Best way to improve
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Hi folks,
I just started playing chess recently and I love improving my skills. For a few weeks I have been playing Blitz which feels like a pretty good way to improve since you are able to play many games.
YannickgoesSchach wrote:
Hi folks, I just started playing chess recently and I love improving my skills. For a few weeks I have been playing Blitz which feels like a pretty good way to improve since you are able to play many games.
Blitz may be fun but many people believe that slow chess, where you have a chance to think, and studying is a much better way to improve.
For example, you drew this position, although you had more than two minutes left on your clock:
You had to settle for a draw because you ran out of time. You ran out of time because you didn't know how to do a basic checkmate with a rook and king and later with a rook and a queen. If you had studied basic checkmates, you would have known how to easily win.
Blitz is a good way to practice new openings relatively quickly as well as developing pattern recognition for newer players. Tactics puzzles are better than blitz for the latter. On the whole, though, blitz isn't a good way to improve - especially for beginning players. You'll pick up bad habits easily, like using intuition instead of analysis and calculations to choose your moves. Blitz is fun, but if you really want to improve work on tactics and player slower time controls.
May 13, 2017
0
#5
I started around 1100. I climbed relatively quickly to 1300, just playing rapid blitz games.
Then I switched to blitz. My rating almost complete flatlined over more than 5 months. Even though I watched videos and read articles, my improvement was minuscule.
Then I switched back to rapid. My rating went to 1500 in a couple months.
Rapid is way, way better for improving. Blitz develops bad habits. It's good for experimenting, or working on a very new opening. But improvement in general lies in rapid (or longer) games
Then I switched to blitz. My rating almost complete flatlined over more than 5 months. Even though I watched videos and read articles, my improvement was minuscule.
Then I switched back to rapid. My rating went to 1500 in a couple months.
Rapid is way, way better for improving. Blitz develops bad habits. It's good for experimenting, or working on a very new opening. But improvement in general lies in rapid (or longer) games