Low Rated Blitz w/ High Daily vs. High Rated Blitz w/ Low Daily

I have observed an interesting phenomenon.

I am just a 1400 Blitz player with a 1700+ Daily rating.   After all, you get 2-3 days to think about your move!  And looking at myself, I figure I'm just part of the Natural Order of things.  More time, better moves.

 And so I just assumed that most players would have a higher Daily than Blitz.  BUT there are a significant number of violators of the natural order of things. 

There is a fair number of blitz and bullet players in the low 2000's who are 300-450 points lower in their Daily ratings!!

This was puzzling to me.  How can this be?  Having won some daily games against OTB USCF Experts and other 2000 players I decided to ask one of them.  He said he only takes very little time to think and make his moves in his Daily games.  This is exactly what I thought was happening.  

So it makes sense and it doesn't make sense.  My question is: Why play Daily when you treat it like Blitz or Bullet?  Just play Blitz or Bullet.  

P.S.  Some 2000+ blitz/bullet players simply time out on Daily losses.  

 My question is: Why play Daily when you treat it like Blitz or Bullet?  Just play Blitz or Bullet.  

Because you have to play blitz all at once.  Lets say you are at work and want to hop on to chess.com and play a bit of "blitz".  Some people might be able to play actual blitz games that take 5-10 minutes total, but others might not.  By treating daily as blitz you can go to your account, make one move, then go back to work, rinse and repeat.  You can log on when it's convenient and not really worry about your boss walking in or getting a phone call, and the chances of getting caught are much less.  

Basically, the two are the same except that in "daily blitz" you can make a move whenever it's convenient" but in normal blitz you have to play the whole game right then and there.

Daily Blitz!! Ha, ha, lol.  That's the best description ever.

Yes, your reasoning is plausible and logical.

For what it's worth, I usually don't spend a lot of time on my moves either.  But sometimes I do!  A lot.  Like at least 30 minutes or more, making moves on the conditional moves board trying to figure things out.

Playing a Daily Blitz player kinda makes me feel dumb.

Thanks for the reality check.

I have read folks giving counsel in the forums to stop playing so much blitz and bullet, and instead to play Daily.  

But I guess, you just have to take your chances, and occasionally, you will play a Daily Blitzer, lol.

You can usually tell by looking at someone's time per move if they are a daily blitzer, although if they only check the website infrequently, maybe not.

The number of games played simultaneously will also help.  People who play 20+ games at a time simply can't take as much time as they might like, and some play 100+ and a few play 1000+.

I won a tough game against such a player about a year ago.  His rating was ~1800 but he was much stronger, but played fast, and had about 50 games going.  I waited until the game got to a tactical phase, which I spent a long time looking at on the analysis board with a lot of variations.  My stroke of genius was to check his page and wait for him to be online and have my game be his only game where it was his turn to move before initiating the sequence.  I stayed online so I could reply instantly.  Sure enough, he moved after only a few minutes and I did likewise, but obviously I was heavily prepped for the line.  He blundered pretty quickly and I won.

I play a similar type of chess to daily blitz since I play Daley blitz.

Somehow I think it would be better to play when he has a lot of games going on. If your game is the only one, he would be more time to think about the position, or not?

I did once a kind of experiment with a lot of Daily Games at once, not sure, but something like 40 or more. My rating went up and down again. I feel already stressed with the 6 tournament games simultaneously; usually I play two or three games. 

He would have more time, but he's not the kind of person who uses more time.  When it's his turn to move, he moves.  Having my game be the only game of his where it's his turn means he will go to my game first and not other games.

I see.

How you get so strong in Daily? I would like to get from almost 1700 to something like 1800 or 1850 next year.

It's no different than any other kind of chess improvement.  Or you could spend more time on your games.  Look at the games you lost or mistakes you made and try to figure out if they are things that you should have seen but played too fast or if they are concepts/ideas/tactics that are probably beyond you.  If it's the first, slow down, if it's the second, you just have to get better at chess.

The first thing I should really stop is to play some games without using the brain. This happens sometimes in a tournament. Just not looking really at the position. If can get read of these I will be already 1800, I guess. 

I still have to make list of my common mistakes, I am just postponing this job. 

Nice, I've done something similar once, it's great when it comes off.

Pretty clever!

What if your opponent said something like this afterwards:  "Ha!  Ha!  You expended so much time to beat me.  Not only did you expend a lot of time prepping your variations, but you also expended a lot of time laying in wait for me to make my move.  Whereas I, spent hardly any amount of time at all on the game.  Sure you won the game, but you used 100% of your brainpower to struggle and overcome a mere fraction of mine, an admitted Daily Blitzer.   If it was an OTB game, I would have crushed you.  I allowed you your fun in a relatively meaningless Daily Chess game.  Now off with you little petty player."

What would you say in response?  I wouldn't like being on the receiving end of such a putdown.

Nothing to say.  Just someone that had to make excuses after a loss.

That's for damn sure, which means technology has again leveled the playing field as it always does.  If you know how to manage engines and have a decent understanding of how to judge one move against another you're in like Flynn.

If one thinks the recent World Chess Championship was deeply prepared and had all the spontaneity of an old knock-knock joke, just get involved with today's correspondence/engine chess.  It has become a rarefied discipline for those who have the time, inclination and personality to enjoy a tweak here and a tweak there versus playing a game as an aesthetic outlet like we once saw from Grandmaster Paul Keres.

I do believe the proper award for today's World Correspondence Chess Championship would be a statue of:

The whole premise is erroneous. It’s a different rating pool and is not comparing like with like. The top Daily players are 25/2600 and blitz and bullet well over 3000, so there’s a lot more ‘stretching’ of the ratings in live chess. 

It wojld actually be surprising if players over 2200/2300 at blitz weren’t lower rated at Daily. Comparing my own stats, I’m at exactly the same % percentile (to the nearest 0.1) for both blitz and daily despite there being a fairly large ‘discrepancy’ in my ratings. 

Exactly.

/thread