On that point didnt the great player and philosopher Lasker have another great quote (not that I completely believe him) something along the lines of "I´ve spent my whole life trying to forget stuff I´ve already learnt"

Thats it! Great quote - Application of information, not Absorption. I think we must all be guilty of ignoring this point from time to time

Very interesting topic this - I would agree in general with the replies. Too much studying, particularly if it is of the type "accumulation" - i.e adding to your knowlege of endgames, openings etc. has to be managed carefully.

I think GM Kevin Spragett said it best - "Chess is a game of implementation, not assimilation" - well something like that he said - basically it is a competitive game and a player who keeps it simple but is very good at Implementing what he knows will always get better results than a player with wider knowledge but who is poor at the implementation part.

I´ve not explained this very well but I hope you get the gist of what I´m on about...

I might suggest another possible reason for this phenomenon. I have also witnessed people claiming similar incidents around me, i.e. higher defeat ratio after studying too much chess. After discussing with friends we came to some sort of conclusion.
When a chess player does not have much "book knowledge" like opening theory, bad bishop vs. good bishop, endgame technic etc (countless themes can be added to this list) s/he plays the game of chess as he was first taught and maybe with wrong knowledge. But he keeps playing those positions and gains experience with time. Then one day after studying books, he learns that what he has employed so far is actually a wrong strategy and with this knowledge he tries to employ his newly-acquired skills. But because he is not yet experienced enough in this new knowledge, he suffers some initial defeats. But the important thing is, with time this player hones his new knowledge and after some time his results get better than before.
Example; 1600 ELO rated player A plays 1.e4 e5 2.Qf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 as opening moves because his father taught him chess this way. Although this sort of opening can not be recommended, he can beat even 1700 rated players with this opening because he is quite experienced in the system. One day he reads a book about chess openings and to his horror he learns that Queen sortie at move 2 can not be a good opening strategy (I hear you mischivious guys who inquiry about 1.e4 e6 2. Qe2. Eh, well, lets say at least for this position) Because the book has been written by this strong authority on chess openings he gets convinced on this advice and starts to play 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 as recommended. But to his his dismay he starts losing against opponents whom he was regulary beating before. Why ? Because at that moment he lacks the experience but with time most probably he will catch up and will increase his success ratio with his newly-acquired knowledge.
Maybe we can name this process as "unlearning". Unlearning may become very hard but once achieved, I believe the overall results of the player will improve.

I think Botvinnik used to reccommend taking a few days break completely from chess before an important even.t.  I think the idea is to keep your chess hunger I think it works.

I used to play  a lot of video games and pinball which are all about muscle memory  and I foun that  I used to get good scores on my first game back after a being a way for a week or more.

I studied all yesterday solving problems in a tactics book.  I signed on to Playchess.com last night thinking that with my sharpened tactical skills I was going to have a fairly successful evening.  Much to my surprise, I lost every game (except for a lag out).   Look at my profile gregsw if you don't believe me.  I simply can't stop losing.  Why is this?  This is not the first time this has happened so I am guessing there is a certain cause-and-effect relationship here.  Has anyone else experienced this counter-intuitive phenomenon?