Improve your blitz results in eight steps

Have you ever wondered if there are some easy ways to make you faster and more dangerous at blitz? Here's my take on how you can do that.

Even if you play blitz mostly for fun, it's surely more fun to win a few more games? Being generally good at chess and being youthfully quick in mind and body are likely the biggest drivers for blitz success. The former takes hard work and the latter is beyond our control.

The good news is that there are also some relatively quick ways to score a few more points. That's what we'll look at in the blog below. To give more detail and illustrate some of the practical details I've also recorded some videos posted here Improve your blitz chess - YouTube. Individual video links are shown at the end of the blog.

1) Play in a quiet environment free from distractions

With only a few minutes to play an entire game it's unlikely you'll play your best if you're trying to do other things at the same time. If you can't avoid distractions, then you may want to play at a slower time limit.

2) Set up your software and hardware to give you the best chances

If at all possible, you should play with a good internet connection. Usually, a wired connection will be less likely to disconnect than wi-fi. Personally, I aim to play with desktop and mouse, but some find a tablet or phone faster. If unsure, you can test which one works best. If you're using a desktop and mouse then you can experiment with different mouse speeds or try shrinking the board size to require less movement for each piece move. On Windows you'll find mouse speed in Settings - Bluetooth & Devices - Mouse.

You should also review your chess program settings to see if anything can be usefully changed. On Chess.com look at the top two options under Settings - Live Chess Live Chess - Settings - Chess.com.  How to use premoves is covered in it's own section below.

I also switch on autopromote to queen. That can save you a second and remove the risk of choosing the wrong piece by mistake. It's very rare that you need to underpromote so worth the risk in my view, particularly if you are playing blitz without increment. 

On Chess.com a 3-fold draw is automatically applied so no need to adjust any settings unlike Lichess. 

3) Play at a time limit you feel comfortable

Personally, I find 3 minutes to be the shortest time in which I can normally complete a game. I'm more comfortable at 5 minutes or 3 minutes plus 2 seconds a move. Choose what works for you. If you're a relative beginner or youth has passed you by then moving into faster rapid like 10 minutes may make most sense.

4) Have a rough plan for how you will typically use your time

At the fastest time limits it makes sense to have a plan for how you will use your time. The next table shows some rough estimates for how many games are determined by time loss. Now some games might have been losing on position anyway, but I think it is fairly clear that faster means more losses on time and increment helps make that less likely.

So how many moves are we likely to need to play? I took samples of 100 Lichess arena games from mid-level Lichess Liga tournaments at different speeds and charted the distribution of game lengths, firstly as a basic percentage frequency and secondly on a cumulative basis.

As a rough approximation the cumulative chart shows that around 80% of games last less than 50 moves.

Below I illustrate a baseline plan for a 3-minute game which enables those 50 moves to be played and also has a little contingency to allow for a longer game.

You could certainly come up with a different plan. However, I think that any decent plan would have early opening moves played quickly, ideally because you know precise moves or at least typical ideas. Also, in the final phases of the game there is a late endgame which includes fewer pieces and in some cases will represent a mopping-up exercise.

The plan above is very challenging for most of us. For those who want to delve deeper, in video 7 I show how this compares to some amateur and professional player stats. The next three blog recommendations are designed to help us get closer to such a timeline.

5) Choose openings you enjoy and stick with them

Now playing blitz games in openings you don't yet understand well is a good way of improving your knowledge, especially if you review the opening and related middlegame afterwards. However, if you want to improve your blitz results in the short term then it makes sense to stick with a narrow repertoire which you know well. In club and tournament classical games you may want to vary your openings to avoid or deliver surprises. However, in online blitz games where it's rare to play the same player multiple times and you normally have no advance warning of who you will play there is little benefit to varying your openings.

As for the choice of openings you can make a strong case for basing a blitz repertoire around any of the following:

- Openings you already know well

- Sharp openings especially where you sacrifice material for initiative.

- Systems like the London or Hippo where you can play many standard moves quickly.

You can check that these perform well by looking here Chess Openings and Book Moves - Chess.com. The Lichess openings explorer is also handy. Even ones which may be a little suspect on the Masters database do well on the Lichess database (mostly blitz and bullet). You can access this from the tools menu on Lichess.

6) Practise completing basic checkmates quickly

I reached Elo 2200 last century but it was only a couple of years ago that I learnt how to mate with queen or rook against king efficiently. I had always muddled through with my own very slow processes.

In summary with a queen against king you can firstly coral the enemy king using only your queen and force it back keeping a knight's move away. You leave two squares free in a corner to avoid stalemate. Finally, you bring the king in and these moves can be premoved to save time.

With a rook you enclose the enemy king in a box. Whenever possible you make that box smaller. If that's not possible you bring your king closer. If that's not possible you play a king move to use zugzwang to drive the enemy king back.

It's worth practising them to make your play almost automatic. Chess,com has a nice tool for timed practising of this under Learn - Endgames - Checkmates Chess Endgames - Training & Practice Made Simple - Chess.com. 

7) Learn how to premove

Premoving is an alien concept to many strong amateur players I know who were brought up on OTB chess. Therefore I have created a video to illustrate in more detail how this is done on Lichess and Chess.com and to illustrate some cases where it makes sense.

The basic idea of premoving is to make a move which (if legal) will be played by the system more or less instantly regardless of what your opponent does. That cuts out your reaction time and any thinking time. You execute a premove by making it on the board before your opponent moves. There are three main areas for using premoves:

- In the opening if you think you can play the same move regardless of your opponent's next move.

- In all periods of the game where you have an "automatic" recapture. (If your opponent doesn't make the capture then the premove will be ignored as illegal.)

- In the endgame when you have a clearly winning position. For example, you may be able to push a pawn very quickly down the board to promotion, particularly if you have already cut off the opposing king from stopping it.

8) Review your games afterwards

This is standard advice for any games you play. At blitz I think it makes sense to do a quick engine-assisted review. I see no point beating yourself up about minor discrepancies against the computer's best line. I would typically look for:

- Where I can improve my opening play next time.

- Any tactical tricks I missed.

- An understanding of a suitable plan at a key moment in the game when I was unsure what to do.

I would ideally do this review immediately after playing the game or shortly after the end of the session you played.

Conclusions

Hopefully you enjoyed the ideas above. Maybe you can think of others? Please share any feedback. 

In case you want to explore the ideas further, I recorded a series of videos to give more details and examples here. Where there are system differences I have covered for Chess.com as well as Lichess. The specific videos are:

1. Introduction Better Blitz 1 - Introduction (youtube.com)

2. System set up Better Blitz 2 - Setting up your system (youtube.com)

3. How and when to premove Better Blitz 3 - How and when to premove (youtube.com)

4. Practising checkmates. Better Blitz 4 - Practising checkmates (youtube.com)

5. Choosing openings. Better Blitz 5 - Openings (youtube.com)

6. Reviewing your play. Better Blitz 6 - Post game review (youtube.com)

7. Reviewing your speed of play. Better Blitz 7- Reviewing your speed of play (youtube.com)

8. Flexing your strategy for different speeds, tournament situations etc. Better Blitz 8 - Flexing your strategy (youtube.com)

Finally, in case you are a traditionalist who likes the printed word, all this and more is covered in my book available on Amazon in which improving your blitz is the largest chapter: Better Chess Faster: Strategies for online and live play: Amazon.co.uk: Crocker, Mr Phil: 9798829874704: Books