I am F***ing Useless!

I am actually getting a little worried.  I have been playing chess for over 40 years and I always thought I was pretty good.  I knew I would never be a grand master, but I could win some and lose some among my circle of friends.  

However, since joining this site, I have realised that I am no good at all.  I feel totally disheartened.  After my initial 5 games, I was rated 750 ish.  Since then, I have been on a pretty constant losing streak and I am down to just over 600.  I don't expect to win every game, but I am getting utterly slaughtered sometimes, like I am just learning again.  IN some games, after just a few moves, I can see that I am in a losing position and want to resign.  I have also been playing against the AI on various chess apps, and on one, I can sometimes only just scrape a win on easy level, but looking back through my history, I was regularly playing at the Advanced/Expert level.  Now I cannot even get up to that again.

It has been a few years since I played, so maybe I am pushing too much, too soon, so I guess I am just looking for a bit of reassurance that other players go through these "bad patches".  To be honest, I have started to question if this is the beginning of dementia as this has affected three of my four grandparents.

Where do you think youre lacking thats an important question, why do you think you cant increase your rating by at least 100 points?

Have you studied at all? Looked at tutorials on openings, defences, endgame strategies etc? Also do you review your games afterwards to identify errors?

Losing streaks aren't unusual, most people have them from time to time. Especially if, in frustration at blundering a piece and losing a game, you then start to play quickly and reactively, I've often done this. You don't say what time control you're playing - perhaps if you play longer games and really allow yourself time to comprehensively plan moves, you will see an improvement. Good luck

Yeah, I’ve got many losing streaks as well, but my latest one is different. Here’s why: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/important-why-you-should-never-let-anyone-know-your-password Anyway, I agree with you.

My advice is to play long games (such as 30 minute rapid) and if you’re in a losing position, do the best with what you have. You never know when you gain the advantage and win !

I always thought I was good at chess too, but my ratings are not good at all, bullet 600+, blitz, 900+, rapid 1000+ classic 1500+

I am going to keep pushing for a bit longer to see how far I can go and once I get into a losing streak, I will call it a day. The fact that I am rated a novice, kind of makes me think I am wasting my time. The only way of improvement is to play lots games sticking to a few openings and that helps, eventually, but the downside, chess has become boring, playing all these games.

Join lots of daily tournaments so you always have games on the go and can make moves in those active games instead of doing puzzles. If you have a few days per move you can take as long as you need to decide on the best move and it sinks in better than faster time controls.