Duckfest Digest 05 Boosting my Blitz

Things were looking good

After 6 weeks of playing, my Rapid rating passed the 1400 threshold for the first time. Over the next two or three months, my rating remained somewhere between 1350 and 1450. While I wasn't reaching my long term objective of reaching a maintainable 1500 rating any time soon, I was pretty satisfied. My decision to play Daily  was also working out well. In a two month period my Daily rating went up to a 1385 rating, with a 79% winrate for white and a 62.5% winrate for black. It was obvious to me I could confidently consider myself a 1400 rated player. Not a massive milestone, but to me it felt great. I had not really expected this when I started.  There was one thing that was bothering me: my Blitz rating. My Blitz rating was lagging and something needed to be done.

Time to Think

There were multiple reasons not to play Blitz. An important strategic consideration was that beginner’s are advised to play longer time formats. It’s something that I fully agreed with from the start. Even more when my data began to support that view. In December 2020, my first month on this site, I was winning consistently when I was playing Rapid, while I wasn’t making any progress in Blitz. Which made sense. Because I needed more time,  I needed to think about my moves. To those accustomed to Blitz and Bullet it might not sound too difficult, but when you have virtually no moves memorized, it’s tough to have only 6 or 7 seconds per move (assuming 40  moves per game). Double that amount made all the difference to me. Not because I wanted to spend 15 seconds per move. I think it’s more like still spending 5-10 seconds per move, but with two advantages

•  adding 2 or 3 seconds for a quick blunder check
• the added opportunity to spend up to a minute on a single move a couple of times per game when the position requires it. 

Not only was I doing better in Rapid, I was enjoying it more. I liked playing and looking at positions. In Blitz, the game was so much more rushed. It felt like everything I knew went out the window and we were just playing random moves. 

To summarize: Rapid felt like a chess challenge, Blitz more like a blunder brawl.

Dealing with a Discrepancy

Playing Blitz was the least of my priorities, because I believed it was more valuable to play longer time formats and also because I didn’t do well in Blitz. There was only one counter argument. For me, by now a 1400 rated player, it’s a bit weird to only have around a 900 Blitz rating. Of course, my priority is on Rapid and Daily, because these games help me develop my chess. But, if I could just boost my Blitz rating just a tiny bit, that would be nice. Just to get above the 1000 rating. I had reached that milestone a few days earlier, peaking at 1002,  but I had lost a few games after that. So, currently I’m around 950. Given how much stronger I am than 900 rated players, it shouldn’t take me too long to get there. Ideally, I’ll get there tonight. But, if it takes a few days more that’s okay too.

It took me 200 games! And if I ignore the initial peak at 1002 that lasted just until the next game, the journey from around 900 to 1000 took me almost 270 games. Obviously, the second time I broke the 1000 barrier, I stopped playing Blitz to leave my rating intact. 

Displaying my discoveries

Eventually I reached my goal, but it wasn’t easy. I really had to focus and adjust. These are some of my findings:

Opening repertoire

Valuable time was lost in the opening phase of the game. At this point,  I had a basic understanding of my newly acquired opening, the London system and for black the Caro-Kann. But, at the lower rating Blitz games, I got destroyed in the opening a lot. One of the reasons is that players rated 900 play a lot more unpredictable, making my preparation useless. But also, even when my opponents played more or less predictable lines, I was nowhere near memorization or familiarity with the position. I realized I was thinking about moves in the opening more than I thought I did. Rapid allows for some time to think in the early game, but in Blitz you can’t be thinking on the third or fourth move. I needed to develop a set of opening moves that were okay, that I could just play fast.

Conversion

Converting takes time. I got a decent winning position in most games. But if I’m the one that’s low on time, my opponent just needs to hold, not to win.  And that’s easier than I expected. As long as it’s a complex position with many pieces on the board, I’m okay. When converting takes time, that’s another story. In many games, even when I have a position with +3 or +4 evaluation, with 1:45 vs 2:30 on the clock, I’m not sure who is better. As long as there are no immediate mate threats, I would gladly play my opponent's position.

Multiple time formats

Playing daily games did mess up my time management. Playing a format with 24 hours per move  enforces the idea that you can look at a position for a while. It’s easy to just look at a position for 20-30 seconds every now and then.  Forgetting the clock like that once or twice per game will cost you a lot of games.

Looking for the best move

I find it difficult to play a move before I’ve found the best one. I’m not saying I always play the best move, lol, game analysis taught me that. But I think I fundamentally prefer playing well over playing fast. I absolutely consider time management part of the game, and consider a win/loss because of time equally relevant. Yet, part of me prefers losing on time over losing because of crappy moves because I overlooked something.

Conclusion

One of the things that I found out is that chess is never easy. You can’t just expect your experience in one format to be applicable to another format. Frustrating as it was, I appreciate the game more for it. Chess is not a game of simple progression for logging in each day, it’s a game of hard progression even when logging in each day. 

Another thing is that I need to work on a basic opening repertoire, at least for the first few moves. And my time management. Under time constraint, a reasonable move in 10 seconds is preferred over a slightly better move in 30 seconds. 

Having reached 1000 Blitz rating, back to Rapid. 

And some opening repertoire, which will be the topic of my next post.

Thanks for reading!