Thoughtful post chuddog. However, is it so easy to really tell what caused the tournament slip? In your first post you point to blitz as the issue, but then you say you were tactically rusty, so that could be the cause. Or it could have been something else or a combination of causes. It's probably not completely accurate just to blame it on blitz and bullet can claim that it rots brains!
How blitz and bullet rotted my brain (don't let it rot yours)
Sort:
FM chuddog, disagree with you. It's obvious that all good players play lots of blitz and bullet and become really good at it. Then, they turn around and give exactly opposite advice to novices. I am still unable to decide if they are deliberately misguiding or not.
Titled player: Don't do as I do, but do as I say.
Novice: why?
Titled player: Because I am better player than you and better ranked and titled.
Novice: Then, shouldn't I just do what you do/did?
Titled player: NO, you should do exactly opposite of what I did/do. 😂
To address the last 2 posts:
(1) No one has ever become a strong player by playing blitz and bullet. They improved by playing slow chess, analyzing their games, and studying. Even Nakamura played in classical tournaments as a kid, although he's always been a bullet addict. Titled / strong players do play bullet and blitz, for fun. As a novice, if all or most you do is speed chess, you will stay a novice or improve only marginally. It's not "do as I say, not as I do", it's "do as I did to improve, not as I do in my free time for fun". Guess what? A lot of top players have major gambling and drinking addictions too. By your logic, you should also start drinking heavily and spend your nights in the casino. Hey, if GM Jobava can do it, why not you? And if he or someone else tells you that's bad for your chess, well they're just being hypocritical, aren't they? Or to be a little less harsh, don't confuse correlation with causation. Correlation: GM X is very strong and a bullet addict. Causation: X became a GM because he/she played bullet. World of difference between those two.
(2) I am hypothesizing it's the speed chess, because there is a clear association between when I signed up for chess.com and started playing a lot of blitz and when my tournament play and results started getting worse. I don't know that that's the cause. It is clear to me that (1) tactics and (2) time management are my major weaknesses right now. Especially tactics. I'm doing the tactics trainer (slowly, with errors, trying to work off the rust), and I'll see what happens from cutting out speed chess. I'm playing in a classical time control tournament starting in ~2 weeks (round robin with once/week games), I'll see what happens.
Here is an illustration of my problems. This is from the tournament I played in before this past one. I happen to have already made a pgn of it in the process of analyzing it (I have some good habits too, not just bad ones 
). Notice how I outplayed him in the opening and early middlegame, but then failed to find two separate kill shots. The first one I chose not to play because I miscalculated, and the second fell entirely out of my vision.
if slow games really did improve your chess they would be more masters
(2) I am hypothesizing it's the speed chess, because there is a clear association between when I signed up for chess.com and started playing a lot of blitz and when my tournament play and results started getting worse. I don't know that that's the cause.
OK yes so it's a rough guess that speed chess caused your poor tournament showing, but it's only that. You've been playing for a year here, 900+ blitz games. The question is that have you neglected something, some normal training you would have been doing in place of time spent here? For example have you neglected your normal study and played blitz instead? Then the fault could be in the neglection of that aspect rather than the blitz. If you had done that thing and done the blitz on top of that study would that have affected anything? Better, worse, the same? Hard to say I don't know. Just I don't think you have the evidence that blitz rots your game in itself. I just think it is not wise to jump to conclusions.
It is clear to me that (1) tactics and (2) time management are my major weaknesses right now. Especially tactics. I'm doing the tactics trainer (slowly, with errors, trying to work off the rust), and I'll see what happens from cutting out speed chess. I'm playing in a classical time control tournament starting in ~2 weeks (round robin with once/week games), I'll see what happens.
Working on tactics can't be a bad thing, but not sure how cutting out speed chess will help with time management. Isn't it the other way around? Good luck in the upcoming tournament.
If I recall correctly, the self-titled StupidGM only plays blitz chess.
Thanks for this post it confirms what I've been thinking. I started playing here about half a year ago (except for a short period in 2014), wanting to learn and get better. I did some lessons and puzzles here and to see things in action I started to watch fast games. 1 to 5 minutes were too fast for me to follow, I could just stare at the moving pieces. 15 minute games were alright, but sadly hardly no one here plays them, so I watched 10 minute games played by ~1900 players. For learning I found they were as good as worthless. The only thing I learned was that boldness pays off (sometimes). After a while I noticed they missed obvious moves, like cleaning up the whole enemy back row or missing a mate in two or three or even one. Also, when a position gets really interesting, especially in the end. The clock breaks off the game, usually with the player with the best position running out of time. It was the best position clearly because he thought about it and that took time. So it became frustrating to look at those games and I went to look at top rated games. But they are all 1 or 2 minutes games, so again I'm looking at moving chess pieces without comprehending their meaning.
