blitz/bullet rating is the only thing that matters in internet chess

"Blitz is useful I think.  Both to test openings and little patterns you can pick up that help speed up your analysis in long games.  Even simple stuff like a bishop on c2 covers all of a c5 knight's forward squares or maybe it's a mate-attacking pattern you hadn't seen."

This has not been my experience. Even the tactics I lose to I've seen before but couldn't see them at the time, and whether I would miss it in a standard game is very hard to determine because it's such a different situation. It's just very hard to learn new things when your only coherent way of playing in the time limit is relying on ideas you have already used exclusively. I learn something a lot better if it stared at me in the face for a long time (in standard) but I still couldn't find it -- that would demonstrate a clear defect, but I would be able to correct it by recalling my thought process.

The part about openings has some point to it, except that how an opponent reacts to your opening in blitz is not necessarily a good indicator of how they would in standard. It's reasonable that an opening idea that works great in blitz would work poorly in standard, if it's just a matter of finding a few specific refutations that would be too time consuming in blitz. In my game with Infiniteflash for example I would be very comfortable carefully meeting white's ideas, but in blitz it was a bit foolish to go into it because there is no way I could find a deep defense in that situation (although it did make the game more exciting )

But truth be told, I'd be begging for him to play that line against me in a standard game where I got the two extra pawns.

When you put it that way I agree with you

Maybe I was thinking of newer players.  Lets say e.g. the most you know about the sicilian is 1...c5 is the sicilian.  Well you can at least practice some of the basic variations and get an idea for the type of play that follows.

Ok maybe not an ideal training method, but it doesn't seem so bad.

I guess the biggest problem for more experienced players is on most sites people play trash openings in blitz.  Lets say I wanted to prep some main line ruy whose position starts 15 moves deep... well I'll probably never see it in blitz unless I'm playing GMs or something.

For example, I have only seen the main line against the scandinavian defense less than 5 times in my more than 5000 blitz games. 

And I almost always play the modern scandinavian (Qa5).

I feel like blitz has helped me pick up the odds and ends though.  You see a lot of stuff like the stonewall or 1.b4 or colle or london systems.  I see this stuff pretty rarely OTB, but I have an idea for what I like to do against it.

Also on the forum... I'd never heard of stuff like the levitsky, owens, or ponziani.  I can say today I have a few lines prepared to give me a comfortable position, just in case I ever see this stuff OTB.

Till_98Wrote:

shell_knight wrote:

Well, I prefer OTB tournament chess.  But you can also argue there are too many blunders in OTB too.  With very long time controls (days or weeks for 1 move) you can play much better chess, and really show your understanding of the game.

An equally interesting line of reasoning (IMO) is that speed chess is better at showing your weaknesses.  If I don't understand a position, I don't have a long time to make up for it with lots of calculation and research.  So in a way this type of chess also reveals knowledge that a player has.

These days I think tournament chess time controls are a bit short.  Too many G/60 tournaments.  I prefer at least a little longer, even if it's just G/75... and if I had my way, I would play something like G/300 but really that's not practical for a number of reasons.

Yeah I used to say blitz was a good sort of diagnosis of what is wrong in your game. But even that I'm not so sure about anymore, because again what you get wrong in blitz may be incredibly different from what you get wrong in standard. In standard you have enough time to slow down, philosophize a bit about the goals, and gradually problem solve. In blitz it's more like you have to pick the most relevant intuitive thought that comes to your head in a short amount of time. While intuition does reflect knowledge, it's subject to all sorts of randomness. With standard you know your decision won't be a sudden whimsical thought that looks good for 5 seconds, because afterwards you'll relax a bit. In blitz, you sort of just have to play that move, or else you'll fall too far behind on the clock. In blitz, you're missing out on that problem solving process that is such a big determining factor in standard. (With exception to maybe a minute-long think or two if you can find time, and even that of course is not a very long think)

In other words blitz still won't tell you much about whether this "problem solving process" is good or bad because you're not really doing it. There are many mistakes I make in blitz that I have virtually zero chance of making in standard because once I have my little "position analysis ritual" I'm fully focused on the important details of the position. Once again what happens in blitz can be misleading in regards to what it means for your play in general.

