"chess is not dependant on blitz or the internet to survive."

So how much do you know about the current top chessplayers with information you collected offline?

It is important, especially on this here intrawebbies, to never lets facts get in the way of a strong, yet highly flawed, opinion.

Chess is pretty much on life support, and the only thing keeping it afloat is what has happened on the net over the past 15-20 years. 

I'm glad there is at least one other guy around that makes even less sense than me

The tournament decline (current or future) due to computer assisted cheating is a good point.

Chess was mainstream in the USA for a time span that is a flash in the pan compared to the lifetime of chess -- which you're right isn't thousands of years in it's current form.  I don't think chess has ever been a permanent and mainstream part of any culture throughout it's few hundred year life span.

"Standard" time controls of the past and the disappearance of chess clubs are things to point out.  It's important to note though that these things didn't happen on their own when the internet came along and saved chess from the brink.  That time controls and clubs have changed is due to technology and the internet.  People haven't given up chess, they've simply changed the venue.  If anything online blitz (and the resulting disintegration of clubs) has brought more people to chess, not less.

Similarly with time controls, it's not that people are no longer interested in serious games, many enjoy long tournament time controls.  That online blitz by it's convenient nature attracts more players comparatively is not a reflection of people's loss of interest with standard time controls.  In fact, if anything there are more international players now than there were 50 years ago simply due to computers and the internet.

Adjournments are a different issue that have dissapeared due to, again not lack of interest, but because of computer assisted cheating.

I myself am fairly new to chess ( i started briefly before summer of 2010 began) and have always preferred standard time controls to blitz though i do enjoy and like both.  I have always wanted to play in a tournament with adjournments but it is incredibly hard to find one anymore. I think that although online chess is good for encourging the playing and enjoyment of chess they should do more to push OTB chess. I remember my first time going to the local club and despite being extremely nervous i still enjoyed it a lot and soon started playing OTB  tourneys blitz and standard. 

Sight-reading is the reading and performing of a piece of written music, specifically when the performer has not seen it before. Its fun but the real good bits of music come with practice and time

I strongly disagree with this. A major blunder in a bullet game, even in the endgame, gives the opponent plenty of time to win by checkmate. Blitz games can involve long and hard calculations.

Yes but in games that are 30 seconds and under all a player has to do is play defensively and win on time

"In a way blitz can be even MORE about strategy because you have no time to calculate the longer lines"

How do you figure? I think, for example, if one were to formulate a plan of trading off dark squared bishops, then advancing a pawn to secure a dark square for a knight, thus making it good, would be somewhat harder with less time than with more time.

"Since you can't rely on calculation, you need to hope your strategy and position holds itself together."

Ok, interesting point, but first off the need to "hope" your strategy works doesn't equate with coming up with a strategy, which will be much deeper with more time. But really the big problem here is that it's so much easier to see a hanging piece then to come up with a good plan, so what too often will end up happening is the strategist will waste half of their time (which wouldn't be much), and even then there is no guarentee that they won't lose a piece to a tactic. The fact that someone who is just looking for combinations (and I'm not saying he would have no strategy; there are lots of simple but effective ones out there like centralizing, as even with no clear idea pieces often "just happen" to be good [especially for tactics!], but this would be very hard to punish without much time to think) on each and every move hardly has to think and can beat any strategy with the slightest blunder, indicates that indeed someone with more knowledge can, more easily, be brought down by crude but effective ideas, and this does makes knowledge less important.

"The same with knowledge, except it's probably even more for blitz. Because you've no time to calculate, you have to know the positions on seeing them.  "

You know, your point is interesting, and perhaps in GM blitz games this can show, but really for any amateur players, maybe even some in the master level, executing those ideas won't be as important as finding the tactics when you need to, so someone with the positional knowledge still won't be doing well if their tactics aren't as good as their opponent's, maybe even just slightly worse in fact.

Also, your point totally ignores the undeniable fact that with strategy, there is planning. Grandmasters are not robots; they would prefer to have time to plan too. Sure in that time they would use their previous knowledge to figure the situation out, but the point is the situation would ideally need figuring out. But one can hardly do that at all in blitz, compared to having two hours to think. As I think orangehonda said, you'd have to rely more on basic strategic principles to "actually work" in any of your particular situations in blitz than to actually strategize.

