Losing on clock most games. Stuck at ~100 ELO.

Started playing a couple of weeks ago out of curiosity about what my rating would be after watching videos of really bad players and laughing at the awful blunders they made. Only played a couple dozen games maybe back when I was a kid, but I felt like I would do decently well based on how easily I was spotting blunders and tactical opportunities in the videos I was watching.

Well it turns out that under time pressure, I'm one of those really bad players. I either run out of time or try to play faster and make huge blunders, or both as I try to find a balance. Even on my slower moves I struggle to keep track of everything going on. I feel like I've only gotten worse as I've learned about more things to consider with each move. Feels like I take twice as long as everyone else to think.

I'm really only interested in blitz. The few times I've tried longer games, I still end up taking twice as long as the opponent to think, so it doesn't necessarily help. Ironically, I seem to do best in bullet as there's no time at all to get stuck thinking about moves.

Any idea how to get faster at considering moves?

git gud. there is nothing else because chess is impossible to win a single game at 

Decide on a plan of attack and stick with it unless your opponent gives you cause to change your mind. Try to think about your next move during your opponent's turn. Review every game you lost and try to figure out what the winning move would've been and try to remember what that for next time.

If you are only interested in blitz you might be in for a bit of a struggle to get good at chess (I mean even more so than is necessary), but it is your choice.

I would imagine playing a lot of puzzle battle might help you spot the hanging pieces, mate in ones and some of the most basic tactics fast.

All that being said, I would still recommend playing longer time controls like 15|10 until you reach a rapid rating of like 1000 and only then maybe playing some blitz on the side (not only blitz), even if your goal is to get good at blitz.

If you absolutely don't want to play anything but blitz (or bullet), then play 5|5 blitz.

play a longe game. you could pick 1 day, 3 day, 7 day, 30 min clock turns and more.

Well anyway, I've been on a winning streak since I posted this and now I'm closer to 200 than 100. Here's some more detail as a reply to most comments.

So first of all, it makes sense that playing longer time formats will make it easier to play shorter time formats in the future. Just, managing to drop all the way to 100 ELO makes me think there's something extra going on. I played a few 10|5 games (not all of them here) and run into the same issue. I think I would need 60 minutes a side before I felt comfortable but at that point, I'd rather do puzzles and and analyze rather than play live games.

From my understanding, even in blitz, the average person that just learns the game has a rating of around 400 on this site. To drop down to 100, you're either not playing seriously or something is wrong. When I pay attention to the clock, I seem to take much longer than average to think about my moves, and when I try to speed up, I end up making worse moves than my opponent while still taking longer. And these moves are often instantly regrettable blunders, like somehow thinking I can pin a pawn with a bishop in the adjacent file. I seem to get tunnel visioned and then panic when I realize time is ticking away.

But it's not all bad. The main thing I seem to be good at is identifying ways to put on pressure and find sneaky checkmates after an opponent blunders when I'm getting low on time. Rarely any time for pawn promotion so getting them to resign or blunder a checkmate are my primary ways to win. And if they don't realize I'm low on time, sometimes I can flip the script and run them out of time (not a fan of increment/delay time controls, I'd rather do 10|0 rapid than 5|5 blitz).

As for my losses, almost two thirds are because I run out of time. From my limited analysis, and potentially flawed memory, I seem to take the longest in the early stages when considering how to respond to how my opponent is opening past the first few turns. Once the options become more limited and I have a strategy based on the board state, I move quicker but often don't have time to pressure a checkmate let alone get to the end game.

Analyzing my lost games is probably something I should do more. Most of my blunders I realize immediately, or at least during the game, but looking for missed checkmates and potentially winning strategies should help increase my winrate a lot with how things are now. But that really only compensates for my slow thinking and early game blunders, it doesn't solve it. And I shouldn't need to spend hours analyzing stuff just to catch up to the average person that just learned the game, which is my primary goal at this point.

Blitz might be bad if you want to get good at anything other than being a chess hustler, but right now I just want to get up to the level a totally new player should be. Even 300 ELO I'd be happy with. And I want to directly attack my problem of slow thinking and tunnel vision rather than compensate for it. That's what gave me the idea to try 1 minute bullet.

I mean this as no offense to anyone, but believe me, there is not going to be a whole lot of thinking going on in bullet games at 100-200 rating. Or at any rating really. It is not possible to think very much in one minute, no matter who you are.

You need to first learn how to think slowly in order to learn how to think faster.

I have been playing for a little over a year now and I still see no point in even trying to play bullet.

Play longer games, like 15+10. Work on not giving away any pieces, and taking any pieces your opponent gives you.

I think the point of bullet is the speed at which you spot tactical opportunities and threats. You have to have some sort of clue about basic openings so you can premove a bunch of stuff but then it comes down to how well you can pressure, avoid being pressured, and taking advantage of blunders quickly while avoiding blundering your own pieces.

Which of course ends up being much different from normal, especially high rated chess, as the rate of blunders is much higher when relying on intuition and pattern recognition.

That said, my first games were a fluke and I need a lot more practice with openings before I can do well.

