I agree though on the general point that blitz needn't be mindless. I don't think it's educational, but you can still play purposefully if you have a lot of patterns stored.
blitz/bullet rating is the only thing that matters in internet chess
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"I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's necessary to be knowledgeable and experienced to have a high speed rating. I suppose it's also necessary to have decent equipment (e.g. a mouse). But neither of these are sufficient by themselves."
Yes, the good old "necessary but not sufficient." But as said there is variability. While varying say 400 points between your blitz rating and OTB rating is unlikely, it does happen for some people, and simply the fact that it can and does happen says a lot. The variability is very high, although of course not so high that Carlsen will be 1600 blitz or something :) And of course in general you can expect blitz and OTB to correlate to a large degree.
Elubas wrote:
"but you can't make up for a few hundred rating points with a good mouse, good internet, and "tricks." Whoever claims that I challenge them to prove it. Raise your rating 100-200 points and post here."
Hmm, I actually think you can depending on what you mean. There are skills that are blitz-specific enough that you could not improve at chess at all but improve 100 or more points in blitz in a day if you learned those skills -- in just one day it would be difficult, but unlike in OTB chess, not unheard of. Obviously this applies more so if you're not so good at blitz -- eventually blitz-specific skill building will have diminishing returns and your lack of "real chess skill" will hold you back. (Then again guys like Marc Esserman have seemingly found a way to get to 2900 in bullet rather suddenly.)
A better mouse is a little extreme, but just figuring out how you have to adjust your mindset to take what you know about chess and use it effectively for the unique time limit can result in massive improvement in blitz without improvement in chess in general. And I would be willing to bet quite a lot on that claim. You spend so much time replaying ideas you already know in blitz that you have no time to learn something new. Maybe an opening trap or something but that's as far as it really goes.
Oh, and no I'm not going to spend hours proving my claim by actually doing it. If the argument works I don't need to, and I don't need to take that kind of time out of my life to try to convince you further.
Yeah, had to change my claim a bit. I agree adjusting the way you think is very important and can lead to definite rating improvement. It's just when I see a 1500 blitz player call a 2000+ blitz player crappy it seems over the line. The >2000 blitz player, even if it's enhanced by a e.g. all gambit repertoire, is probably producing BLITZ games of higher quality than the criticizer's OTB games. Not all games, but some.
And maybe I'm overreacting a bit. I do think OTB tournament chess is the real thing, blitz is just for fun.
"It's just when I see a 1500 blitz player call a 2000+ blitz player crappy it seems over the line."
Yeah I agree. Although at the same time people will assume you're bad or inferior if your blitz is low, which I think is quite presumptuous too.
As weird as it sounds, it's hard for a player to be bad and have such a high blitz rating, but it's not nearly as hard for a player to be good and have a low blitz rating. Sometimes getting better at blitz is almost like a beginner learning opening principles -- just practicing a very few simple ideas/techniques will result in massive improvement early on.
"Blitz is useful I think. Both to test openings and little patterns you can pick up that help speed up your analysis in long games. Even simple stuff like a bishop on c2 covers all of a c5 knight's forward squares or maybe it's a mate-attacking pattern you hadn't seen."
This has not been my experience. Even the tactics I lose to I've seen before but couldn't see them at the time, and whether I would miss it in a standard game is very hard to determine because it's such a different situation. It's just very hard to learn new things when your only coherent way of playing in the time limit is relying on ideas you have already used exclusively. I learn something a lot better if it stared at me in the face for a long time (in standard) but I still couldn't find it -- that would demonstrate a clear defect, but I would be able to correct it by recalling my thought process.
The part about openings has some point to it, except that how an opponent reacts to your opening in blitz is not necessarily a good indicator of how they would in standard. It's reasonable that an opening idea that works great in blitz would work poorly in standard, if it's just a matter of finding a few specific refutations that would be too time consuming in blitz. In my game with Infiniteflash for example I would be very comfortable carefully meeting white's ideas, but in blitz it was a bit foolish to go into it because there is no way I could find a deep defense in that situation (although it did make the game more exciting 
)
But truth be told, I'd be begging for him to play that line against me in a standard game where I got the two extra pawns.
