Does Blitz Actually Help Your Chess?

A lot of people play blitz chess. For a variety of resons. Some people think it will improve their chess. Why? It can help with instincts, memorization, and finding moves quickly. Memorization is important for openings and stratgey. It teaches checkmate patterns. But is blitz good because of that?

Some people don't play blitz. They think it will make them move to fast without thnking. And if quick moves usually lead to blunders, is blitz helping? Another bad thing about blitz is you might get too relying on your instinct. For example, a move might look good at first, so you do it. If it isn't good, you've blundered.

I don't know if I should keep playing blitz. I don't play it too much, but I don't know if I should stop, stay this way, or play a lot more. What should I do to improve my chess?

I've been putzing around these forums for awhile now and if there is one thing I have noticed, it would be all the expert and above players seemingly being able to agree on one thing: "On Chess.com, 30|0 is probably the best way to improve your game without studying."

While shorter, faster games can improve your ability to see certain positions clearly, you will often miss more complicated and often winning combinations that you may have seen had you spent more time. So while you may be honing your instincts in a way, it really is worse than if you play longer games. You can choose to move fast during those [longer games] but you can also take your time to really work through a position and ask yourself what is best.

That is important.

I agree that 30/0 is the best available method on chess.com for improving your chess:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-300-is-imo-the-best-option-for-improving-your-chesshellip

You get out of practice what you put into practice.  It's really simple.  Blitz is a lot of fun for me too, but it only leaves you enough time to play the patterns and ideas you already know very well.  Importantly it gives no time to practice new or difficult ideas you've recently learned.  There is also no analysis and little to no visualization of future positions.  There's also no time to form proper evaluations and make plans or check difficult tactics. All of these are fundamental chess skills.

Even if you did form a proper evaluation and plan the clock is so important that it changes the strategy e.g. moves that give initiative or force your opponent to defend are good because defense takes more time off the clock than offense.  Whether your attack fails in the end or not dosn't matter as long as you're ahead on the clock.

If what you really want is to see many useful opening and strategic moves then play over a number of GM games quickly.  Speed chess is for fun, not improvement.

Not that my experience should matter, or indicate anything about other people, but I've gained my rating over 3 years of pretty much exclusively 3:0 and 1:0 chess. 
I've been playing chess for 4 years, began at 22. The past year my ratings have stalled, I think its because I only play fast chess.

I believe you will be able to feel, to some extent, if blitz is helping your game or not.

 

Gained your rating?  I gained a 1900 rating in less than a month (err... I think lol).  But that's not when I started playing chess... that's just when I started on chess.com.  Don't you think your phrasing is a little misleading?

So quantity instead of quality?

Actually I should have added... when I first began playing chess itself I played 3/0 games almost exclusively and I played nearly every day for 3 years (around 10 years ago now).

My rating went up very slowly the first 3 years I played chess and I had many bad habits.

Perhaps it is, what I mean is when I started out my first "stable" rating on FICS was about 700 or so until I started learning a little. Over the course of 3 years my rating went up pretty evenly spread. But the past year the previously neat curve stalled and flattened out so to speak.

I'd hate to mislead you Phylar, but for me quantity definetely at first. And I believe quality becomes ever increasingly an issue with the gain of skill. I saw improvements in my play quickly, since i made the same mistakes often and within perhaps 1 hour (I could lose to a knight fork 3-4 times) the pattern would sort of stick with me since it had been repeated so often. 

I would tend to believe it does if you play it long enough with the right sort of review. I.E looking at missed tactics, your primary mistake, where you deviated in the opening etc.

The best way to get better at long games is to play long games, I agree completely. But I believe that if you're improving in blitz chess you're improving your over all chess skill. And eventually, when you transition back over to long chess you will see improvement. Now I can already forsee everyone getting upset so let me explain what i mean. When you first start playing blitz, you're going to be improving just as you get used to playing blitz chess. You may gain 100 points just by getting used to the blitz chess rhythm. I'm talking about long term blitz chess improvement. If you gain 100 points in blitz chess, this doesn't necessarily translate at all over to your long time control play. But, if you lets say go from 1400-1800 in blitz chess, I will guarentee you that you will see some improvement in your long time control games (once you readjust to the long time control). 

My blitz rating has been gradually climbing over thousands of games.  That's improvement.  I'll take it!.  10 | 0 games.  Might try some 30 | 0 when so I can savor some moves more when I have more time in a given day though.

This is slightly off topic but when I see a rating disparity like yours bullet ratings so low, blitz rating so low, tactics rating so low and your online rating so high, i would assume you are using some sort of computer assistance to cheat. How do you explain this rating gap? You have thousands of games in both bullet and blitz so they are somewhat accurate. Please don't say "the rating pools are different so you can't compare the two" because while this is somewhat true the bullet ratings and blitz ratings aren't that deflated.

People have more time in online chess and thus the quality of moves will be better. 

Blitz is good training if you are focusing on a specific area of your game, like openings. But you can't take it serious like a full game or it will ruin your chess.

Blitz is my excuse to practice tactics withour the repetition of endless puzzles. i don't really care about the score I just throw my pieces out almost randomly and try to see what happens when I get into trouble. I win some, and I lose some.

Blitz is very tactical and good way to grind opening positions do's/don'ts very quickly. Not too say this is the way to master an opening, but it's a good way to study the basic idea. 

Many blitz advantages and disadvantages are superficial, being down a pawn means almost nothing. (At least below a certain level). 

While in standard, if you're down a pawn. It becomes very strong, and a good advantage. 

Standard=Positional chess, and measures a lot of your strengths and weaknesses. 

Blitz= 1/3 position, 1/3 tactical, and 1/3 time control.

How to improve chess:  1)Problems, 2)correspondence games, 3) review games from books on a board, 4)not play blitz chess, 5)study and play wei-chi or Go game which is unsolvable and far older than chess.

I thought your avatar might be this book: http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Mathematical-Analysis-International-Mathematics/dp/007054235X and I was going to be impressed :p

Just stopped in to say go is not unsolvable lol.  But like chess the practical problems make solving it about as unlikely as teleporting as seen in sci-fi movies.

Also, the best way to get better at chess is to play chess.  It's a skill like anything else.  You don't become a proficient violinist by playing the guitar.

I don't play blitz...and I don't see how it would be conducive to good chess. In my experience when I play fast I lose fast : )

I was wondering the same thing if blitz chess helps or hurts your ability

I simply can't play blitz.  I think my blitz rating is like 600.  Some people swear by it.  But I just can't manage at 10 mins / game. I suspect it's b/c when I was growing up we didn't have $50 ($200 in today's dollars) chess clocks.