A blogger or a beginner one??

 Many of us play online chess or friendly games with our sparring partners. 

The question is – which time control in chess should you choose? A blitz time format or 60-minute game?
With increment or without? Is bullet (1+0) a good time control? 

The answer is – it’s very individual. And after reading this article, you’ll find out what the best chess time control is for you. 

Define the purpose
This is the first step for deciding which time control to choose.
Why do you play online? Or why do you play a sparring match with your friend?
What’s your purpose? ♔ 

Do you play for fun or do you want to improve your chess?
If you say improvement, what exactly do you want to improve?
Your game? Practice your new chess openings? Gain experience?
Develop your time management skills?  

Answering them honestly will help you to find out what the best time control is for you.

Let’s discuss the most popular answers. First, we’ll look at scenarios where your aim is to choose the best online time control to improve. And then at the end, we’ll talk about if you’re just playing for fun.

I want to raise my online rating
If this is the reason you find yourself playing online chess, I have bad news for you. 
Your rating won’t increase until you start playing better chess.
And playing more games isn’t usually the fastest way to play better chess.

When I was a kid and I worried about my rating, my father used to say to me, “Son, just concentrate on becoming a better chess player, and your rating will follow. It will run after you and not allow you to go ahead alone.” 

I want to practice my new opening repertoire 
 

That’s cool! 😎
When you learn a new chess opening, putting it into practice is a good decision.
And what you need to do after each session is to download your games and check them to see where you went wrong in the opening. 

I said, “games”, not “a game”, right? 
This means the more you play, the more data you’ll have.
The more data you have, the more mistakes you’ll fix, and the more mistakes you fix, the faster you’ll master your new opening. 

That’s why analyzing your chess blitz matches is so important for fast growth.

Important note
When you practice your new openings, you shouldn’t care about the final result or your rating either.
The only thing you should care about is to play the opening part correctly and to start feeling the positions that you get from the opening. 

Therefore, you should play as many chess games as you can, preferring blitz/rapid over a long time control like 60+0. 

Now here’s a good question...

Is blitz chess better than classical? 
 

Obviously not.

You’ll learn much more from a single 60+0 game than from a blitz chess game.

But if I change the question and ask - which is better: to play 1 longer game or 12 blitz games in the 2 hours you have, the answer will depend on your purpose - what do you want to get better at?

As we’ve seen, for example, when you want to practice your new opening, it’s better to play more so as to gain more data. 

When should I play with longer time controls?  
When you’re new to chess, playing blitz will definitely be very tough.
So you can start with longer time controls first. 

Another typical situation is when kids learn to play chess. They play very fast, without thinking, without noticing what their opponents want to do.
In situations like this, playing blitz may be dangerous and you should prefer longer time control games for your kids, so that they develop the habit of “thinking, then playing”, instead of just playing 🙂♕♔♖♗♙♚♛♜♝♞♟