I think that players who play both live and daily chess will have a higher rating in daily chess than in bullet/blitz etcetera, because those are better games. One could do research on this.
Interestingly, GM Max Dlugy just published an article in Chess Life where he argues that blitz is a useful activity and good learning tool. Clearly, opinions differ.
Meanwhile, instead of playing blitz on here, I've been spending that time doing the tactics trainer. I'm rated >2700 in tactics now. More to the point, it's training me to dig deeper, calculate more accurately, and see more resources, esp. for my opponent. But I still feel like I'm missing too much.
Oct 3, 2017
0
#32
intermediatedinoz wrote:
chuddog wrote:
Interestingly, GM Max Dlugy just published an article in Chess Life where he argues that blitz is a useful activity and good learning tool. Clearly, opinions differ.
Meanwhile, instead of playing blitz on here, I've been spending that time doing the tactics trainer. I'm rated >2700 in tactics now. More to the point, it's training me to dig deeper, calculate more accurately, and see more resources, esp. for my opponent. But I still feel like I'm missing too much.
Some sites are scam and some people are junk.
On this sites an account can be closed.
What were you saying again?
Am I missing something?
this is what bullet does ... posting in the wrong thread
Oct 3, 2017
0
#33
chuddog wrote:
I'm going to relate my experience of how online blitz and bullet has, in my self-analysis, harmed my chess game. I'm a 2400+ US senior master and FIDE master, but this may apply and be helpful at all levels. I'm not sharing this as a typical forum confessional, but because I think it may help others.
Starting a few years ago and up to ~ a year ago, I was steadily improving. I went from a low (not all-time low obviously, but multi-year low) of like 2370 to ~2430, getting the highest rating of my life. I got rid of fear in my game and gained a decent killer instinct, winning games positionally and tactically. Mind you, this is in my mid-30s, which is a late age to improve.
But, for the past year, I've been stagnating. After every tournament, my rating was staying the same. I started giving up upset losses and draws. Yesterday, I played in a local tournament that was a complete disaster. I went 2.5/4 against opponents rated 200-400 points lower than me, and that's actually much better than I deserved. The way I played, it should have been more like 1.0/4.
First question is, what has happened to my game? First and foremost, I've gotten worse at tactics. Yep, the t-word rears its ugly head once again. You know how every forum post on here on "how should I improve?" is answered with "tactics, tactics, tactics"? Well, it applies at every level. My positional understanding is still as good as before, but I'm missing tactics left and right. And it seems to be getting progressively worse. Second, my time management has gotten terrible. I'm getting into time pressure nearly every game and have blundered or lost on time repeatedly. Third, my ability to objectively evaluate the position has also gotten worse. I'm being overly optimistic and missing resources for my opponent, and sometimes overpressing a drawn position and losing. There may be more problems, but these are the most obvious ones.
Second question is, why? Well, as it happens, a little over a year ago I joined chess.com, and quickly got addicted to the live games feature. By which I mean blitz and bullet (I'll just refer to it as blitz). I've playing way, way too much online blitz. As it's clear that I've gotten worse at chess in that time, and nothing else in my chess-related life has changed, I don't think it's a coincidence.
Here are the excuses I gave for why it's OK to play blitz: (1) It's still practice of sorts and keeps me warmed up and sharp. (2) It's a good, quick way to test out opening ideas, being able to trash ones that suck without losing an actual tournament game. (3) It's also a good way to practice endgame technique.
But here are the problems blitz has created: (1) It's messed with my ability to manage time well in slower time controls. Sometimes I move too fast and miss my opponent's resources. Other times (more often) I leave myself too little time. The point is, getting into a habit of moving fast all the time has made me worse at spending time intelligently. (2) It has made my game more superficial. This is where the tactics thing comes in. In blitz, you can get away with mistakes way too often. It makes you lazy at calculating and evaluating. I often play stupidly in blitz, and don't even get punished for it. I also don't have time to evaluate deeply in blitz, so I don't. And now I'm missing stuff left and right in slow chess. (3) It's not really good practice. I've spent way too much time playing against weak players who don't challenge me. A very obvious outcome of this is I've gotten worse.
