Excessive Turn Based Games?

I see some people playing 20, 40, 50, 80 turned based games, 3 days to move.    I've played 10 at a time now, and it seemed when facing as little as that many moves to make, I often would rush a move, just to get to the next one. 

  Is it productive to play THAT many games? 20,40,50 to 80?  Does that help ones chess?

I don't think it's productive and in fact think it's quite counter-productive, as IMHO it can only encourage fast, sloppy analysis - or no analysis at all. BUT, who knows what others may have to say here? And, back in the good old daze of snailmail chess prior to PCs and the Internet, I had a pal who was playing +100 games inc several vs me and he wasn't any pushover even with all those other games going on. The downside is IMHO a fair amt of players like that eventually quit playing chess completely after getting burned out on it, although I have no facts or figures to back me up on this one

There's been a few posts on this topic recently.  Most people will just say "depends on the person," which I guess makes sense.  

But what I think it really depends on, in addition to the person, is the amount of time the player can budget daily in these games.  So lets say that you only have fifteen minutes every three days to select 80 chess moves then, yes, that's not good.  Conversely, if a player can budget eight hours a day to selecting his moves then 80, 100, 200 games probably will be no problem at all (to those that are into that kind of thing, anyway).

One thing about the 3-day/move games though is that you "stagger" the games properly you only have to select moves for 1/3 of your games each day -- assuming that your opponent replies immediately.  Therefore, if you have 50 games going simultaneously, you should only have to move in about 16 or 17 or them each day.  

I don't know how people can play 50 games simultaneously... I find 10 games the maximum I can handle (and I still blunder...), and I do have some time for chess every day.

If you use Vote Chess for improvement 5-7 games looks like a good #

Right now I'm playing 16 games but several are unrated so the bottom line is they don't get as much attn as the rest, still I tend to agree with hicetnunc that 10 games (or even less) is a good max #, it's just that I have very little self-control in limiting my game load - at least to 10 or less

When you have 100 turn-based games going, the result in my case is I win some and lose some so I hover around 2000s.I hope I dont go down to 1900s and below. I hate to be a 1900 and below patzer. A 2000 patzer look much better.  

Some time ago I came across a thread in which a player was asking to be able to take back bad moves he had made in turn-based games but after submitting them !  A few of us commented (wryly) that players are supposed to think carefully about each move before commiting themselves & not afterwards.

What was puzzling was that his rating was reasonably decent (1500+) so it didn't make a lot of sense why he was making so many blunders, until I checked his current games. He had over 130 'open' games in progress & yet he didn't seem to understand why he was making so many errors. We gave him the obvious advice to cut the number of simul' games he was playing right down to a manageable level.

It's not possible to make good moves when you're spreading yourself so thinly. I try to keep my current games to 5 or less because in difficult positions I sometimes spend an hour or two trying to find the very best move (I have found myself going up to 10 moves deep on certain promising variations!). But who has the time to do this with a lot of games ?

I get bombarded as often as any of you with requests to enter this team event or that tournament but I decline most of them now. I've also promised return games to a couple of friends of mine but I've explained that they're just going to have to be patient until I get some other games out of the way.

After all, two of the most useful words in the english language are 'no' & 'thankyou'       

Okay, great.  Thx for all the replies. You all confirmed my suspicions. I think I'll cut back to at most 5 games and fully concentrate on those 5.  

Whoa, Esragon, IM Walter Korn doing 400 games into his 70's and 80's?!!!  That's amazing if it's true.  Just the fact about into his 70's and 80's. 

A 1900 level patzer, Filipino. lol. (and he's playing 88 games as we speak.  )

Spot on Stephen!

I wonder what 'vote chess' is Laurent? 

I meant turn-based - my mistake

Who IS this Nuclear guy?  Maybe it'll work out for you then. 

Off with their heads!  

I try to keep 20-40 games going.

I move fast, I always have, I dont like coming onto the site and have no moves. Every now and then I'll give more attention to a game I find particularly interesting, but I almost never use more than one minute per position.

Will it make me a better player? That boat sailed decades ago.

Am I having fun? Hell yeah!

I feel that 12 is the max. # of games one should limit himself to. Why? Quite simply because that is the max. # of mini boards your online chess page will let you review at any one time simoultaneously - and this can be very useful. It helps you keep the positions in your mind, analyze them, etc, especially if you are facing the 'exhaust the available time' specialists - who can make you forget your name let alone any previous analysis of the game, by the time they make their move...

If you are a good tactician you can play in thousands number of games in many sites.

The more you play the better get evolved  the  hidden chess player in you.

 Some day I gonna do some stressful activity undoubtedly.

I had at one point 40 Online Chess games going at once, but that mainly came about because when I first joined here I began playing some lower rated players, and after winning almost all of them I was at a 1804 rating. Knowing my rating was artificially high I quickly began to submit numerous 3/day game proposals using my rating as a mimimum and a 2300 as a maximum so that I could get a lot of games against higher rated players. So I ballooned into a 40 game at a time which I found easily to manage over all as long as I made moves as they occurred and didn't let the moves waiting to become over a dozen at a time, which only happened to me twice so far when I didn't make any moves over a 10 hour period. I don't take long to make my moves though, I think the longest I analyzed on a move was about ten minutes because I am trying to keep the time I spend on each game to roughly equal to an OTB time control (40moves/2hrs). I am at 19 games now.

"Will it make me a better player? That boat sailed decades ago.   Am I having fun? Hell yeah!"

That's funny and probably true, I don't care who you are.

Could it be we are ALL addicted?  

be careful w/ too many games.....can become a trap.Seen more than a few players in the last couple of years drop 500 ratings points---time, stress and 100 games become lost because time ran out.One guy(1600 rated) i played 4 two months and one morning he was 750---he walked from 3/4 hundred games!

Just hope we don't go crazy, like B..., I mean Morphy, Rubinstein and Alekhine.    

..and I thought that I was the only one who blundered in correspondence chess.