What Exactly Do You Have to Do To Win at Blitz?

Plan to trade down (equals) rapidly, and reach the endgame.

Learn endgames so you can play them FASTER.

Then maybe you won't make lots of (perhaps) extraneous pawn moves (via deep thinking) and subsequently lose on time, as you did in the game posted earlier in this thread.

Also, consider putting whatever bonus time (5 or 10 seconds) into you time controls that you need to have a reasonable chance of reaching the end of the game "on the board," instead of "on the clock."

And if you want to be thoroughly miserable.  Play Bullet Chess -- say Game in 1 min., with a 2-second bonus.  And your problems will multiply accordingly.

Finally, whenever major pieces are still on the board, either a checkmate "coming out of nowhere," or a loss via time controls, (from the complexity of the position) is a VERY COMMON OUTCOME in blitz.

Nuff said?  

I know the answer, and you know it, but you are not going for it. The best blitz players in the world is Magnus Carlsen and maybe Hikaru Nakamura. They have played so much longchess that they understand whats going on, and can move instantly.

I play 5-5 because its fun. It doesnt help my rating much, but my openingplay is slowly improved. I also get computeranalyze after most games. I know that longchess is more efficient blitzlearning, but I dont do it very much and my improvement is therefore slow. I only  have 143 rated longchessgames.  

Stop playing it, works everytime.

Playing Game in 3/0 and losing on time is your only conundrum.  Give up the Ghost.

Switch to Game in 5/5 or 10/5 and surely you'll will rarely lose on time.

End of Story.

@eric0022

That is a good point. A decent player can sometimes know nothing about openings, or choose to play weird openings for whatever reason - but, after playing those weird openings in dozens games, they gain a lot of experience and learn a lot of traps they can lay. If the opponent doesn't know a refutation to these particular ideas, then he/she won't be able to figure it out in that little time blitz offers. After that, analyzing the game, they can, of course, find the best plan, but the game is already over by then.

Even more so, sometimes people win lost positions or lose won positions due to the time factor. Here is just the latest game I played:

Of course I didn't deserve to win it (made a principal opening mistake 9...Qxb3?!, which I still cannot explain, and then blundered a tactic 14. Nxg6!, even missed a free pawn with check 22...Bxd4+). My opponent even had a mate in 1 on the 51st move. But I managed to win on time, in a position where my opponent had 2 queens and I only had 2 stuck pawns... These things happen even in long serious games, but blitz especially makes them a major factor influencing the result in otherwise decided games.

1400136896 wrote:

 

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In blitz, one big factor is time management where you are able to use your time very well, playing fast enough while maintaining quality moves. Here are some of the things i learned playing blitz for several years already:
1. Be an expert of your own opening systems. This way you won't lose precious time in the beginning of the game as you move fast, when you know your o penings so welll.
2. In many cases, don't look for the best moves but look for a good move and play them as fast as possible. Always looking for the best moves in all stages of the game often leads to consuming lots of time, thereby losing on time often.
3. Learn more about general and important chess theories and principles,as they would help you decide the right moves more quickly. When you have a more solid understanding of chess theories and principoles, it would be more likely to choose moves that would have a solid chess foundation, and would be less error prone. When you play blitz and play with less errors, this could guarantee good blitz results.
4. Practice, practice, practice! Study your saved games after and look for the lessons you can learn from each of them. I cannodt stress this enough. Don't be afraid to lose, The more games you play, obviously the more games you will lose, but the more lessons you will learn and the faster you wdill improve.

Good advices, and I will comment  about endgame. We dont learn endgame in blitz 3-0 or bullet. The games are too often decided by the clock before we come that far, and we dont have time for counting and calculating. Longer timecontrols with increments is better. Daily chess is better.

@MayCaesar

Perhaps you were planning something while trying 9...Qxb3 in the game. There must be something there or you would not be playing it.

Time management is an important factor in any game, long controls included. Whilst winning a game on time in a losing position does not sound as great as winning a game (whether on time or not) in a winning position, the outcome is still the same 1-0 or 0-1. The other player may be better, but he is probably poor in making time-efficient moves, and this is something he must work on. It's like playing a Super Mario game; the more coins Mario collects, the more points the player would have collected in a game, but if Mario does not reach the flag pole in time, the player loses the game all the same.

I myself play more poorly as time pressure catches up with me in my games, so I try to make it a point to remain time ahead where possible without having relatively much worse positions than my opponents.

@penandpaper0089

Surely you will have some days where you have the time to play longer controls. Even in longer time controls, you can play at the same current speed if you prefer (it should not change your gameplay at all, although maybe the opponents will be a little stronger in play since they also have more time) and have sufficient time at the later stages of the game, or for a change, slow down a little in moves where you feel you may need more time to ponder on, to try and figure out moves-deep attacks, defences and plans and possible tactics to launch or avoid.

Don't flag.

Thanks guys. I just get salty when I lose like this. If it isn't tactics them I'm just moving too slow. Anyway, no I have my reasons for not wanting to play longer time controls. It's sounding a lot like people are saying play longer time controls or don't play at all though lol...

But yeah I'm not really looking to improve right now tbh. I figure I was just missing something in my game...

My OTB blitz/quick rating sucks compared to my OTB regular rating.  Why?  because i dont really care for fast time controls.  Its fun to play, and maybe that is how you need to approach it.  Have fun with it.  

I am not that harsh. it is good to play fast games too, but I can not understand that it is possible to play good endgames in 3-0 blitz. I think 3-0 playing can give much  experience in openings and middle game. What about extending to 5-5? I enjoy it, and it is possible to move into the endgame.

Blitz requires you to be able to balance speed and accuracy. Practice accuracy by playing slow games and playing through annotated gm games. Practice speed by playing bullet.

From Philidor to Capablanca...Fischer... Kasparov and now Karlsen, among others, all of them are recognized as exceptional blitz players since their early career starting up, despite their incipient chess high level experience  at youth. Perhaps it indicates that, despite how much experience training may also help., to make exceptional difference playing blitz is prioritary to have natural perception of strategic and tactic positional paterns, as well as good spacial mind control, to fastly foresee future chess board positions resulted from pieces moving calculations.. On the other hand, I do agree with Mr. chiss words above regarding to what to do to play blitz satisfactorily...

winning tactics are important