I am terrible at blitz, as compared to having time to think through moves.

But I play it anyway.

Lawdoginator: After like 18 months of playing 5|0 and 5|2 (all 5|2 now, the extra minute the games get makes all the difference, and it allows me to win in the all too often occurences where time is low, but I have a clearly winning position and my opponent needs to put more thought into move than I do) I am on my way to my USCF long-control rating, which I think is really my goal. The openings practice has been so helpful both in and out of blitz. In long control OTB games I feel like I have the psychological advantage when I quickly play moves against obscure pet openings. 3 moves in and my opponent is already losing confidence. The pattern recoginition is really the hard part. Most of time its not in the recognition itself, but the speed of it and choosing how long to spend looking at a position before playing the best move in your head at the time.

That was a fun Nimzo and that's probably all you can ask for from a blitz game. It seems to me that blitz can be played for instant gratification and fun at any level. To play it well, it seems like you have to be very experienced at chess and have dozens of openings and thousands of patterns available to you for instant recall. I'm just not there yet either. 

blitz is not for the chess perfectionist. playing blitz is fun. contrary to common beliefs, i don't think playing blitz can ruin the quality of your long game. chess is fun when you are at it playing not analyzing.

So since I've written this, PsychicMuffin, my thoughts and abilities have changed significantly. I agree that I am now better at all openings, both off the wall and main line. Blitz has changed my thinking from looking at each move in isolation to thinking about the ideas behind openings, like ideal positions, available attacks. While a supercomputer would do better looking at each move in isolation, I feel most humans do better thinking in terms of patterns and theories.

My ability has gotten to the point where each game I lose, I lose with a hefty advantage. Unfortunately, that is still the majority of games. My piece hanging has occurred less and less, but I'm not seeing attacks (especially sacrifices) I would normally see in longer game.

The other problem I am coming across now is that I am often put into the situation where an opponent plays an off beat opening where I find the best continuation is to adopt a main line defense. However, I am not too familiar with the main line defense. For instance, today I was in a game and it became evident that I could go into a modern-benoni-looking game. My setup would be more than ideal (I had already played a6 and b5, and my other peices were in their correct place), and my opponents set up would be about 2 moves behind what white would normally be. The chess.com computer confirmed my suspicions after the game, that this was the best route. The ended up being a straight loss for me because after I get my ideal benoni setup I thought, "I have the initiative as now he needs to get castled, etc., good time to start attacking on the queenside, that being the point of the benoni." However, my knowledge of the benoni is small, and I realized I couldn't remember what an ideal queenside attack looked like. I ended up getting the first few moves right (again going by a post game computer analysis), but then got stumped made a mistake giving the opponent a passed pawn and I was dead in the water.

I would go up to 10 minutes, but I find I often don't have 20 minutes to give up right now. I suppose I should at least try to work it in, like do half my games at 10 minutes.

I found this blog post and I have to respond. I actually started doing the EXACT same thing for EXACTLY the same reasons as you about two weeks ago. In fact, you'll notice I haven't played a CC game in quite a while. I got fed up with the time commitment required and the panic of knowing my opponent can win by just spending more time than me, so I was just sticking to VC and enjoying it much more. I hated having to constantly consult an opening book for even simple opening lines in CC, and felt pathetic every time I used the tactics trainer, since I couldn't solve the puzzles in the time that would grant me a bonus, so I just panicked and lost points with a hasty move. So I started playing blitz, which I haven't done in quite a while.

I remember trying to play 5 minutes games like a year ago, and just falling below 1000 rating, so I had a few ideas this time. I stuck with 10 minute time control, and after a session of a few games, would pull out my handy analysis engine of choice, and run through them all. Find the opening lines I missed, find the tactics I missed, and see where my position started to weaken. 10 minutes allows me to spend 30 - 60 seconds on a couple of moves to set up a good position or tactic, and then hold the advantage for the win. Also allows me to spend at least 5 second on every move checking if I've dropped a piece like an idiot. Still happens but...that's blitz right?

The difference has been noticeable for me. I am already better at memorizing opening lines, from common to off the wall, and I'm learning faster than I was with CC. Going over games so quickly allows me to remember exactly what I was thinking at the very time I made a move, and thus figure out where my thinking was wrong. I feel like my VC analysis is better now than it was a month ago, even though I haven't played much CC. I'm less intimidated trying to analyze things knowing I can gain something useful with just a few minutes of looking, rather than knowing I'll have to run through lines for the next 15 minutes.

You are right that blitz is a very different game, and played differently, but that doesn't mean you can't learn skills that cross over to all types of chess. Yes it is extremely frustrating to lose games by dropping a piece, and in general knowing that I lose to players that are nowhere near as good as me, but simply can think faster at whatever level they're at. However, even though it's frustrating, it gets a little less frustrating every day that I play, and know that I avoided a few of the mistakes I made last time. Going over games I play at such a rapid rate has a lot of benefits that I haven't had since back in the day when I played at over the board tournaments.

Essentially, I have two suggestions. First of all, loosten up your time control to 10 or 15 minutes, and work your way down as you get better at playing quickly. Second, analyze your games right away, and stick it out through the frustration, just trying to get a tiny bit better at a time. Hopefully you start to gain more of a benefit like I have. Also, endgame SUCKS in blitz, because even in a ten minute game, I'm often down to 2 minutes or so. That gets tough. Check out my games if you want to see the style I play 10 minute games at, and the mistakes I make at speed. Let me know how it's going!

-PsychicMuffin

I've pretty much given up on blitz because I spend a lot of time on CC and when I'm caught up on that I prefer trying to read a chess book or some articles here. I also prefer posting blogs on endgames, which gets me to read my endgame books a bit.

Once in a blue moon I might play some blitz here.