Getting rust away

So, I like to play chess. I was about a 1950-2000 FIDE player. A couple months back, there's this big project at work, and I'm putting in a ton of overtime, don't have time or energy for chess.

Project's finally over. I come back to my old club, start playing again, and get crushed by all the people I used to do about evenly with. I go play some of the weaker guys, the ones I would effortlessly beat, and I'm struggling to go evenly with them. Oh, just a bad night, I guess.

I come back next week, same result. A week later, marginally better, but not really noticeably so results.

I reckon my performances are around 1600-1700, with the occasional better game that's still probably weaker than my average play a few months ago.

I mean, I expected a little rust on my game, but nothing like this. I have no idea how I lost my skills that fast, and it's really been bumming me out, I have trouble even getting back into my practice routines. Anyone have any tips, either for rebuilding strength or for dealing with the blughy feelings.

> dealing with the blughy feelings.

Reflect on chess and why you play it.

Let go of your desire to win.
That is the origin of your suffering.

>. I go play some of the weaker guys, the ones I would effortlessly beat, and I'm struggling to go evenly with them.
You should be commending them on their improvement and enjoying the fact that you now have a larger interesting opponent pool.

Also chess is boring

>Reflect on chess and why you play it.

I've done at least a little thought on this. At least, if I can trust my conscious mind and its conclusions, goes something like this.

>Chess isn't exactly a game so much as it's an opposed calculation.
>Chess has not been solved and might never be, but there's clearly better moves and worse moves.
>The goal, isn't so much to win (although that's nice) but to play the best possible move in every position in the game.
>If you can't do that, at least try to deviate from that hypothetical "perfect play" as little as possible.

My deviations have increased enormously, and I can't seem to figure out how to turn it around. It's not only regression, it's a kind of decreasing the precision and thus beauty of my play.

It's not winning or losing per se. It's playing good moves being superior to playing bad moves. I was (and still am) much more satisfied with a well played game that I got outmaneuvered in, than a game where I blundered badly and my opponent blundered worse.

I don't want to win, I want to play perfectly. And playing less perfectly than I used to be able to play hurts.

Can't you play against a computer as practice?

I could in theory, but practically, not really.

A human who plays at a FIDE X and a computer that plays at an equivalent ELO don't really play the same way. Humans have much more variation in move to move, whereas computers, even dialed back to club play levels, don't really. They'll take the same amount of time to think on almost every move, they'll never make an especially inspired play but never make a bad mistake, and they tend to do these hypertactical complicated positions that most people shy away from in real life, because they either aren't able to measure or just don't care about meta-analysis of a position. (Well, I think my position's better, but this position is more complicated than that other position, so I'm less sure of my evaluation.)

Perhaps you have actually physiologically degraded. Did you sleep well over that period of overtime? Personal experience with night shift hours has taught me how easily long term sleep disturbance can destroy your mental capabilities

That's a lo of thought about chess, not so much why you play.

I suppose that's a possibility. I haven't really given it much thought, or measurements.

I'm sorry, I thought it was clear from context. I play to produce a set of perfect play, or at least inch towards that goal. Going backwards along that road, playing less perfectly than I did before, is something of a problem and an irritant.

>Anyone have any tips, either for rebuilding strength or for dealing with the blughy feelings.

Yes. The difference between then and now is that now you are more impatient and less relaxed. That's all.

> I play to produce a set of perfect play

Why?

Why not? At that point, you may as well ask why you do anything. I want to.

just admit you dont know why you play chess lol

i like to play because i enjoy the novelty of making a good tactical move for example

this is detrimental to my game because sometimes ill make positional sacrifices that aren't very good because i find it fun to play like that

And I play because I want to create a set of perfect play

You can't say that "lol you don't really know why you want to play" without me being able to turn around and say you don't know why you really want to play because you haven't explained down to axioms why you enjoy the novelty of playing a tactical combination.

i play because i enjoy the novelty of tacticts

what do you enjoy or why do you care about playing a "perfect game"

This isn't a case of his reason being invalid and yours being valid, you just don't understand his reason so you think it just isn't real. He likes the concept of perfect play, you like the concept of novel tactical moves. Your arguments against him would be like me going "Tactics don't mean anything, why do you REALLY like it" to you.

his reason isn't invalid at all i just want to know why he plays like he does

maybe its because he finds perfect plays novel justlike i find tactical plays novel

maybe its because he likes the idea of being smart enough to play the best strategic moves

or maybe he just likes to win a lot

How about trying out some games like chess?