To be clear, I'm not blaming chess.com. It's a great site. I'm blaming myself.
So, my plan is to go cold turkey. I'm going to (try to) stop playing bullet and blitz on here. I'll still be available for lessons, and I'll keep playing a bit of daily chess, but I have to get rid of this poison that's rotted my chess ability.
To those seeking to improve, I would also suggest minimizing blitz. Play slower time controls, get into the habit of digging deeply into a position and finding the best move. This is not new and has been said many times by many people. But I thought sharing my experience as an advanced player and teacher may be helpful. Best of luck to everyone.
Blitz also killed my ability to manage my time in tournament chess. I also found myself in time trouble again and again. Intelligently using time is definitely its own skill.
Your other points about superficial thinking are good too, but for me time management became the biggest problem hurting my tournament games.
Oct 3, 2017
0
#34
chuddog wrote:
president_max wrote:
this is my 2nd favorite chess related post since
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/top-secret-method-for-chess-improvement-that-they-don-t-want-you-to-know-about
i've become a chuddog fan :-)
hope nothing happens to him, though the last person i was a fan of, the esteemed chessmate fm, got removed from this site :-(
Thank you, I appreciate that. Seeing how I don't cheat or post anything offensive or abusive, I don't see why they would kick me off the site.
If interested in reading more of my chess writing, I have a column in Chess Horizons magazine (http://www.masschess.org/chess_horizons/chess-horizons-archives.aspx) starting spring 2016. I also had the cover story (co-authored) in the Sept 2017 issue of Chess Life, but that's probably available only to USCF members.
Oh, I know you.
Well, not really know. I saw you at a tournament once 
Oct 3, 2017
0
#35
intermediatedinoz wrote:
poodle_noodle wrote:
Blitz also killed my ability to manage my time in tournament chess. I also found myself in time trouble again and again. Intelligently using time is definitely its own skill.
Your other points about superficial thinking are good too, but for me time management become the biggest problem hurting my tournament games.
people are playing blitz as a pastime, nothing to do with anything
Yeah, everyone's goals are different.
I know a guy who has over 100,000 blitz + bullet games. He couldn't be happier. It's how he relaxes after work.
Oct 3, 2017
0
#36
intermediatedinoz wrote:
president_max wrote:
intermediatedinoz wrote:
chuddog wrote:
Interestingly, GM Max Dlugy just published an article in Chess Life where he argues that blitz is a useful activity and good learning tool. Clearly, opinions differ.
Meanwhile, instead of playing blitz on here, I've been spending that time doing the tactics trainer. I'm rated >2700 in tactics now. More to the point, it's training me to dig deeper, calculate more accurately, and see more resources, esp. for my opponent. But I still feel like I'm missing too much.
Some sites are scam and some people are junk.
On this sites an account can be closed.
What were you saying again?
Am I missing something?
this is what bullet does ... posting in the wrong thread
There is no answer in the right thread either. Cut the crap!
that would be constipation & would need another thread.
This is not the first time that a GM has had a thread on this site saying that bullet and Blitz can hurt your game. there was a threat on this site from a GM and this GM said that he could raise my bullet score by 200 points but it would cost my standard game 100 points. Didn't seem worth it.
I decided to play only Blitz hereafter!
Blitz is mostly an entertainment for me. It may be a profession for someone. And I can imagine a professional which can successfully switch from blitz to slow chess. And of course some other professional will get spoiled by too much blitz. It can get toxic for quality chess if the personality is not fit for easy transition from one to other. People are different!
I tend to disagree with you chuddog. Yes blitz has it's dangers, as you've already outlined. But a disciplined mind can switch between blitz mode and slow contemplative mode. I think blitz has a crucial benefit of training your intuition, your ability to see and recognize patterns quickly and efficiently, your ability to evaluate a position cursorily and identify weaknesses and strengths of each side with a quick glance. These are essential skills, and blitz helps you acquire them. It will help you use your time more efficiently, seeing things quicker and recognizing patterns, so that you can use that extra time for calculation and forming plans of attack when needed. It comes with a caveat - playing with a blitz mindset in a game of longer time controls will get you into trouble - but as long as you are aware of that danger and are careful to avoid it it will improve your game.
Of course everyone's different, and I see your points and respect them. Good luck with improving your game, your way!
Strong classical chess players (Carlsen,Grischuk,MVL,etc) are definitely strong blitz(or bullet) players. But the vice versa is not true.
So, yeah, become a strong classical chess player first.