Playing unrated now for a long time.

I have recently peaked at all my ratings. I have played everyday from a complete 900 noob 5 years ago to what I am now. To some of you my rating is bad (especially now you can just start a new account at 1800 which is digusting) to me it's everything I have worked on.

However now I am going to shut down and just play unrated for a long time. Here are my reasons;

I am overstretched and I know it. I have peaked and locked down but now I want to put my head down and do some serious learning and training, without the stress of my rating effecting my mood.

V3 is appalling, especially for fast games. Once we are forced to switch I will get slaughtered for time or will end smashing my mouse to pieces because it's so frustrating playing on it.

I want to play live. I haven't played live for years and I have no idea how good / bad I am in the real world compared to chess.com.

The players above me are awesome. I used to improve by just playing 1,000s of games badly and improving through lots of mistakes and learning from them. Now the players are so good that I need a very deep understanding of the lines. I get extra points in bullet by playing unsound sacrifices and squeezing every mini second of thought of my opponent.

I need to really practise my end games a lot. Infact I think 99% people on this site could do with improving their endgames. When you play lots of bullet/blitz games you are constantly practising opening lines, tactics etc. But you are under so much time pressure at the end you never have time to absorb what the strongest move is. You just move under sheer instinct. Plus there are so many early resignations you play hundreds more openings than endgames.

Anyway enough rambling, just some thoughts. Haha

gl

gl m8

I was thinking on getting to 1900 blitz back and just studying after it but I decided that is stupid. I need to get to 2000, LOL.

Seriously tho, some will call you sissy for not playing rated but if that is what makes you happy then go for it. I also play unrated bullet (I got to 2119 because I clicked on rated games by accident, without knowing they were rated) because I feel more chill, rage free If I hang all of my pieces!

You are easily a 2000 blitz player though so should go for it. I am a sissy. I'm very scared but I want to concentrate on studying before I go into battle again.