Yips in Chess? Experience or Advice?
Background:
I'm 39 years old, and started playing chess in middle school. I slowly progressed to mid-expert strength to around age 30. I never had any real instruction an for my level have always been quite poor and opening theory and endgames. I guess this was balanced out by being better than my 'rating' in the middle game, I'm at my best in open tactical positions, I'm one of those guys that wants to hang himself when I see the London System on the board, etc.
Around 2016/2017 I noticed I started losing an inordinate amount of 'won' games. I initially wrote it off as normal variance as it happens to everyone here and there, but as the years have progressed the frequency in these types of losses has gone up and up and up. I have taken breaks for weeks, months, half a year when COVID happened to use as a reset, nothing helps. When I come back the problem only gets worse. Everytime I actually defeat an opponent who is close in strength to me, I have to utterly demolish them to accomplish this. If I'm slightly better or even clearly better in an endgame, I lose. I am routinely losing to players who are 20 yrs older than me and weaker, the same people I would defeat easily 10 years ago. I hit my USCF rating floor in my mid 30's. I have only met one other non-sandbagging player who has done this.
The only way I can describe what's going on in my head is once I perceive myself to be slightly better in a game, everything changes. Every candidate move looks horrendous to me. If I am stuck between 3-4 candidates, I see only negative consequences to all of them and cannot pick, a horrible anxiety grows inside. The game will slowly degrade. Sometimes I have told myself, I will play to simplify in these spots going forward, I do that, blow the game, and next game I say, I will play for checkmate before the endgame, I do that and blow the game. It's gotten so bad I often feel relief when my opponent resigns, because to me, the game is actually still loseable.
Advice? I haven't received good advice from anyone. The most common response is "it happens to everyone" and the person relates a story where they blew a game recently. This is always an internal eyeroll for me as I know this does not happen to everyone. Some people theorize I'm distracted by my real life. This certainly can't be the case either as this been going on for a decade and my real life has gotten better and worse and better in those 10 years. Ironically I am at the happiest I have ever been in real life, engaged to be married, living in a new beautiful home, and previously had lots of anxiety which seems to have gone away. Back in the early 2010s I had anxiety up the wazoo.
I've considered it in the past, and possibly because I'm both happier and busier and don't need this hobby anymore, that I am just going to quit. I'd still rather not quit, as it is my favorite hobby and have been playing for 25 years, but I can live without it. Is there any advice or has anyone experienced anything like this. I hate quitting things as a rule.
One last thing, I don't have this problem when playing blitz games for fun on the internet.
5 Replies
This is serious sports psychology stuff.
There are actual papers and studies on techniques to mitigate choking.
Here's a paper of a study of the effectiveness of some:
thoughts from a mid-amateur strength player:
with elo being a relative rating system, is it possible others have passed you by last 8 years with engine study and deeper theory to patch their middle game holes?
of course that doesn't seem the full story. aiming to simplify things or go for checkmate in middle game seems like two sides of the same tilt coin
sounds like you're putting a ton of pressure on yourself and psyching yourself out. maybe if you gave up caring on results and just got lost having fun in contemplating optimal moves you'd perform better? easier said than done of course
thoughts from a mid-amateur strength player:
with elo being a relative rating system, is it possible others have passed you by last 8 years with engine study and deeper theory to patch their middle game holes?
of course that doesn't seem the full story. aiming to simplify things or go for checkmate in middle game seems like two sides of the same tilt coin
sounds like you're putting a ton of pressure on yourself and psyching yourself out. mayb
Question 1:
So the long answer is no that is not possible, and there are a few reasons for this.
1) The weakest evidence first- I have only met 1 other player in my life my age or younger who hit a rating floor (and he's a nutjob)
2) These are in most cases much older players, who are in many cases declining themselves I am now losing to.
3) These aren't all "end games", it can happen in a late middle game, or a position that is borderline resign-able that it can't really be labeled as middle or end game.
And I also just have general sense of what's going on in my own head. In complicated unclear endings or endings where I am losing I play fine, it is literally only in wins, it can be against stronger opponents, or weaker opponents, or much weaker opponents. It's insane.
I lost this games Monday Night with ample time, there are other examples almost as bad as this this, this year. On top of it the player was 500 ELO lower than, this is lunacy.
I'm very convinced it's psychological and your advice is sound. In fact, your advice is the approach I tried to take in the last 6 months but this still keeps happening. I think the issue is blowing horrific games and humiliating oneself is the hardest conditions to have fun under. I'm much happier these days than I was before I had this problem, I take the games less seriously, but take these kinds of losses worse than ever before because it's a repetitive beat down. It's so in my head I can't think about anything else the moment I am winning a chess game.
This is serious sports psychology stuff.
There are actual papers and studies on techniques to mitigate choking.
Here's a paper of a study of the effectiveness of some:
This is interesting thanks. Something that struck me If I'm understanding this right is back when I was younger and suffered from general anxiety, I was acclimated to playing the entire game with anxiety. I used to play chess to try and escape reality and would play an entire game with a knot in my stomach from general outside anxiety. Now when I go to play chess I generally feel fine, and only feel anxiety during a chess game when I'm winning it. I just don't see how any of this can work in chess though. Obviously I can't multi-task or do left-hand contractions, while playing.
The bright side is this is a good problem to have when compared to the alternative, but I'd still like to defeat it I just don't see how. The only thing I've really learned is I should mock professional athletes less.
You ever watched Levy Rozman? He's having similar issues. Losing won games because he loses his nerve.