Even in the opening, you need to react to what your opponent is doing. This is impossible when premoving.

If you want to get better at playing chess, I recommend you stay away from premoving completely.

Even though I suck at bullet, it seems to actually be the thing helping me. Getting better at *chess* is my secondary goal right now. My primary goal is to get faster. And from what I can tell, it seems that I have a tendency to perseverate on finding the best move, considering everything twice over and getting tunnel vision when it's difficult.

Getting better at chess by playing long games would certainly make a lot of decisions easier, but as my ELO rises I would still struggle with speed as my opponents put me in tougher positions.

At least for now and with a very limited sample size, a few games of bullet first seems to help me focus on making good moves quickly when the best move isn't obvious, and putting a lot more pressure on the opponent so they actually time out before I do.

If this truly is a time management issue rather than actually slow thinking speed, then practice should give me something I can fall back on at any level of chess.

I think it is way more likely that you are just conditioning yourself to making questionable moves quickly while learning to play chess by playing bullet.

Also I don't think basing your strategy on playing the opponent's clock is going to be very beneficial for your chess improvement.

Now I could be wrong, of course, maybe someone more experienced will be able to tell better.

I wouldn't say I'm playing the opponents clock, just I'm actually ending up with equal time left in the beginning of the game. Usually I end up with only 3 minutes when they have 4 minutes left. If I'm at 4 minutes as well, with similar moves made, then during the midgame I can pressure them with tactics and positioning and don't need to rush. I wouldn't say I'm playing their clock, just I'm not letting them run my time out despite me being in a better position in a lot of games.

Practicing time management like this, I'm able to spend half the time and the quality of my moves is about the same, because time pressure was making me blunder before and now I'm blundering at the same rate but much sooner.

And like I said in the first post, the few times I've tried longer formats I've still run out of time. I might make better moves but I'm still taking twice as long because I have more time to perseverate over strategy and "perfect" moves. This is a time management and/or processing speed issue.

"

This is just wrong.  You have to be able to find the moves "at all" before you can find them "quickly".  What you need is an opponent that will punish you for bad moves.  I would recommend that you play bots first before humans.  Play 2 games against a 2000 rated bot, then play like the 600 rated bot.  Keep playing that bot until you beat it three times in a row.  Then 2 more games against the 2000 bot.  THen move to the next bot up from the 600 one.

You also need to work on your tactics, that will help your speed.  If  you're a member here, do the tactics and do the puzzle rush tactics.  If not a member, go to Lichess and do puzzles there.

And learn an opening.  1. e3 is not chess.

Keep practicing

NO SOUP FOR YOU!!!  

If chess was the Oscars, 1. e3 would be like, Best Animated Short Film.  1. e4 is Best Picture, 1. d4 is Best Director.  DON'T BE BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM!

It seems I wasn't clear enough. The key thing is, there's no good reason for me to hit the lowest rating on the site unless something is fundamentally wrong. Even if I don't know what I'm doing, I shouldn't be losing the majority of my games by running out of time, I should be losing by being checkmated because of my bad moves. Simply put, I have a fundamental issue with time management.

That fundamental issue applies in longer games just as much as blitz. I might only have a couple of longer games played here, but every time I think it might help I'm acutely aware that the problem still have exists. I also have games played elsewhere without an account against a friend where this happened.

Anyway, I've managed to get back to about 200 rating in the span of a day. The bullet chess worked better than expected to help me make "good" moves faster instead of trying to think for far too long. In my perspective, this is highly necessary at any level of timed chess. Because it's a fundamental time management skill. It's essential to be able to play moves at the correct rate for the time control that you're playing, otherwise you'll always lose on time. And then as long as I keep practicing good time management, I can steadily learn more and change what the definition of a "good" move is.

And of course, the way that I learn more, is to play longer games like everyone has been suggesting. I have a suspicion that it will be harder for me to maintain good time management with longer games, but spending more time on each move should give me more practice spotting tactics and potential blunders.

Not sure if this is clear enough yet so let me reiterate one more time. Even with horrible time management habits, I could brute force victories by compensating for my slowness with better moves that I learn after hours of studying and analyzing. And because my time management problems are directly related to my confidence in my moves, I could compensate at low ratings by learning better chess. The problem is that as I get better, I'll just start losing on time for 2/3 of my games at 400 rating because my confidence in my moves will go down again. Solving the time management issue alone should get me at least to 300 rating, probably higher, which puts me in a much better position for actually learning chess.

Anyway, since some of you don't like my opening, perhaps I'll make it better by following with Ke2.

I think you should go with those longer time controls. This will give you time to see your and your opponent's mistakes and learn from them for the next game, gradually becoming tactically stronger in the process. It doesn't really matter if you take a long time to think, as long as you avoid blundering. You also will not need to take as long to find good moves.

The point of longer time formats like rapid is to see who can spot the best moves to make.

The point of shorter time formats like bullet is to see who can make good-enough moves the fastest.

If you don't have the skill to find the best, or the good-enough, skills in rapid format (which you likely don't) then you will never find them in bullet.