Converting success in daily to live games

Hello everyone, I would really like some advice for this. I am a respectable, just doing this as a hobby player in daily chess. My current rating in that format is 1506, and while I think it's probably overstating my ability slightly, I don't think it's too far off. Live chess on the other hand. . . I am so terrible (800s in rapid and I was able to work back up and plateau at 600's in blitz after being 477). When I do play live I have been doing blitz mostly 5 min and sometimes 10 min because with a wife and 2 young kids, I just don't really have long blocks of time that I can guarantee will be uninterrupted to do a longer time control in live chess. But whether it's blitz or the rare occasion I get to play a 30+ minute game, I am just a different (and far worse) player.  I will be the first to admit that part of it is psychological. The clock gets to my head, even if it isn't a super short time control. I alternate between losing by timeout in winning positions and losing by hanging pieces in ways that I never do in daily chess because I don't want to time out. I can make calculations on an analysis board, but not in my head. I feel like live chess makes me worse as I struggle with my tactics training and daily games after I do live chess regardless or the time control. I have made the decision today to just cut out blitz and just do daily games, tactics, and if I must do live chess then no faster than 30 minutes, but what else should I do to help me think faster and be better at live chess? I have accepted the fact that I will probably just be better at daily than live whatever I do because of my personality, but based on the tactics problems I can do on chess tempo and what I have seen myself do in daily I feel like my rapid rating should be more playing at 1100-1200 instead of 700-800.

It depends on how much chess knowledge in general you have, and also how much practice you have OTB, and in online chess in different time controls. If you have no experience playing long or even short time controls in OTB, and never played any online live time control formats then you probably need time to adjust to those time formats under those conditions. My dilemma is that I’ve played mostly blitz all my chess life, and have little experience playing games with longer time controls. Because of that I move too fast on online live long time controls, and also move fast in OTB tournaments. In OTB tournaments I also have a problem more with focusing too much on one area of the board or just in general seeing ghosts (imagining things on the chessboard that aren’t really there). I think you need time to adjust to live conditions. You are used to the daily chess format, which is a different skill set that you use when playing under live conditions. Let me explain that. In daily chess your allowed to use the analysis board and move the pieces, and your also allowed to use chess books and databases, and you have days to make each move. In Daily chess you are learning a different skillset, to compliment learning while playing under relaxed conditions. Daily is meant for you to learn how to play chess by taking your time. Not to say you should only play daily to learn chess for the first time, it’s just an outlet to use to mainly learn new strategies and openings. If you wanted to choose to get a lot better at just daily chess, and not worry about live chess for the time being, then it would be a good idea to use opening explorer to help you chose your opening choice when playing daily chess, but, there is a but, don’t do it, without drilling those openings, while you are playing, because if you didn’t do that you’d be wasting your time. But then again people say its not good to study openings as a beginner, to which I agree, which beg’s the question, “Why play daily chess as a beginner?” If you want to play daily chess go ahead and play daily chess. Just know that daily chess is a different skillset. For me, a live game as a different “feel” than a daily game. I don’t like playing daily chess, but I play it with friends who want to study openings. I know I’m not really high rated or anything like that but in my opinion, the purpose of daily chess is to practice new strategies and new openings, in which case you’d have to drill afterwards. Drilling openings in general isn’t reccomended for beginings, so that begs the question, “Is it good for a beginner to play daily chess?” I’ll let you decide on the answer. In short, all I am saying is that daily chess is like a different chess variant basically when compared to live chess. It’s a totally different feel. You’d have to get used to both formats. Also, daily chess ratings are usually inflated in general, but it depends on your chess knowledge and experience also, and since you have no experience with live chess, and we don’t know what you studied, then for all we know your chess knowledge is also limited. Just keep playing 30 minute games, and analyze them after you are done, and later, review them with a stronger player. If you don’t know any stronger player join a chess club on chess.com and ask around for someone to help you. Where there is a will there is a way. Also, the key to improvement is to play people that are 200-300 points higher rated than you. You also need to on occasion play people lower rated than you to get good technique. I can’t say exactly why your blitz rating is so low but for the most part people that are new to chess don’t have high blitz ratings, so that’s probably why yours is so low. You need to get better at 30 games, (5 hour games are preferred but you’ve stated you have time constraints) then move to 10 minute games or 5|5 time controls. Don’t play 5 minute blitz at all (or anything below) because those games teach you a lot of bad habits. In my example I’m good at blitz but bad at longer time controls because I tend to move to fast. You tend to move too slow, and due to time pressure you make a lot more blunders than you normally would in a daily game. If you ask me, that is normal, you just need practice playing in live formats, like I need practice playing games with longer time controls. Practice. You just need practice with live games. Since you’ve never even played blitz at live formats before then your also impaired by the fact that you aren’t used to playing live chess. Meaning, your used to using the tools of daily chess, and aren’t accustomed to live games, which have a different “feel.” But there is also another factor. I’m not sure if you are aware of this, or will even believe me, but some players, regardless of they are beginning in chess or have played chess for a long time, once they learn the rules and know how to play, for the most part, play either “fast” or “slow”. Some chess players play fast in general, regardless of how skilled they are, and some, play slow. I’ve learned this myself by observing different players play the game. You can improve your fast chess if you are a slow player, but this takes time. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty but depending on if you are a fast or slow player, that may cause you to want to hold off on playing blitz even longer. It has nothing to do with how smart you are. You could be good at math and still be a slow chess mover. It’s not how good you are that really determines this. I don’t know what determines that, maybe mostly genetics. You have to figure out which one you are. If you are a slow chess mover than you will have a very hard time converting to live formats online. But, I can’t answer the question, only you can. You have to be honest.with yourself, and not believe I am full of crap. I can’t change your mind if you think I’m full of crap, all I can do is point you to a book that hints on this fact, Why you Love at Chess, by Fred Reinfeld. I’m not making the argument that this premise transfers outside of chess. So don’t put words in my mouth. I am merely saying that sometimes, when people play chess, different people generally make slow or fast moves. I never said this transfers to real life.

So, in a nutshell, daily chess and live chess are different animals entirely, and it might also depend on whether your a fast or slow player, and how much chess knowledge in general you have. My recommendation, play 30 minute games with an increment if you can or without depending on your time constraints, then analyze those games by yourself then with a stronger player, and try and play people 200-300 points higher than you at least 30% of the time. Continue to do tactics. You’ll need a theory book, which I have no idea what is right for you, ask RussBell for that info.

Here is an update, I have cut out the blitz entirely, and have been doing 30 minute games. I actually got to do 4 already! I have even won all 4! The 30 minute increment has been a lot better in terms of not feeling rushed. That being said, it is very disorienting playing live chess vs 700-900 ratedprated and then going transitioning to my daily games with players who are rated 1200-1500. I don't think it comes as any surprise that my accuracy score is still much better in daily than live, even though my daily games come against better opponents. That being said, the 700-900 rated players I play against in live aren't super accurate either. I have won by checkmate on move 12, once by move 15, and had another resign after I was up 10 on material by move 21. The last a more tightly contested game but I still won by checkmate on move 35. I feel reasonably confident that my skill in live is above 800, but whether or not I can get to 1100 is less clear. At the very least though, I am finding live chess as at least fun with a 30 minute game.