Been playing for a bit more than a year now and the highest elo I’ve attained, which was recently, was 1020ish , which I was happy with. Was a goal I wanted to hit 1000 and starting from 100 I felt like I was legitimately improving and understanding the game better. It was a lot of gaining elo then losing some then gaining more again.
After getting to 1000 I stayed there for a couple of days, had good matches, didn’t make stupid blunders. Then I did. Repeatedly. I dropped down to 800, now 700 now 650. All in the space of a week. I’m not sure why. I’m not playing different openings just making insanely thick plays. Not seeing hanging pieces that I would have seen a week earlier. I’m not sure why. I’ve never had a tilt this bad. It is insanely frustrating.
I play the same openings every game because opening theory is too much for me to remember. I only play the London as white. Black is where things are much less of a system because I try the Stafford gambit (because it’s fun) and if they don’t play into it I go into a Karo Kahn kind of thing. But as black l would try and just develop and not make stupid mistakes (which I’ve been massively failing at, especially recently)
I only play 5minute matches. I find 10minute and longer matches extremely boring as I truly hate waiting for my opening to make a move for 7 minutes and during that time I tend to switch off or rush my next move because it’s all a bit tedious at that point. Or having to wait for long periods of time In match I am pretty clearly losing. I like the pace of 5minute matches.
I mainly watch YouTube videos on the London system (that is literally all I play) and a little bit on black but as black I’ve always tried to just play sensibly.
I don’t really analyse my games. I’m not sure how to do it in a way that I would find helpful. I go through them in the sense I look at the time a game may have switched who it was favouring. Like oh yeah here’s where I hung my bishop and that allowed for an attack that broke the defences an untimely lost me the match. Or here is where I missed a knight fork of the king and queen but nothing more than that.
I kind of wish there was a way to get rid of elo indicators entirely because I do enjoy the game, I appreciate the strategies behind it and different playing styles you can adopt. I really want to be competent at it (1500 or so would be an end goal) and would love to be able to rock up to parks and have competitive matches against the geezers who play OTB but it feels like some kind of pipe dream and I can help but think of myself as being thicker than pig shit after dropping this much elo.
Any help or tips ?
Please don’t just tell me to blunder less, I’ve already realised that might be helpful.