Maybe some of the chess variants like Fischer Random Chess. Or pick up Shogi for a bit, at the very least the drop rules should entertain you.

>Tactics don't mean anything, why do you REALLY like it

id say that the combination of moves is visually and intellectually pleasant to me just like like a painting or piece of music

i like the idea of complicated and drawn out forcing sequences because of the intricacy of the planning and because it shows how the pieces can interact with eachother in unusual ways

i like the idea of seeing a combo your opponent hadn't considered too. like when the position looks equal but you can actually win a piece or even checkmate with a really obscure sequence of moves

thats why i find tactics novel and enjoyable to play

he still doesn't seem to know why he likes "perfect plays"

chess 960 is so therapeutic because literally no theory just skill in the game and it really shows who has a good chess mind vs the people who have practised a lot and have the experience or theoretical knowledge of positions

Because I enjoy perfection for its own sake, as well as striving for it. It's aesthetic, bad moves are ugly, almost physically painful to see, much worse if I'm the one making them as opposed to just observing them. It is fundamentally right, and mistakes are fundamentally wrong. It's like asking why I prefer health to disease, or why it would be better to drive skilfully as opposed to fishtailing and crashing into things.

Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger.

yes it sounds like you are too worried about looking silly to yourself or your opponent instead of just playing moves you feel are right even if they aren't perfect

carlsen says that a lot of his success at the grandmaster level has been because he follows his intuition more than the established theory in middle and end games

i think that striving for perfection in every game is not 100% helpful towards winning against higher rated opponents

instead of striving for perfection in every game its better to just learn from your mistakes and try to improve your game gradually to win against better opponents

remember that a lot of openings (particularly for black like the benoni) are not actually very sound from an engine perspective but they have the advantage of dynamic play and sharp positions that can test your opponent

chess is more about your opponent making mistakes than it is about you not making any

tl;dr: even the best players in the world dont necessarily strive for perfection in their games

if perfection is really all you care about you could play a perfect game as black and lose(more likely draw) every time against a perfect game as white... so why complain about rating?

>if perfection is really all you care about you could play a perfect game as black and lose(more likely draw) every time against a perfect game as white... so why complain about rating?

I don't care about my rating. But it is a convienent shorthand for level of play. I can tell that I'm making more mistakes, and greater magnitude of mistakes than before. It's maddening. Rating is just a way to assign a value to it, as I wasn't sure if anyone here would understand me if I started talking about average centipawn losses from my games.

I mean fuck, these are club games, they're not even rated.

>chess is more about your opponent making mistakes than it is about you not making any

If you care about winning and losing. That's not actually that high on my list of priorities, user.

>tl;dr: even the best players in the world dont necessarily strive for perfection in their games

And if you're playing for the sort of bank that Carlsen does, yeah, winning and losing actually has stakes to it, it means something, and maximizing your winning chances (or at least minimizing your lose chances) makes a great deal of sense. Nobody's paying for me to play user.

And I would note that quite a few world Champions, Botvinnik and Kasparov especially springing to mind, did see things more or less the way I do.

>Chess has not been solved and might never be
*Synthesized Laughter from Robot Overlords*

It could be the meta. Perhaps you had experience with a certain group of people, and now you just have to get back into the swing of things and start figuring out how to calculate again.

Really, just keep on doing it. You blunder and see your mistakes, and you improve through recognizing where you've failed. That's not regression, it's chipping away the rust, relearning chess. When you blunder, don't focus on it, there's nothing at stake. Remember the times you've done better, and recognize that your best isn't just required to play, just play adequately. You'll get back eventually, it's just the laborious process of resharpening a dulled blade; doesn't mean it wasn't sharp to begin with, and it doesn't mean it will never be sharp again.

Check if you have brain cancer.