When you put it that way I agree with you 
Maybe I was thinking of newer players. Lets say e.g. the most you know about the sicilian is 1...c5 is the sicilian. Well you can at least practice some of the basic variations and get an idea for the type of play that follows.
Ok maybe not an ideal training method, but it doesn't seem so bad.
I guess the biggest problem for more experienced players is on most sites people play trash openings in blitz. Lets say I wanted to prep some main line ruy whose position starts 15 moves deep... well I'll probably never see it in blitz unless I'm playing GMs or something.
Aug 28, 2014
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#168
For example, I have only seen the main line against the scandinavian defense less than 5 times in my more than 5000 blitz games.
And I almost always play the modern scandinavian (Qa5).
I feel like blitz has helped me pick up the odds and ends though. You see a lot of stuff like the stonewall or 1.b4 or colle or london systems. I see this stuff pretty rarely OTB, but I have an idea for what I like to do against it.
Also on the forum... I'd never heard of stuff like the levitsky, owens, or ponziani. I can say today I have a few lines prepared to give me a comfortable position, just in case I ever see this stuff OTB.
Till_98Wrote:
no rating is more inflated than the online chess rating on this site. Some players are proud being 1800 online chess but they mostly are 1200 Otb and their blitz rating is also around 1200 normally. Of course blitz is not the world but there is a reason why strong Otb players are also strong blitz players. Its not about moving simply fast, its about playing good moves with few time. you can try Whatever you want, playing fast and playing for tricks wont help you. In blitz the difference between 2 players strength is the Intuition. People with a very good intuition will often find the best moves without taking time for the move and they will often see if a tactic is working without even calculating it properly. And this intuition comes from the experience of a ches player and of his general chess knowledge. People like Kramnik have such an immense experience in chess that their Intuition is also very good. Chess is not luck and also blitz is not luck,its all a matter of skill.
Unfornately, there are weak players who are very good at blitz, Let review Searching For Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin, there is a chess hustler by the name of Vinnie who is a national master with a low 2200 who can beat grandmasters with chess trash talk and quick moves, he beat GM Eric Lobron this way, they actually played six games and they had a tied score of 3-3. This some of Vinnie trash talk, 'Ya got nuthin Grandmaster, I said you got nuthin. What you think you're gonna do to my black ass? You think you're gonna come into my office and take my money." Kind of hard to play this way when you have a prick trying to break your concentration. Another example is a strong IM Victor Frias, he was playing a weak player bullet chess, this what the author had to say about this weak player;But this had no time for depth or art; he had devoted much of his life to learning the best shortcuts in a game doesn't allow its participants time to think. He was a grandmasters of cheap shots. By the way,IM Victor Frias lost all his games to this weak player, because he could move faster than Victor Frias. There are players who have a high blitz and bullet rating but are weak player because they can move faster than their opponent, they know how to use time to their advantage. They don't care how poor their skill is, as long as they win. I myself fell bad when I win in a lost position and played poor and win.
My friend who is a senior master (2400 USCF and up), said there weak player who move very fast and they don't care about the quality of their moves, this happens in ICC. I see weak players in my club play very fast and win game on time but they lose their game on regular time control; because they played very quickly and don't think.There is a danger in playing too much bullet and blitz games,they get use to moving quickly without thinking deeply in a position.
shell_knight wrote:
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yureesystem wrote:
I not talking about the best player but below 2200, there is a lot blunders. Are you saying you don't blunder in your games, every player claims to be good at blitz but I seen plenty blunders in their games. Online chess is different, there less blunders and give a player time to think, nothing is worst than to have a won game and lose because your opponent can move the mouse quicker.
