In order to do well in rapid and blitz, one has to posses the correct thinking patterns during the game and they have to come naturally because shorter time control demands that you should be able to implement them in few seconds or minutes. Who are the best rapid and blitz players in the world? They are the best classical (longer time control) players. The problem is that when a player hasn't develop proper thinking patterns in chess by fully submerging and analyzing deeply the position, "bad habits" are created. It will be much more difficult to eliminate these bad habits later on as opposed to getting rid of them right away as you're just starting to learn the game. Analogy for example, when someone is learning piano, you start with single notes, or right hand first, then left hand, before you can even play both hands. And you have to start very slowly until your eye-brain-hand coordination becomes faster. The same thing in chess. As soon as you see a position, there are moves that we'll consider. Majority of these moves are bad moves and we have to do a process of elimination. Good players are able to narrow them down not only quickly but so accurately. It's very difficult to do this in rapid and blitz. Tactics develops pattern recognition in our brain. Positional understanding is another important aspect. For example, as soon as I see a position on the board, I immediately evaluate the king safety because it's the top priority. Then I look for positional strengths and weaknesses etc. etc. It's pretty much a mental checklist. With rapid and blitz a person has to be able to do this checklist immediately and make a move.
OTB - How would you prepare for an OTB tournament as a beginner?
Sort:
Otb?
TheDietiesCollection wrote:
Otb?
Over The Board IRL
Hi, next Sunday I will participate in my first ever rapid or blitz FIDE-rated tournament.
Today I participated in a rapid, non-rated tournament, and I scored 0/7. The experience was quite humbling, as I'm the only one who is over 20 years old. I don't want to repeat this, especially when it's rated.
I started learning chess again a few weeks ago. I've prepared a few openings for black and white, as well as watching a lot of the Habits series by Chessbrah, Climbing the Rating Ladder by IM John, etc. But OTB is a different beast than online. I plunder left and right, forget opening lines, and make stupid mistakes that I thought I would never make, for example, getting backrank mated. It's even worse when the clock runs out without any sound; I got a lot of flags for that. And I've noticed that it's much harder to calculate or spotting tatics on the real chessboard; the angle is weird, and pieces are not perfectly aligned inside the squares. Another thing is distractions, and opponent's intimidation.
How would you prepare for an OTB tournament as a beginner? How to properly transfer online skills to OTB?