These past weeks have been an interesting time for my training. On one hand, I have lost a fair amount of my ELO, going from around 1020 to 920. However, I believe that I have identified a weakness that, when addressed, will lead to improvements.
My primary weakness is: I find it difficult to stop playing if I lose. If I am losing, I want to at least have one more good game. As I lose more, I become more frustrated, which causes me to play worse. And, as I become more frustrated, I more strongly want to keep playing and get a win. This cycle has not boded well for my rating; however, now that I have recognized this cycle I believe that in the future I will more able to break it!
Another clue that this frustration is significantly detracting from my performance is that my rating on the puzzles has gone up in the past two weeks:
My interpretation is that I am still improving in my abilities to perceive the best move in a given situation, but that perception is being overshadowed by increasing frustration in actual games.
One thing that has perplexed me is wondering why this is happening now, when it was not as much of an issue when I first started playing against live opponents. I think the reason may be that when I first started playing I did not know my rating and so I did not have specific expectations about my performance. Once my rating was established, however, it became much more frustrating to lose part of that rating, and it became harder to look at it as “just a game”. Therefore, I consider the games that I am playing now to be emphasis change training, where I direct specific focus toward my emotional stability.
As for my games against bots, there were no significant changes. Against the 1000 ELO bot I was able to win without making any mistakes or blunders:
Against the 1500 ELO bot, I was not able to secure a win this time, but my accuracy was respectable:
In more positive news, I have been able to focus less on the clock, and have avoided rushing myself to play at my opponent’s pace. I have also begun to identify and counter more gambits and maneuvers that, in past weeks, have tripped me up. Moving forward, I will continue attempting to improve my ELO, while making a concerted effort to control my frustration.