No no no, my blitz games (and those around my level, 1700) are pretty terrible in terms of the kinds of blunders there are. My last game I was just laughing at myself... I feel like it was uncharacteristically bad.
But there are good games too where there is actually decent technique, solid plans, and no big tactical blunders. I and most my opponents understand pawn structures for example, and our moves will follow (at least superficially) strategically sound plans. We know which endgames to avoid and play our minor pieces and heavy pieces accordingly. And even when I've been drinking a bit, and I feel like I don't care about my moves, I still have a basic plan for every move I make.
I played a series with a ~1500 opponent who kept giving me an obvious strategic target like a backward pawn on a half open file, or he'd have a very bad minor piece. Well it was simple to grind him down game after game. I wasn't playing for tricks or tactics or the clock, I stopped his counterplay and improved my pieces and went into winning endgames.
I'm not saying it's objectively good chess if you seriously analyzed it. And the skills needed for tournament chess are different (correspondence, even more different). But it's far from senseless time burning blundering all the time.
And you say it's frustrating to lose in a winning position. Back when I didn't disable my chat I liked to tell my opponent (when they complained) "the difference between you and me is I could have won that position with 10 seconds left."
If you really understand your advantage, and have experience in converting it, all you need is premove to win.
I guess I'm agreeing and disagreeing. It's not "real" chess, and there are differences in the skill set, but you can't make up for a few hundred rating points with a good mouse, good internet, and "tricks." Whoever claims that I challenge them to prove it. Raise your rating 100-200 points and post here.
I am more concern with my quality of move than to beat my oppponent on time. This my belief is correspondence is much closer to otb game than blitz or bullet, at least you are able to analyze a position more properly than move on impluse. There is more depth in corrrespondence chess, you are able to go deeper in a position and less silly blunders. I like you to be honest, how many time you lost chances because you did not find the proper plan; in one of your game in the Ruy Lopez ( Steinitz variation 3...d6) you should of played pawn to e6 and you win all variation but you fail and lost in a won position; if this was corespondence game you might of found this move. This why I believe blitz is not accurate in gaging ones true strength.
Well, I prefer OTB tournament chess. But you can also argue there are too many blunders in OTB too. With very long time controls (days or weeks for 1 move) you can play much better chess, and really show your understanding of the game.
An equally interesting line of reasoning (IMO) is that speed chess is better at showing your weaknesses. If I don't understand a position, I don't have a long time to make up for it with lots of calculation and research. So in a way this type of chess also reveals knowledge that a player has.
These days I think tournament chess time controls are a bit short. Too many G/60 tournaments. I prefer at least a little longer, even if it's just G/75... and if I had my way, I would play something like G/300 but really that's not practical for a number of reasons.
Yeah I used to say blitz was a good sort of diagnosis of what is wrong in your game. But even that I'm not so sure about anymore, because again what you get wrong in blitz may be incredibly different from what you get wrong in standard. In standard you have enough time to slow down, philosophize a bit about the goals, and gradually problem solve. In blitz it's more like you have to pick the most relevant intuitive thought that comes to your head in a short amount of time. While intuition does reflect knowledge, it's subject to all sorts of randomness. With standard you know your decision won't be a sudden whimsical thought that looks good for 5 seconds, because afterwards you'll relax a bit. In blitz, you sort of just have to play that move, or else you'll fall too far behind on the clock. In blitz, you're missing out on that problem solving process that is such a big determining factor in standard. (With exception to maybe a minute-long think or two if you can find time, and even that of course is not a very long think)
In other words blitz still won't tell you much about whether this "problem solving process" is good or bad because you're not really doing it. There are many mistakes I make in blitz that I have virtually zero chance of making in standard because once I have my little "position analysis ritual" I'm fully focused on the important details of the position. Once again what happens in blitz can be misleading in regards to what it means for your play in general.
