Well, with less distractions, I still managed to go down a rook in my 2nd game with "Eric." With my losing streak at two (along with a few other losses (rated blitz) games in Chessmaster) my rating has dropped ... so much so that the top of the allowable personalities for me to play is "Lacey" who is 1309.
I've been in a major slump on ChessTempo too. For the first time this year and for the first time in a long, long time, I've been struggling to get out of the 1630's and 1640s (blitz level tactics). Usually I will drop down to the 1640's and 50's but then I'll pop right back up to the 1660's and higher. But this week has been an absolute struggle. I'm missing 1400, 1500 rated problems and even the occasional 1300 problem!
I don't know what's going on, but this is brutal.
Maybe you're worried by other things in your life, which are unrelated to chess. If this is the case, stopping your chess training for a while and taking care of these worries may help.
ReplyDeleteMaybe also you're just a bit tired.
Good luck !
With my training performance, there's a huge difference between when I just feel like playing chess, and when I'm focused and awake enough to /really/ play chess. This is pretty obvious when doing tactics drills as well, as in the latter state of mind I score 90% or better while with a fuzzier mind the score is...well, much less.
ReplyDeleteI've learned not to bother playing in the latter state of mind, since I won't play well and learn anything anyway.
Laurent S and CA - both really good comments and I agree with them. On Tuesday, when I posted this, my head was in a fog all day. Then yesterday and today, I feel a lot better and at least I've improved on the tactics front a bit ... still a long way to go to recover to where I was a month ago.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for the comments!
I think my Chesstempo rating is 1730 right now, but I can say that the rating of the problem seems to correlate to absolutely nothing, and I find the difference between a 1700 and a 1300 problem to be a total joke; all I know is that I get them all right when I am focused and otherwise seem to get them mostly wrong.
ReplyDeleteMy last problem, it took me 9 minutes to see a Nf4-g3 retreat, defending the Rf1 and attacking Qe2 winning a piece. That is so crazy. The easy stuff can seem hard and the hard seem easy just as often as not.
LinuxGuy - I absolutely agree with your comments.
ReplyDeleteWhen my blitz rating was above 1700, I was consistently getting 1700 problems correct. I was also consistently getting 1500 problems correct. My bane, however, were the 1600 problems.
I've seen REALLY east 1700 and even 1800 problems, but then I'd miss a 1400 or 1300 and I'd just smack my head. So yeah, the problem ratings are deceptive.