Part V: Playing the Game

This morning, I attempted to put a rope halter on my wife’s horse.  I’ve seen my wife do it a million times, but when it came time for me to do it, I failed miserably.  After about a couple minutes of trying, the horse realized my utter incompetence and started bucking her head making it even more difficult.

There was a time in my life I could read a manual, understand it, and then apply it.  I found that as early as my thirties that reading manuals, textbooks, and watching videos were a waste of time.  I could trick myself into thinking I understood them, but in reality, I couldn’t really apply what I just read.  Did I become stupider?  More forgetful?  What happened?

I believe that the mind has a limited amount of storage capacity, just like a hard drive.  As we age, that hard drive fills up.  As a result, we become very selective as to what new information is important enough to retain.  If it’s not important, the mind discards it.

I still remember the first opening I learned:  The Italian Game.  In fact, back then, it was called the Giuoco Piano and it was in descriptive notation.  I now know that the variation I learned is called the Center Attack.  Ironically, I never used it in a game.  Today, I find that if I learn an opening, it must be played a number of times until I “understand” it.

As a chess player learning new skills in his fifties, I find that the most important training tool is playing games.  Building base skills by solving tactical puzzles, learning strategy by going through lessons, memorizing opening lines using spaced repetition are fine activities, but “understanding” will not happen until these new skills are tested under the fire of a game.  The mind will not accept a new idea until it decides that the new information is important enough to retain.

Knowing this, what is the best strategy?  We can now play dozens of games in one day through blitz play, or one or two games using classical time controls.

If you peruse through the variety of opinions, the consensus opinion among professional trainers is that long games are best and too much blitz can ruin your chess.  I cannot disagree with this assessment.  Long games are essential for a player to improve.  However, before I give out my caveat to this, we’ll discuss the reasons why long games are best:

• Long games allow a player calculation practice in complex positions. Blitz games force a player to move without the requisite evaluations that are required to make a decision without guesswork.
• Long games allow a player to properly strategize and plan in the middle game. Blitz is mostly about winning tactics.  In fact, most long games below 1600 are about tactics as well, but for blitz, there’s almost no room for strategic play.
• Long games allow you to reach the endgame far more often. The difference between good players and great players is endgame proficiency.
• Long games allow a player to introduce new concepts to their play. For example, new players will have problems understanding simple pawn structures such as doubled, isolated and backwards pawns and how to exploit them.  New concepts take time and if all you play is blitz, you will never learn them.
• Long games train a player to be focused. Blitz feeds into the ADD and short-attention span culture.  Learning chess requires a lot of focus.  Blitz runs counter to this.
• Winning and losing long games carry more importance than blitz. Game importance is essential to long-term memory.  Losing a long game hurts a lot more than losing a blitz game and more lessons are likely to be learned.
• Game analysis is more meaningful in a long game than in a blitz game where you likely lost because of something careless or as a result of time pressure panic.
• A series of long games help determine trends and reveal areas of needed improvement. Often a player will make the same type of mistakes over and over, and long games are more likely reveal that.  It filters time pressure issues, and reveals real reasons with actionable training plans to deal with deficiencies in play.
• Blitz games reinforces bad habits. Since blitz games often rely on intuition, and unless you are Magnus, your intuition is likely to be bad.  Blitz will be reinforcing those bad habits.

However, blitz is not all bad:

• Blitz games are fun and addicting. A positive reason to blitz is to get in a lot of games in a short period of time.  You cannot do this with long games.
• Blitz allow you to explore openings and gain experience in the wide variety of responses to them very quickly.
• Blitz helps internalize opening lines by playing them over and over.

Personally, I feel that there is almost no value in bullet chess as it is a different game altogether with a different skill set.  Of course, I’m terrible at bullet, so that may be influencing my opinion.

So, does this mean to eschew all blitz?  Is blitz truly the potato chips of chess?  I’m actually coming to the conclusion that fast time controls (including blitz) can have an important value in adult improvement.

In the movie “Shine,” Geoffrey Rush returns to the piano after having a nervous breakdown.  He played the “Flight of the Bumblebee” in this clip:

When he plays this, I guarantee you he’s focused, but not consciously thinking about what he’s doing.  In my last post, I discuss the value of allowing your subconscious to act and how thinking can get in the way.  This is a perfect example.  Now imagine trying to learn how to play “Fight of the Bumblebee.”  How would you do it?

First, you would have to play slowly, making sure your fingering and technique are perfect.  Then you would speed up.  Again, making sure your fingering and technique are perfect.  And then, you would speed up again.  Each time, making sure you are not reinforcing bad habits each time you speed up.  If necessary, you may slow down again to correct your mistakes.

At the point you have sped up to your desired speed, the habits that you consciously applied have been successfully transferred to your subconscious.

I think some same lessons can be applied to chess.

With long time controls, the goal is to consciously learn new lessons and to practice calculation techniques.  Then by switching to faster time controls, the goal is to transfer those lessons to your subconscious.  Because of the aforementioned dangers of too much blitz, I believe this should be done carefully, as to not reinforce bad habits.