Basically, for obvious reasons, blitz must take depth out of chess by making subtle mistakes much harder to punish, and that's fine, but clearly it's long chess that would best test your proficiency in each part of the game, because you can't get away as much (although it's certainly still possible) with having an incomplete understanding of certain areas of the game. In blitz a tactician who has some basic strategical knowledge (like, you know, pawn storms) has a decent edge against one of the same "real" rating but is more of the opposite, because in blitz the former's skills are the ones emphasized.

i can realy relate to what you are saying... after some advice on how to study several subjects in chess i started to do online correspondence chess.

i realy like this form of chess and  am going to join my national federation to play official games.

why do i like cor.chess?? i allways have positions to think about (ATM 14 games). you can choose how long you like to think about a move... 1 day, 3 days, 10 days. you can use books and databases to help you. i use some books on openings to improve my opening play.

what i don't like is that in official games many players use chess engines. i don't have problems with it now (1494 chessworld.net rating) and this site does forbid the use of engines (i don't know if they can check it). when you start playing iccf. games you will meet fritz or rybka at some point in your progress.

maybe you will enjoy cor.chess for the subtile positional battles and blitz for fast tactical intuition??!! 

Blitz is to chess just like sex in an airplane is to making love.

me - either

 How is standard chess a waste of time?  How can you compare the two as being the same?  The quality, typically for weaker players as myself, will improve if we are able to slow down and actually use our minds to cordinate movements.  Blitz, in reality is nothing more than memorizing openings and making strategic mistakes "on purpose," other words making a bold enough move, which will make the opponent stutter to figure it out, thus losing on time. (Bullet)  However, blitz and bullet I use as entertainment when I don't put much emphasis on the result; nice with a few drinks and when you want to chill.  But, I pride myself and my thinking when slower time controls are utilized.

Blitz is a special contest: Who can win without thinking?

That said, that instinctive ability is a very important part of any time control. Just that in standard, it's merely a component of the many parts you need to win a chess game; in blitz, it's nearly the whole machine.

lol, yes

Blitz in a nutshell means: You either got it or you don't.

Your success or failure usually depends on mistakes and your familiarity with the positions you're falling into. Now you could sit there for 20 hours and find a plan that works - that is true. Blitz however shows you that you probably didn't know what to do in the first place and that you probably need to work on it. It's similar to doing timestables - if it takes you a long time to figure out 7 x 9 then you probably need to work on it a lot more. That is one of the redeeming factors of blitz: you are immediately faced with the problems with your game and you so you can learn what to patch up for the long game. You will also take less time in your long games too.

This is why a GM could stomp regualar players with only one minute vs. their five. They have an understanding of the game that is so great that they don't even need to think much of what they should be doing. They already know what to do most of the time and they barely calculate anything. Blitz is a great way to gain more command of your game that way.

Usually people that don't play blitz say it's bad because they don't win as much as when they play slow games. Well if there's less time on the clock then obviously you need to move faster. That isn't natural at all and you have to PRACTICE to be able to do it well. Yes it turns out that with less time on the clock there's well - less time to think!

So to get better at blitz you need to get better at chess and try to better understand the positions you get into so that you don't waste too much time.

Just be aware though that there are no grandmasters out there that can't play blitz. Wonder why...

I strongly agree on how it highlights your weaknesses almost obnoxiously. I think the reason I had trouble with blitz was that my skills were very lopsided -- I was comfortable with abstract strategic thinking, and this was very good before tactics hit the board. In fact, in standard games I still didn't have a ton of tactical problems since I could think them through; in blitz though I simply couldn't -- tactics just didn't come to me in an instant like they had to. I knew what a knight fork was, but that doesn't mean I could spot one every time -- I had to be very, very comfortable with the knight fork and so on. I didn't like having to play on instinct and just predict whether a plan or attack would work.

I think I was really good at one thing, and really bad at the other; standard highlighted the former, blitz the latter, so those ratings were very different. Now I can play decent blitz chess because I can concentrate on the big picture rather than feel I need to calculate every little detail (which is impossible even for the millions of times faster (!) computers), and simply have more patterns stuck in my head, waiting to be recited.

So, blitz certainly embodies certain chess skills. A big however though: I think it's effective to get better at blitz by getting better at certain parts of chess but I do not think it goes the other way around. As far as instructive purposes go, it's more like a quick-and-easy diagnosis of your flaws.

Blitz is not based on blunders, it's about sacrificing pieces to pull the king out or force the other player to lose a queen, like the fried liver or lolli attack. From then on it's pinning the king down and trying to win and develope pieces while keeping your opponents pieces out of the game by checking the kind and so forth. I've won by playing the dannish gambit plenty of the time. It's fun to sacrifices pieces and go for a head on attack at the king. I think turtling is boring but if you like it then study openers for turtling against those attacks and play 30 min games, my computer on hard is pretty damn good at stopping those attacks. Learning how to blitz is frustrating, new to aggressive attacks I make so many mistakes. It does require allot of skill to plan ahead that quickly.