Advice please on dealing with nerves.

Hi all, i'm Dale from the UK and i joined Lichess a few months ago. I played the game on a casual basis for fun 30 years ago in the local bar. I thought i would try to learn it again and relive the fun. Looking forward to making some friends on here. Chess is now becoming my passion, though i have MUCH to learn.! Another passion of mine is the study of Knights Templar history - hence the username.
Anyway enough about me and now to my problem / question:-
When i play a human opponent on here, i Become VERY, very nervous, it's an awful feeling, i get tense, fidgety, chain smoke (vape) and get that sickly feeling in my stomach. I end up being bent over the computer screen without even noticing, it's very uncomfortable. It gets so bad that i feel it's disrupting my game, after playing, i cannot have a rematch, i feel drained, tired and very thirsty, i have to go and get a drink of water and yet my games are only mainly 20 + 10 rapid games.
When i play against a bot it's not nearly half as bad - say a 3 out of 10, 10 being what i have described above.

I know this is not normal, so has anyone ever experienced something similar ?
And more importantly what can i do to solve the problem ? and begin to relax and enjoy my chess more.
Any advice / suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Enjoy your Chess and thanks for reading.
Cheers.!
Dale.

@TEMPLAR567 said in #1:

And more importantly what can i do to solve the problem ? and begin to relax and enjoy my chess more.
Any advice / suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Hi.
You are an amateur, like me.
Think about : having won or lost a chess game with an unknown opponent that you don't even know who he/she/it is, what does it means ?
If you win, you demonstrate that you move the pieces on the chessboard better than him ; if you lose, it means that he is better than you at this thing. Nothing else. Is it really that important ?

Different if you were a professional who lives on chess ( or a non-professional but of high level ), who participates in important tournaments, for whom winning or losing means a lot. In this case, suffering for chess can make sense, somehow.

My humble advice, as an amateur, is: enjoy the game, enjoy learning. You don't have to prove anything to yourself, you just play for pleasure, and/or interest.
I don't know if this can help you.

It's completely normal in the early days , play more , play more , play more and then eventually it just becomes like second nature to say, think I'll have a game and have absolutely no worries about win or loss , power on through my friend ,
Keep calm and carry on xxx Happy chessing xxx

Thanks guy's for taking the time to reply and offer your advice. Much appreciated.
Cheers.

the story I heard from scientists, nerves/anxiety/fear are bred into us. they said imagine being an early human in africa and you're out on a hunt. you think you hear footsteps in the tall grass up ahead, it could be a lion or it could just be the wind.

If you don't get scared and keep walking, either it was just the wind and you survive, or it's a lion and you die. if you're dead you can no longer reproduce, your brave genes get removed from the gene pool.

If you get scared and run away, you survive whether it was just the wind or a lion, so your scaredy cat genes remain in the gene pool.

so, a bit of fear is normal and can be a good thing. it stops most of us from doing dangerous things.

playing chess isn't dangerous, though, so maybe play some shorter games? try to win but don't worry about your rating. treat it as exposure therapy. you're just playing to get your nerves under control, you're not worried about improving your chess at this stage.

every now and then, go back to your long games and see how you go.

on the internet, no one knows I'm a potato. If they did, I'm sure I would get ridiculed.

You could try playing unrated and see if it helps with your nerves. If it does, you could play unrated for a while and switch back to rated when you're ready and hopefully you won't feel as nervous.

Well. You can try playing out in the real world with real players. That might help you keep calm when actually interacting with others during the game (like deviating the focus a bit away from anxiety). And, with the right circle, you can find people supporting you to help you improve. Besides, you can practice other techniques to keep your mind and nerves calm like meditation, etc. The core idea is to control your mind on how it should behave in a particular situation and this takes time to achieve. Even I had similar feelings when started playing.

It's natural to fear losing but it is an inevitable result in any game. Even Magnus Carlsen loses, so why should we be upset when it happens to us? Enjoy the game rather than the result - if you played well, then the result is less important. And if you didn't play well, understand why and you've learned something.
One of Magnus's greatest assets is his ability to reset after every game. Whether he won or lost, he'll give the next game 100%.

You are taking the game too serious. Maybe the following does the trick: play at faster time controls which you cannot take seriously. You will have not the time to think too much, you will not have the time to get nervous and you will not take the result too seriously. In my case I take chess at Blitz time controls very serious, but sometimes I play at Bullet time controls which clearly is in my personal opinion not serious chess and cannot be taken seriously. But you can practice anyway and maybe you will grow nerves of steel and confidence.

Great advice guy's. Thank you all.!