How did I lose 300 points of playing strength?

@firebreathingpoptart said ^

A lot of players in the middle ranges have discovered the plugins. They don't rise high because if they do it's too obvious and they get busted. I was pretty consistently above 1700 blitz on here. A few months ago I started falling and now staying above 1500 is a challenge. You can feel it in the pace, the positional play, tactics spotted. For some playing the game is fun, for others getting ...

It is possible some of it is related to that, that might explain some of the incredibly deep tactics some of these 1500's are playing.

I can't use that as an excuse though for my own bad play.

@RabbitSamurai said in #20:

I don't think "entitled" is the right word. Just to put it into perspective, if I played a player rated 500, I wouldn't feel "entitled" to beat them, I would just figure that if I play anywhere close to my level, I should beat them.
Doesn't that seem reasonable?

Maybe, "entitled" IS the wrong word. What I had in mind was this sort of thing: "... The volume is huge, I have played tons of chess.com games and was over 1800 for a long while before this all happened. ..." (#16)
If you "don't have a ton of time to see every threat", it is pretty much inevitable that you are going to lose SOME games because of things that you don't see. Just random chance can put a few such games in a row, and if you have an emotional reaction, the resulting decrease in the quality of your judgments can contribute to what is happening.
In the [Site "https://lichess.org/ttojKYOl"] game, after 12...c6, you had an approximately 1.6 advantage and could understandably have felt that the game was yours, but you made an approximately 2-second decision (13 Bg5), and suddenly things were very different. Emotions can influence the frequency with which things like that happen.

@kindaspongey said ^

I don't think "entitled" is the right word. Just to put it into perspective, if I played a player rated 500, I wouldn't feel "entitled" to beat them, I would just figure that if I play anywhere close to my level, I should beat them.
Doesn't that seem reasonable?

Maybe, "entitled" IS the wrong word. What I had in mind was this sort of thing: "... The volume is huge,...

I agree with everything you just said.

I am trying to regain control of my decisions :)

Lichess and chess.com rating systems are different which is why I stopped playing chess.com
For example my chess.com for blitz is around 900 and look at it here

I made it back to 1700, using a NO TILT agreement that I made with myself. Tilting is very sad, you can spend months playing good chess and then lose all your points in one night due to anger, the only way to avoid this is to actually force yourself not to tilt.

I'll keep everyone posted,... I know my chess progress is very interesting to everyone :)

@RabbitSamurai said ^

The gambler visits the casino. He keeps on winning and he's so happy. Then he loses. And loses again. Now he's mad, how can the casino do this to him? He's smarter than the average gambler, he deserves to win and he's entitled to win. Day after day he returns, tired and frustrated but convinced this is the day.

Great analogy, except this is chess....

Blitz = poker (strategy + luck) Bullet = roulette (complete luck)

@whatismymainbro said ^

The gambler visits the casino. He keeps on winning and he's so happy. Then he loses. And loses again. Now he's mad, how can the casino do this to him? He's smarter than the average gambler, he deserves to win and he's entitled to win. Day after day he returns, tired and frustrated but convinced this is the day.

Great analogy, except t...

I don't think there is THAT much luck in bltiz, chess is generally not considered a game of luck. Most players achieve the rating that reflects their playing strength.

This is obviously distorted in my case because of all the TILT when things go badly for me and I lose it completely.

@kindaspongey said in #15:

... [Event "rated blitz game"] [Site "https://lichess.org/ttojKYOl"] [Date "2026.10.20"] [White "RabbitSamurai"] [Black "sambukapleer"] [Variant "Standard"] [TimeControl "180+0"] [Annotator "lichess.org"] 1 e4 e5 2 f4 d6 3 Nf3 Nc6 4 Bc4 Bg4 5 c3 Nf6 6 d3 Be7 7 O-O O-O 8 f5 Bxf3 9 Qxf3 d5 10 Bb3 dxe4 11 dxe4 Na5 12 Bc2 c6
... 13 Bg5 ...
13...Qb6+.
Oops!

@RabbitSamurai said in #17:

... Yeah, that Qb6 was a shock to me, in a 3 0 game you simply don't have a ton of time to see every threat your opponent has. ...

@kindaspongey said in #18:

... Lacking “a ton of time”, one is, to a large extent, obliged to guess what to do. ...

@kindaspongey said in #22:

... If you "don't have a ton of time to see every threat", it is pretty much inevitable that you are going to lose SOME games because of things that you don't see. Just random chance can put a few such games in a row, ...
... after 12...c6, you had an approximately 1.6 advantage and could understandably have felt that the game was yours, but you made an approximately 2-second decision (13 Bg5), and suddenly things were very different. ...

@RabbitSamurai said ^

I know ratings points don't mean everything, but I have been on a really dark journey as of late with regard to my rating.

I got to over 2000 rapid and 1930 blitz on Chess.com... I am rated over 2000 blitz on the Chessbase server

I feel like the chessbase server (playchess.com) is populated with mostly european, frequent OTB players and tend to be a bit stronger than chess.com, and certainly LiChess.

Specifically on chess.com I tilted off 300 points of blitz in a really bad 6 hour session and fell to 1600 blitz, and now I have been >stuck there for weeks!

The thing is that people here will not care or sympathize with you. They will be more like "Well, you could not have ever been as good as you thought you were. You deserved what you got."

BUT, why are you playing for 6 straight hours? That's insanely obsessive and you don't give yourself room to absorb any of the information you might have learned, so it leaks out of your ears. It probably took some other stuff with it. It difinitely took your common sense! You have a leakage problem. Do you brag to your friends when they ask

Them: "Hey, Sammy, what did you do last night?"
You: "I played blitz chess for 6 hours straight and jettisoned 300 rating points, guh, and I cant get it back..."

-- Sad Face.

You know that "getting to a rating target" is just a number and doesn't mean a thing to anyone but yourself so you can flex online or somesuch nonsense.

The obsession with ratings is such a mistake in chess. your obsession should be to improve your game overall.

The rating takes care of itself.

If your methods are good, you will see it in your rating.

In your case, playing 6 hours is clearly not the way to improve (or even to just maintain you rating "status", which clearly was a false-flag) and you see it by your ratings collapse. I think it's a good indicator for others, so at least you helped your fellow players, kinda?!

If anything, that's a strong message to you that you are doing chess wrong.

Classic pump-and-dump stock manipulation and behavior.

You pumped up your rating on false pretense and the bill came due.

Play less, play longer games, review your losses, compile them into a rolling list, and start patching your holes.

Playing "ratings obsessive chess" is just a terrible way to spend an evening.

You will either figure it out or not.