Had to really switch my mind for blitz

So I'm interested if you guys experienced something similar.

First off I only play chess here at chess.com. When I started playing, I mostly played 10 mins blitz. I then began doing some research and looking up some openings, training tactics. I really felt like I needed to play longer games.

So I started playing standard games, 15|10  .in some positions I really took time to analyse etc. Eventually I even started playing 30 mins, I felt like even 15 mins plus bonus was just not enough time and I was missing waaayy too much.

So after maybe a couple of months of allmost exclusively playing standard I decided this week to give the old blitz a go. My gosh, it really goes fast, I just couldn't play that fast the first games. Lost on time and overthinking unfamiliar openings.

It really was a shock how different it was from my standard games. I needed to get in that blitz mindset.

Anyone else had the same problems when they didn't play blitz for a longer period?

Here's a game that I just played against a significantly lower rated player. I beat him in the middle game but I was under time pressure in the endgame so I blundered a few moves.

It seems to me somehow that blitz is about who blunders less.

Some of us just will never be good Blitz players, but we play on because it's a blast.

I'm usually rated a good 400 points higher in long games than in blitz. This is true on several different sites I've played, as well as my OTB ratings in USCF. 

It's all about the blunder. I have thrown away way too many won games in blitz. I'll have a big material advantage and a crushing attack, but then play the only move that loses. Something I would naturally see if I weren't so focused on the clock.

By the way 15|10 is really not much shorter than game in 30. An average chess game is about 60 moves, a 15|10 game is about on par with game in 25.  

Try blitz with an increment . It makes shifting gears between slow + blitz a whole lot easier ... and you'll win/lose because of Chess playing and not  via  race-condition chaos with the clock. 

Yeah I know but It's a bit longer but I find that it gives a better overview of how much time spent/left in what stage of the game.

Maybe I'll try blitz with an increment but usually I'll have to wait some time if I make custom timed games.

5|2 is a pretty short game, but at least it is one of the chess.com default times, so it shouldn't be hard to get a game. Or maybe that's what you were already playing?

I wish that 2|12 was one of the defaults. It's a nice time setting in my opinion. Those 12 seconds really start to add up. And when you get in time trouble, at least you should always have at least 12 seconds you can spend on each move.

I usually play 10 mins sudden death for blitz. 5|2 is the default after that I think? Maybe I'll give that a try or otherwise something custom in between.

So I managed to overcome the rating difference in this next game pretty easily, and since it was me playing the KID in 10 mins, I think my 'fear' of blitz as well.

He blundered early, and I blundered less.

Yes, it's hard to speed up, I usually need around 30 minutes of blitz to get back into that fast mode.  It really is a different mindset.  In long games you analyse at least two different moves and pick the one you think is best.  In blitz you do a lot of blunder checking while your general knoweldge/pattern recognition plays the strategy side of it.

Blitz is about finding OK moves really fast... simply move that look reasonable and don't lose.  Much different from analysing and trying to find the best move you can as in a long game.

So now I played a decent amount of blitz, but I can't play like this too long or else my standard might suffer :P

I'm going through the same kind of thing but only backwards.  Unfortunately for me, I started off playing chess with 3 min. Blitz games.   When I finally found out that in order to play good fast chess you need to learn to play good slow chess, I switched.  But now I play games with no time limit as if they were Blitz, trying to set up pre-moves and all, lol.  I constantly am trying to remind myself to slow down that I have plenty of time, but especially when the pieces start coming off the board and it's getting into the "late" middle game, I start moving as if I had only seconds on the clock, lol.

Actually, my blitz and CC ratings are pretty close, CC being 1645, and blitz 1611, so getting into the frame of mind happens naturally for me.

The common stereotype is that chess coaches HATE blitz. I was just curious as to what you coach feels you'll get out of it.

The past two coaches I've had have advocated a healthy mix of Blitz + Slow ... though I will state that for a newbie/player starting out, blitz leads to "nearly uncorrectable" bad chess behaviors, esp. if the student is a nintendo-generation specimen with the attention span of a hummingbird.

Aint nothing wrong with the nintendo generation broseph. We used to play outside, unlike the kids of today

Apologies ... should have said nintendo gameboy generation :)

The oldschool tendo boys definitely played outside!

I play ONLY 10 min. blitz, and sometimes even 10 minutes feels too long. I can't keep focus for longer time, in some games it's just enough for my opponent to "think" more than 60 seconds for me to get completely lost.

Here is one funny game from today:

I actually have the ChessMaster game for the SuperNintendo!!!! Haven't played it yet,  but for 4 Euros I couldn't pass it up, lol

Thank you for the explanation.  I can certainly see where Blitz would improve your time management skills!!!!!