Blitz and Bullet are not chess

I had a GM recommend to me that blitz will improve my time management issues OTB (I'm very slow).

He was wrong, it was the opposite. I'm slow because I play blitz. When you never do classical time control length analysis, then once your in front of the board you'll calculate in circles not knowing what to look for.

In some cases blitz may be the answer, but in my case it was timed exercises. It could be tactical puzzles or endgame studies, but the exercise would be to decide on a move within __ minutes (I chose 5). So do all the analysis I wanted, but it MUST be over in 5 minutes or less.

That helped me set analysis goals and structure my thinking.

I know a national master that think the climate change is a hoax and that the earth is flat!

The consensus among coach is for any beginners to Think! carefully on Each move!

Not allowing beginner players to play the game is stupid!

Blitz ( under 10 min) is not a welcoming format for anyone who want to learn under 1200.

WHAT,no!!!

They know openings well, but more important are the many thousands of patterns they recognize in a heartbeat. I’m much weaker, but I instantly recognize at least a thousand patterns and know how to play when I see them. One that I see, but will misplay when there is no time for calculation is the classic bishop sacrifice on h7/h2. Masters know this one better than I do, and hence instantly perceive whether the defensive resources are adequate (making the sacrifice unsound). I simply play it and take my chances, half the time to my detriment.

Kotov, Think Like a Grandmaster lists the necessary defensive resources and I have this book. I could study this section to improve my instant recognition of when it works and when it does not.

Pattern recognition is fundamentally a different animal than eidetic memory. Patterns are the significant aspects of the position on the board in front of you. Someone with eidetic (“photographic”) memory sees and remembers everything, the insignificant as well as the significant.

The late Alfred Binet, often credited with having invented the intelligence test, in his first published study, studied the minds of chess masters. He was interested in photographic memory, which he hypothesized might be a factor is chess skill. His research showed him that it was not. What chess masters perceived was not the board as a whole, but relationships between the several pieces—what Yuri Averbakh would call “contacts” in his seminal Chess Tactics for Advanced Players. Binet’s work built the foundation on which later work concerning chess memory would be built.

Chase and Simon are noteworthy in their development of pattern recognition in the early 1960s and thereafter. Anders Ericcson’s work on expertise and the training of expertise through deliberate practice built on Chase and Simon’s foundation. IIRC, one of the two had been his professor (I think Chase).

Eidetic memory is more likely detrimental to chess skill than helpful.

(I understand that some chess masters have claimed the opposite, but none of them have a clear grasp of the research—rather they perpetrate long-refuted myths through their ignorance.)

Susan Polgar does help explain the research in a Google video that was made 15 years ago or so. It is called My Beautiful Brain. The episode that features Polgar also featured a young violinist, a prodigy who performed at Madison Sauare Garden at the age of nine or ten.

An example of pattern recognition from a book on checkmates that I am writing for beginners. This position arose in a blitz game two years ago. I made the correct moves, and likely did not use more than two seconds. I could track down the game and find the move times. I do know it was a 3 0 game and that one second is my typical move time in such games.

During the game itself, I would have been aware of many contacts on the board, but now when I see this position, my eyes instantly focus on the lower-right corner where a familiar checkmate is imminent. 

Black to move

When I play blindfold chess, I see the critical patterns and remember the moves well enough to reconstruct the positions on less critical pieces. But, I am not very good at it and have only played one blindfold game at a time. For me, I need a quiet room, and I find it easier if I can look at a blank chessboard while playing. I have played a blindfold game while also playing two other games with the boards in front of me. I was able in my mind to see two positions on one of the boards in front of me: the one on it, and the one on the other side of the room where the player was calling out his moves.

I remembered incorrectly the title of the video featuring Susan Polgar. I have embedded in below. There is a scene where a truck drives past where she is sitting in front of a cafe. The truck has a chess position on the side of it from a real game. Polgar is able to reconstruct the position quickly after seeing the image a few seconds. At the end of the street, the truck turns around and drives by a second time. Another chess position is visible, but not from a real game. Polgar cannot reconstruct it. The explanation is that it lacks the logical patterns that she uses.

In my experience playing blindfold, it is harder against weaker players. The chaos they create can be harder to visualize.

Pattern recognition is easily trained. The "wiring" in Polgar's brain is the result of such training. That was her father's PhD thesis and his three daughters are his proof.

Of course, for a player to use more than two seconds on a move, they must have something useful to think about. You cannot simply tell them to calculate; you must give the knowledge of how to calculate. It is useful, for instance to start with a list: what pieces are undefended, what contacts exist, what checks are possible, ... Always consider both sides.

Never too late. I'm a couple of years past 57 and I'm still learning patterns.

Try this book: https://www.newinchess.com/a-modern-guide-to-checkmating-patterns

It is very good, and organized in a manner (developed by the late-Viktor Khenkin) that facilitates learning and memory.

Thanks, but I'm on a limited, fixed income now and can't afford books.