Daniel Gormally on blitz: same people playing blitz

Daniel Gormally wrote in his book  Insanity, Passion and Addiction - A Year Inside the Chess World that he stopped to play blitz, as he felt addicted to it, and this took away from serious chess training. When he began to play again, he saw the same people playing blitz. I guess as a GM he have less strong opponents to play, so you know most of your opponents. But what about people between 1200-1600? Do you think you are playing often against the same people? Is it possible to know when a specific person is online, so you can prepare and play against him? I am asking this because usually (friends are exceptions) I do not plan to play against a specific person, I just log in and wait until somebody ask me. Is this also what do you do?

For titled players that's possible. Especially at the GM level you may only have 100 opponents on the whole site near your level, so the ones that play often get to know each other.

If you believe chess.com's numbers, they're claiming there are hundreds of thousands of players around your rating... so no, you're not going to have the same experience.

Some people only play friends or people from groups they join... but for most people the opponents are completely random and someone they've never played before.

 Like 1 out of 50 is someone you've played before, or are you getting a lot of the same guys I wonder?

you can't prepare because there is too many players at the lower ratings and if you have played someone more than once it is probably because you rematched them straight away before they disappeared into the nether

Dr Who has asked me to put together a chess boxing team. So far I have Daniel Gormally and Joseph Blackburne...

It's true I stopped playing for like 3 months and when I came back I see a lot of the same players

I have to check, but I noted that something like 7 or more players I played in the last games did already play against me - several times each of them