I can relate to this, specially when playing chess.
On sunday morning I play <i>rapid</i> games online. When I reach a certain amount of victories in a row, I tend to trust my intuitions or feelings more than my analysis, this is a weird mechanism because losing seems to be the cure.<p>If I stop playing after three wins in a row, my elo is raising better than with a <i>let's continue</i> approach. (Paranoïa)<p>That's a little bit out of the initial subject, but it is a pain for me to play in a tournament. Every win in such a situation makes me anxious : the more you progress toward the final game, the more winning a game is valuable and the more losing a game is overwhelming. (Pressure)<p>But then there is <i>Victory Disease</i>, which relates to being overconfident, and <i>Tournament Disease</i>, which relates to "there's no way I will win, I must throw the game because pressure is unbearable to me".<p>I suffer from both, and I wonder how I can still enjoy very much that game.