From my experience, the average USCF time control is sudden death with a 5 second delay. People tell me that it's because a 5 second delay is "enough to hold a draw" so that if you end up in time trouble you won't just lose when your flag falls. However, in my opinion, this is simply NOT the case. I can't count how many times I've been "blitzed to death" after falling under five minutes.

I started out playing action chess (G/30) and I just assumed that with such a short time control it was inevitable that many games ended up in a blitz fight. However, after moving to longer time controls like G/90 or 30/90 SD/1, I discovered that approximately 50% of my games STILL ended up in a blitz match at the end. It just kind of sucks that after playing for 5 hours the game is decided by who is the best blitz player with only 5 minutes left.

Of course, if I have 5 minutes and my opponent has half an hour, it's totally my fault for getting into time trouble and I need to work on my time management. That's not what I'm complaining about. I'm complaining about when BOTH parties have under five minutes. This happens surprisingly often because in order to play your best you HAVE to use all of your time. Any sudden-death time control encourages this blitz degeneration, I think.

I bring this up because I think it's very relevant when people ask the question, "Is it important to be good at blitz chess?" The answer, in my opinion, is a resounding ABSOLUTELY. In fact, improving your blitz skill is one of the most important things you could ever learn about chess. You will win an unbelievable number of games if you improve your blitz skill. When I manage to stay out of time trouble I often can hold my own against 1900s or even 2000s. However, if I'm playing against a class A player or an expert and we both have under five minutes I haven't a chance in hell. Why? Because they are just so much better at blitz than I am.

Has anybody else had a similar experience? Do you think this is a bad thing? Should there perhaps be increments instead of delays?

(PS Also, in drawish endgames where there is no obvious three move repetition, the stronger blitz player will almost always win if the clocks are below five minutes.)

Do all chess games invariably degenerate into mindless blitz at the end?

no.

EDIT: and yes i think there should be increments - 10 seconds at least.

Nah, sometimes you lose, early doors.

Here in Denmark, in amateur tournements, we have very nice time controls, that gives time to the endgame. I almost always play 2h + 30min (or even a hour) when 40th move is reached. But in Copenhagen Open, we also had the engame killing time control.

I agree that blitz skills is worth practising these days.

the clock's. it should know better.

I don't think blitz would help much (it certainly hasn't helped me! I only play it for fun and intensity that you wouldn't normally get in a long game) because blitz teaches you how to play an entire game in time pressure. To be a good blitz player you have to be able to make an easy plan for the entire game and see tactics right away. In other words you have your own little sub strategies just for blitz in addition to traditional strategy. But that doesn't make your play with low time any deeper, you're really just finding the best way to compensate for not being able to think deeply. The real way to get better with less time is simply to cram so much knowledge into your head that you can hope that maybe 10% of it sticks in your head without you even thinking about it, and use that. Also tactical patterns of course so that you can smell a tactic coming as soon as it's there. Simply "practising" being in a time scramble just isn't too useful. Maybe it helps a little, but I think mostly it just gets you used to superficial thinking . Not so helpful.

If the situation you described were to happen (but again this is most likely because of flawed time management), in my case worst case scenario I'm playing an endgame in time pressure. But here you can try to use your technial knowledge of certain endgame positions to help you, and at least it's easier to calculate with less pieces. Not saying there are less tactics, but it's just easier to calculate moves themselves. In fact, this kind of thing would have nothing to do with playing blitz, rather practicing playing out certain endgame positions outside of a game.

Second, the most obvious point, given 90 minutes you don't exactly have to get yourself into time pressure! You do get time to plan, but if you just daydream it's your fault you're in it.

You should be seeing a lot more 90min +30 sec per move. That is almost exclusively what I have played the last year or so as it is the minimum Fide rated time control.

Well I can't say it's not helpful at all, but I don't think it's one of the better ways to improve results. The OP is just raving about it.

"People tell me that it's because a 5 second delay is "enough to hold a draw" so that if you end up in time trouble you won't just lose when your flag falls. However, in my opinion, this is simply NOT the case. I can't count how many times I've been "blitzed to death" after falling under five minutes."

The 5 second delay helps, but sure it doesn't solve everything, it's not supposed to! It's mostly useful in situations where the position is so easy you could win playing moves every 1-2 seconds, but this way if you only had a few seconds on your clock your opponent can't move back and forth just waiting for your clock to run down as long as you move every 5 seconds. Otherwise your time would slowly sap away, 1 second at a time no matter how fast you play, and that could make all the difference. I hate that.