In my previous blog post, I discuss the requisites for teaching a stubborn subconscious:

• The skill is important.
• The skill is performed under duress or time pressure.
• The skill, although can be complex, can be done without any judgment or critical thought.
• The skill is repetitive and performed many times in a day.
• The skill is subject to continuous improvement.

Long games are certainly important, but have limiting value in transferring certain skills to your subconscious.  Whereas I think there are skills, such as checking for move safety, that can eventually become a subconscious habit; there are others, such as calculation speed that will continue to require conscious effort.  There’s little time pressure in long games, and it lacks the repetitive nature due to the low volume of games compare with blitz.  This is where shorter time control games show their worth.

This is my proposed guidelines for playing long and short games:

1. If you are a novice, play games at 30 minutes + increment of your choice. Stay away from short time controls because a random guessing of moves is never good.  Longer time controls do not help a novice player.  It’s important to get as many games as possible for a novice player at this time control.  Do this until these goals are met:  a) You no longer randomly drop pieces and pawns, and b) You recognize when your opponent randomly drops pieces and pawns.
2. When you have met the requirements in #1, you can play shorter time controls. Play a time control with increment so that you find that you are NOT randomly making moves simply to meet time control.  If you find that you are randomly dropping pieces and pawns or are missing when your opponent randomly drops pieces and pawns, then go back to playing long time controls.
3. If you can play shorter time controls without the aforementioned dropping of pieces and pawns, then go back to long time controls and find a new goal, such as never be surprised by a capture or a check. Calculating lines regarding all checks and captures is very important during game play.  This habit is often called “CCT”:  Checks, Captures and Threats.  For now, focus on Checks and Captures.  You may need to increase your time control for your “long games” to 60 minutes + increment at this point.
4. Once you are confident in your abilities there, then you can go back to short time controls to test your new skill.

I understand that these types of milestones are not concrete, and you'll have to use your best judgment.  The point I’m trying to make is that long time controls should be your main training tool, but short time control games should also be sprinkled into your training whenever you think you’ve achieved a milestone in learning.

A few rules should be applied when playing games:

1. DO NOT TILT! Tilting is often associated with a string of losses to the point where you start wondering if can play a game without sucking.  Make a rule that you must quit for the day after losing a certain number of games in a row (say 2 or 3).  Negative feelings can be trained as well as positive feelings.  Bad habits can be trained as well as good ones.  Do not negative-train!  Never negative-train!  Never get used to losing.
2. Do not play short time controls if fatigued or otherwise pre-occupied. Take your short-time control games as seriously as your long games.  I personally find that longer games are paradoxically better when fatigued, because when it comes to conscious processes, fatigue can be overcome by willpower and desire for victory.
3. Analyze every game immediately, and attempt to learn something new with every game (more on this with a later post). This means do not accept or offer rematches.  Think about why you lost, and ponder it again the next day, and vow never to lose the same way again.  As an example:  how often do you type on a keyboard?  Do you ever improve or become faster in typing?  If not, it's because there is no conscious effort to get better regardless of the massive amount of repetition.  You must try to get better in order to get better.  Mindlessly going from game to game will not improve your game.
4. Determine if losses were due to “stupidity” or “playing somebody better.” I use the term “stupidity” to refer to careless mistakes that one would normally not make.  It’s up to the individual to determining what’s “stupid” and what’s not.  If you lost due to stupidity in a short time control repeatedly, stop, and go back to long games and fix the problem.  If “playing somebody better,” strive to understand why you lost and learn from it.
5. If losing due to “stupidity” during long games, this likely means that you have not yet developed that habit of CCT. This must be a conscious process before it becomes a subconscious habit.
6. Focus on learning instead of results. Yes, losing sucks and it should suck.  You should never get used to losing.  The goal is to hate losing enough to take every game seriously, but not hate losing enough to quit or fear playing.
7. If you are completely tilting with all your games and really losing your confidence, it’s not wrong to take a vacation from chess. You can also focus on tactics, reading books, or anything other than playing games.  Learn a new opening, hire a coach for a session, perhaps try a variant, or in my case, write a blog.  You want to be re-energized and focused on learning when playing again.
8. Know that improvement is not constant. It comes in spurts, so do not get too frustrated when it seems like you’re taking steps back.  This is normal in learning. 

This is my progress graph when playing "rated games" at 60+15 against the Fritz engine:

This chart starts October 2018, to my last game January 2022.  Although there are peaks and valleys, progress is undeniable (even with suboptimal training!).

The final rule:

Chess is fun.  Chess is what you do when you’re not paying the bills.  It’s a time where you can just focus on the 64 squares and shut out the world.  If you do not enjoy an aspect of training, then it is better to avoid it and continue to enjoy the game versus grinding out an activity you do not enjoy.  Always associate positive feelings when playing the game or training for improvement.

My next post will deal with a phase of the game in which older players may have an advantage over younger players.

This article is part 5 in a 6-part series about playing and learning chess at 50+.

If you enjoyed these articles, please leave me a nice comment.  It will encourage me to add more content.  Thanks for reading.