The point of classical chess by the way is not to play perfect chess, but to really get engaged with the struggle. Yeah, two hours is long enough to look for schemes and such -- no one said that means look at every single possible move every time. In any case it's certainly not going to emphasize reflexes or something. If of course you manage your time poorly, you have to deal with the consequences, but when you get into time pressure in that sort of time control you can never say you didn't see it coming -- you had plenty of time to plan out your usage of time.

Elubas, I wonder if you think there are any benefits of blitz play?  Say a player NEVER plays blitz... sort of like Botvinnik suggested.  I guess even he said it was a good skill to have during time pressure.  But I wonder if there are any benefits of it to analysis in general.  I wonder if someone who never plays blitz tends to take a longer time seeing relevant forcing lines.

This may not matter as much in quiet positions, but could hurt them in sharper positions (maybe?)

Yeah, I think it's a good balance.  It's long enough to avoid most mistakes during most games and bring your knowledge to bear on the position.  It's short enough to force you to guess or gamble sometimes and creates additional sporting elements like time management.

Let's put it this way: Indeed, I think a person will suffer virtually no penalty for never playing blitz (and they may avoid possible bad habits). That doesn't quite mean that blitz has zero benefits, but any small thing that can be learned from it will probably be learned better through a different method (e.g., tactics solving, reading a book, etc).

The funny thing about blitz and time pressure is that as intuitive as it seems to say it helps with time pressure I think it's quite false. Again, what you're doing with a small amount of time is just recalling ideas you have learned before. So how then do you learn new things? All you can do in time pressure is play fast, try to play active moves; the rest is limited by your ability.

Honestly, I am not trying to sound like a blitz-hater -- I play it often :) But I'm trying to look at it objectively. What I do think it can do is sort of warm up your mind -- if your mind is feeling lazy or something, blitz can give you some adrenaline and sort of "wake your mind up." And of course it can be fun, as if that's not a good reason to do it :)

As a recovering blitz addict I agree with nearly everything you said.  I was just speculating and curious what you thought on the subject.

When I was playing blitz often though, I think it did help when the clock got down to a few minutes and there is little or no increment.  In "blitz mode" I only looked at forcing lines and moves and gave much less value to objective evaluation.  E.g. if I curled up in a passive ball with zero obvious tries for my opponent, so be it.  If I sacrificed and made it crazy with no obvious defense for my opponent, that's fine too.  So I disagree it's just about playing what you know and staying active.  For me it was more about playing what I could calculate quickly and being safe against all rudimentary threats / tries.

If my opponent was not in time trouble, either is easy to counter of course.  He should simply take his time and look beyond simple variations.  If it was mutual time trouble, I often came out on top.

The weird thing for me is that time struggles in blitz don't really feel like time struggles in otb tournament chess. Maybe it's because in standard I grow more attached to the position/result (since if I lose that's four hours out of my life just to lose ), I don't really know. But again even though it appears logical to say blitz helps with certain things, it hasn't been my actual experience, and I don't think I am biased because honestly I believed those things for a long time.

And then I have come across people who play really well in otb time pressure yet they have low blitz ratings here :) Certainly surprising to see at first.

So I guess in this case, whatever experience you get with time pressure in blitz, is not nearly as useful as time pressure in a tournament game. Somehow they don't really match up, at least for me.

We shouldnt forget that blitz can also be very good as a tournament preparation, guys. What I mean is that you can try out all your prepared opening lines in so many different games and against so many different types of opponents that you might really find the weak points in your preparation. It might help you to build up a more solid and complete opening repertoire.

Not so much the pressure itself... I agree that can't be simulated.  I was thinking the mindset.  What you value and how you look for it.  With a big enough increment though, it doesn't really matter, and the goal should be to avoid those situations in the first place.

In my opinion the best practice for tournament play is to play in tournaments.

I guess I think the truth is there is a limited amount of things we can really do in time pressure (as much as we'd like to think otherwise!). I think that once you learn the general principles of, for example, just making a move rather than losing on time, looking for simple solutions if you're winning, look for lines that increase pressure in mutual time pressure, basically stuff we all learn really early on, there isn't much else to learn. There will come certain points where you have to choose between losing on time, or playing a move you know is lost. Some time pressure problems just can't be solved no matter how much practice you have for it. And remember the only real way to play good moves fast is to first learn how to play good moves slowly and develop pattern recognition.

Focus is important though. If you're more focused that will help in time pressure. But focus is not really blitz or standard specific.

Maybe you're right and I'm romanticizing it.

It's true, because it is hard or impossible to use an engine