My opinion on 1 minute games

Yes, but it is the slow chess that gives you the tactical patterns to make you good at the bullet chess; not the other way around.

Tactics cause bullet to improve, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the converse is true, that bullet causes tactics to improve. I have argued that the converse is in fact not true, for reasons given in my previous posts.

Just the opposite... what you miss in bullet, you'll probably see in longer games.  Bullet, when it comes down to it, is about time, not about tactics. When I play Blitz, if Ican force my opponent to stop and think for a while, I robbed him of time he may need later, so often unsound moves work quite well - but that doesn't make them good moves  they might even be losing moves, but trying to prove them losing without adequate time can often prove impossible.

"Do you think you'd have more tactical repition from playing one 2-hour game, or 120 1-minute games?"

No. You get tactical training from studying tactices, playing through anotated master games and from deeply studying positions and learning the themes. Playing fast does none of that because you're too busy... umm.. playing fast.

More tactical ideas would be going through my head in a two hour game. Moreover, those tactical thoughts would be more fully worked out than in a one minute game. Again, the irony is that you get good at finding things quickly by finding them slowly at first, until you understand them.

In a bullet game, the only chance you have of finding a tactical idea is if you are already familiar with it in general. Do you believe otherwise?

That's how I see it too.

Again this isn't an attack of bullet, which is a fine game... but on the delusion that it benefits one's standard game.

"I think that's because you know 120 one-minute games are better."

That's the result of bullet thinking.

I mean, it kind of depends on how you define "seeing a tactic." I generally only see anything in a bullet game on a superficial level.

Only if you're playing the same game over and over - as I already said and you didn't read, or you read superficially.  In long games the same tactical ideas do appear regularly, but not so obviously, and seldom played out.

Do you have an example of a tactical trap you hadn't seen before?

We're getting to the point where it's hard to understand/prove our concepts until we see examples. We probably have different definitions of "learn tactics," or "see tactics," for instance. We also probably have different ideas on what the process of accurately recognizing a pattern precisely entails.

Elubas' idea of slower is better is interesting.  At the piano it's better to start slow and relaxed, which leads to greater speed.  Just interesting, is all I'm saying.

Unfortunately, I can't say I agree, no.

But don't get me confused: that doesn't mean I don't think it takes certain chess skill, I just don't think it improves it.

I agree that it doesn't help, and that it may hurt.

Maybe it tests it but does not improve it?

There are people who have good arguments that grades in school show how well one takes tests and does their assignments but not their knowledge or progress.  I almost failed a class because I wasn't doing the assignments and had poor attendance, so the teacher decided to let me test out of it since my knowledge was much superior than that of the student with the highest grade.

Yes, the college I went to actually has an attendance policy...  ... . .....

Exactly.  What you put into it is what you get out of it.  Unfortunately blitz is nothing like tournament length games, so it simply can't help.  (You can expect to get a bit better in blitz though, as you get more and more accustom to the speed).

In music, this is like practicing very fast, with many mistakes.  If you continue to practice these mistakes, they become bad habits that inhibit your future progress.  In chess, it's not only the errors in the moves you play, but also in the poor methods you use to find moves that you're practicing.

In blitz there is no time to do actual analysis which should be happening every move in long games.  This is something like look at a few different moves, calculate them, evaluate the end positions, and finally compare those evaluations to choose the best move.

Instead the clock forces you to find OK moves as fast as you can, so you play off of general principals like centralize, develop, meanwhile your memorized patterns look for tactics and exceptions to general rules.

Another reason the methedology is flawed in blitz, you nearly never opt to go into a technically winning endgame simply because there's no time to play it correctly... so middle game plans are different, and to a lesser extent this also makes opening choices different.

Additionally, the clock is so much more a factor than in long games, that you often sacrifice position for time on your clock.  Random sacs that give check and kill pre-moves are the crudest example, but at any time if you can sac to gain a temporary initiative it's often good.

Others take a passive fortress approach.  They'll play primarily looking only at their half of the board, and just make sure everything is defended.  They'll wait for you to spend time on your clock trying to crack it, so now they're ahead and will begin a counterattack.

Maybe this is a simpler example.  In a long game, you have to check the forcing variations, then if you aren't winning / they aren't winning, you can move on to positional thought like improving your pieces or stopping their counterplay.

In blitz all you have to do is spot a forcing variation.  If its defense is involved, then you can play it right away, knowing your opponent will either succumb to the tactics, or lose too much time finding an appropriate defense.

And in blitz, you only have enough time to spot the variations which are obvious to you already.  You're actually good enough to account for a greater number and difficulty of ideas (as you would have to do in a long game) but there's not enough time in blitz.

Excellent posts, wafflemaster.

They are so well said it makes me hungry to go eat an orange, and drive a, oh, never mind.

Who says one-minute chess is crap?  Look at this amazing game I played today on bullet chess live.  From move one to checkmate on move fifteen only took 23 seconds.

Nah I just woke up not too long ago.  Gimme a few hours.  Don't rush it man, my lifestyle is an art, not a science.

Good point my man.  I'm takin' the fuddy-duddy gloves off.  Puttin' down the chessboard and hittin' the streets of Miami to go live my life!  See ya!