Why terrible some days and great others?

Yesterday I was beating players ranked 1600s, 1700s, and holding my own against 1800s. 

Today, I'm tanking my score and lost every game. I was 1660-1680 all day yesterday. Today 1580. 

 

Finally forced myself to stop playing after so many losses. I'm just not seeing obvious stuff. 

How do you avoid wild fluctuations like this? 

 After looking at some of your games, I will offer the usual advice.  You're losing games for the following reasons:

Not following opening principles..

Hanging material.

Missing simple tactics.

Playing to fast time controls.

 

I know I'm missing simple tactics today. I guess the time is a factor, but I also feel like my brain works for chess some days and not on others. 

 

Maybe step #1 is slow down. 

Psychology...

Psychology Everywhere

You're missing simple tactics everyday.  You first need to be honest with yourself.  What are your expectations?  Just to have fun?  Casually improve?  Serious improvement?

This certainly happens to me. I see it most clearly when I’m working tactics problems. Sometimes, like yesterday everything is clicking. I see potential solutions quicker, I calculate accurately, and I do real well. Other days it is like my brain is in a fog.

Part of the variance for me has to do with when I get in the bad habit of relying on intuition instead of calculating. I can go into a week long slide before I know it.

But that is definitely just part of it.

Some of it probably has to do with how rested I am. But again, I have good days when I’m tired and baddays when I am not.

Personally I think I do my best when I believe I am capable and I’m not lazy, relying on intuition.

There are days when I truly believe deep down I can beat someone well above my rating, and it definitely shows in my play.

I'm honest with myself about my level of playing. I know I make a lot of errors, but even still, some days are worse than others. I'm trying to get better at avoiding blunders and making simple errors. 

 

I actually play and study quite a lot. I've tried to familiarize myself with a lot of openings. I've practiced tactics. I even run a chess club for kids where I have over 100 students. Granted, they are 3-5 grade so I'm good enough to teach their classes. I study a lot so I make sure I teach them well. . . 

Anyway, i just don't seem to be able to get to that next level. And I think this is problem #1... missing stupid stuff. making stupid errors. I play distracted too often...in small pockets of time I find at work. . .etc. etc. But at the base of it all is why do I miss the stupidest stuff one day, and not others. 

 

What would you recommend... 15/5?

it happens to me as well maybe the answers given to you might help me too

it happens to me as well maybe the answers given to you might help me too

Thats because youre playing 10 minute games.  

Chess improvement is often a case of two steps forward and one step backward.  As you study more, your chess knowledge increases, but it takes a while for your thinking process to assimilate and sort out what you have learned.  Until that time, you have too much to think about and make patzer mistakes.  Not to mention that you may be trying to execute deeper plans that are beyond your technique.  All of this is magnified when you play at fast time limits.

The good news is that we all learn more from our losses than our wins.  As painful as it may be, look at your losses and try to find the patterns in your blunders. 

AND, don't take results in blitz/rapid too seriously.  Take the games seriously, as you play them, but not the results.

15/10 is ok; 30 min is better

if you play 30 min games then you can really channel “the best you got” for that moment in time- then- once you finish the game and make a serious enough effort to go over and annotate your game you will have had a really productive couple of hours; then you can study on areas where you see yourself lacking— even if all we are doing- at the end of the day- is just “hanging pieces”- the point is going over the game and really be specific with how you hang your pieces; was it a one move catastrophic blunder? was it a weak position which progressively got to the point of over working your pieces and eventually losing pieces? whatever- that is the point of going over games where you had time to really do your best

i try not to play more than 3 a day- if i am lucky; and one of the games usually ends quicker than normal

if you get two games of solid effort from both sides and make good post-game review of game then you should be able to really bring up the floor of your “worst days” after some repetition

do you play uscf rated games? these are the best to play and then review with a really strong player who can size up your game; playstyle; maybe throw in a really solid move/variation that is just above your comfort level especially when it comes to some prophlyax (sry spelling) or something you might not be thinking about- like some quiet moves or whatever

if we just rely on our natural momentum which ebbs and flows we will have more of these “great day/bad day” sessions

good luck

Also, I tend to do better when I make a concious effort to access what my opponent was trying to do with their move. That doesn’t mean reacting to every little threat. It does mean at least trying to understand what the threat is.

And I agree with the others that blitz and bullet can be a cancer on improvement. Personally, I simply won’t play without an increment.

That happens with every skill, not just chess.

200 points is a pretty wide swing though, so either you were overestimating yourself (were you holding your own or were you getting lucky?), or your sleep / food / emotions balance is off.

 

If you sleep enough, eat regularly, are emotionally ok, and warm up with some tactics before games, then you will still have good and bad days... but not 200 point swings.

totally agreed coffeeand420; 30 minutes isnt long enough at all

That's not the point at all, and doesn't answer his question...

maybe maybe not
op is talking about good days and terrible days which is just nature
perhaps i wrongly assumed- after noticing we all have good and terrible days- that the next step is to try and limit our terrible days or, more accurately, try to bring the level of our worst days closer to the level of our best days; basically- get some consistency

and in any endeavor- to make those steps in improvement requires effort and discipline
nearly everyone on these boards recommends play in classical time controls to really establish our “baseline” of chess performance- good and bad days included

getting out of a provisional uscf rating takes 25 games and i’m sure in these 25 games one will experience his terrible and great days but he will be taking very solid steps to shoring up weaknesses which are exacerbated on our off days

if the op was just referencing the very natural occurrence of good days and bad days then i’m sorry for going off on a tangent

fwiw- i remember a high school trigonometry teacher who was always on about ‘biorythm’- i think that is what she was talking about; but we would always have to plot out stuff on graphs which was essentially mapping the nature between our “good days and bad days” as it related to performance on some trig questions

Please check out this episode of my chess show on youtube - https://youtu.be/4YK7QJa3nKs  - among other things - you are tired in an invisiible to the concious mind way. Find your peak in terms of highest number or points gained per total number of games played, stop playing at your daily peak, You were crushing 1800s yesterday and you are tired, you have the same expectations from you today(not gonna happen), you lose one game and you get frustrated and start losing more and more- you need more discipline, patience, modesty- be content and happy with 20 or 30 points gained per day, play no more than 5 rated games per day or at a time - always warm up with 1 game. Do not play on the next day after big rating gains

 

 

it can actually be your sugar levels.