The point of classical chess by the way is not to play perfect chess, but to really get engaged with the struggle. Yeah, two hours is long enough to look for schemes and such -- no one said that means look at every single possible move every time. In any case it's certainly not going to emphasize reflexes or something. If of course you manage your time poorly, you have to deal with the consequences, but when you get into time pressure in that sort of time control you can never say you didn't see it coming -- you had plenty of time to plan out your usage of time.
Elubas, I wonder if you think there are any benefits of blitz play? Say a player NEVER plays blitz... sort of like Botvinnik suggested. I guess even he said it was a good skill to have during time pressure. But I wonder if there are any benefits of it to analysis in general. I wonder if someone who never plays blitz tends to take a longer time seeing relevant forcing lines.
This may not matter as much in quiet positions, but could hurt them in sharper positions (maybe?)
Elubas wrote:
The point of classical chess by the way is not to play perfect chess, but to really get engaged with the struggle. Yeah, two hours is long enough to look for schemes and such -- no one said that means look at every single possible move every time. In any case it's certainly not going to emphasize reflexes or something. If of course you manage your time poorly, you have to deal with the consequences, but when you get into time pressure in that sort of time control you can never say you didn't see it coming -- you had plenty of time to plan out your usage of time.
Yeah, I think it's a good balance. It's long enough to avoid most mistakes during most games and bring your knowledge to bear on the position. It's short enough to force you to guess or gamble sometimes and creates additional sporting elements like time management.
Let's put it this way: Indeed, I think a person will suffer virtually no penalty for never playing blitz (and they may avoid possible bad habits). That doesn't quite mean that blitz has zero benefits, but any small thing that can be learned from it will probably be learned better through a different method (e.g., tactics solving, reading a book, etc).
The funny thing about blitz and time pressure is that as intuitive as it seems to say it helps with time pressure I think it's quite false. Again, what you're doing with a small amount of time is just recalling ideas you have learned before. So how then do you learn new things? All you can do in time pressure is play fast, try to play active moves; the rest is limited by your ability.
Honestly, I am not trying to sound like a blitz-hater -- I play it often :) But I'm trying to look at it objectively. What I do think it can do is sort of warm up your mind -- if your mind is feeling lazy or something, blitz can give you some adrenaline and sort of "wake your mind up." And of course it can be fun, as if that's not a good reason to do it :)
As a recovering blitz addict I agree with nearly everything you said. I was just speculating and curious what you thought on the subject.
When I was playing blitz often though, I think it did help when the clock got down to a few minutes and there is little or no increment. In "blitz mode" I only looked at forcing lines and moves and gave much less value to objective evaluation. E.g. if I curled up in a passive ball with zero obvious tries for my opponent, so be it. If I sacrificed and made it crazy with no obvious defense for my opponent, that's fine too. So I disagree it's just about playing what you know and staying active. For me it was more about playing what I could calculate quickly and being safe against all rudimentary threats / tries.
If my opponent was not in time trouble, either is easy to counter of course. He should simply take his time and look beyond simple variations. If it was mutual time trouble, I often came out on top.
The weird thing for me is that time struggles in blitz don't really feel like time struggles in otb tournament chess. Maybe it's because in standard I grow more attached to the position/result (since if I lose that's four hours out of my life just to lose ), I don't really know. But again even though it appears logical to say blitz helps with certain things, it hasn't been my actual experience, and I don't think I am biased because honestly I believed those things for a long time.
And then I have come across people who play really well in otb time pressure yet they have low blitz ratings here :) Certainly surprising to see at first.
So I guess in this case, whatever experience you get with time pressure in blitz, is not nearly as useful as time pressure in a tournament game. Somehow they don't really match up, at least for me.
And thank you for the graphs to illustrate. other the lack of bullet skill I display, The notable part of the data for me is that the peaks rise and fall with a change in computer performance.
The first and Highest peak was when I was a premium member the second is from using my buddies laptop