I think the title of the post is self-explanatory. I've been working to improve my game a lot over the past year, and, indeed, have improved my game a lot.
Now, in the last week or so, I've been sucking, HARD. As in, getting into things like obvious knight forks, putting my queen in front of my king just in time to have a rook brought to bear, ignoring mate threats, etc. etc.
Examples: Game 371388 (ignores obvious mate threat) Game 370913 (unbelievably bad opening, stupid pointless fianchetto, stupid failure to protect king bishop pawn, etc.) Game 343775 (disaster turned into complete disaster by stupidly putting myself in front of a knight fork), etc. etc. etc.
What the hell? I shouldn't be making these mistakes. I don't claim to be terribly good, but I'm a better player than THAT. Maybe it's partly the many, many simultaneous games I'm playing now, I don't give each one nearly as much thought as I should? Or maybe I killed too many brain cells on new years eve? What?
For what it's worth, I wouldn't play so many concurrent games. Slow down and study the board. Also, try to play players 200 points better than yourself. If you're trying to trap someone using simple tactics you're not working hard enough, and you may fall into those kinds of traps yourself. Stonger players may beat you silly, but you will gradually learn to look for the best move, not the obvious one.
Thanks everyone! (well, except for stoker, really). I do seem to have suddenly grown a million simultaneous games, and I'm usually doing something else while playing -- kind of on robo-move. stupid.
I've never seen chesscafe.com -- what a great site! Downloading heiseman's articles.... cool... thank you.