depressing performance but it's not your new rating or strength

Yup; didn't even look at a board for the five years I was "off it". But since picking it up in January I've been mildly obsessive ;) You know; playing online, plowing through books, vids, analyzed, reg'd here and at icc - probably more than healthy but hey we all have our vices :P (At least I'm not WoWing! .... well, anymore...)

I had the same type of experience when integrating more tactical and positional play into my playing style and wtahced my ratings go from nearly 1500 blitz to 1300 and nearly 1700 online to 1400 as I readjusted to a new learning curve. However, by continuing to lpay through and analyze what went wrong and see the mistakes and successes in real life so to speak, I began to play better and bring my ratings back up a bit to where they were before (just made 1500 Blitz in 10 min play today). Same thing when incorporating endgame study as well. The point is, expect a drop as you get back into it or learn new concepts as you are also fighting against habits and previous conceptions as well. This is also not just in the chess world. Nearly any newly assimilated technique or relearning to do something will result in a slight drop in overall performance at first. However, once the new information is absorbed and integrated, you ineveitably find that your ability to do things (whether chess or work or even music) will get back to and increase above, the previous plateau. Wafflemaster is also correct that the 250-300 ratings points dropped is not an indicator that this will be the new standard for you, rather it will likely be that perhaps within 12-18 months, your FIDE  or ELO ratings norms should increase beyond there as well.