How blitz and bullet rotted my brain (don't let it rot yours)

Just like sprint and marathon are two different sports though both involve running, blitz and slower chess are not really same game. Both have a place and not all people can excel in both at the same time. Muscles of a sprinter are a burden for a marathon runner. The qualities of a marathon runner are a waste in a sprint.

Good point.   I wish I was like Magnus.  He's a Sprinting Marathon Chammpion.    Or is he a Marathon Sprinter?   

There is truth in that. Training for sprint is different than training for long distances. The question of this post is: does sprinting a lot impair one's long distance running. That could be true, but there is a difference too. A chess game is a chess game whether you play it fast or slow and the first notion for a move might not be the best one. But in Blitz you don't have time to look for a better move, so the moves in a blitz game are by definition inferior and so you see a lot of mistakes being made that would not have been made with some more thinking. patterns are mostly hidden by pieces that have not been put in position yet and when a pattern is recognized it could already be too late.

Anyway, what do I know. Just my two cents.

To mister or miss chess master chuddog: "Take your time and never turn off your calculator." Note this down on your phone or tablet and bring it to any tournament you are participating. Idiotic but you seem to be getting impatient, hyper, excited and forgetful of what you learned in the past, sir/madam. Keep on playing blitz like I do. 5|5 is feels very natural to me. I quite admire you cos you could sit in front of a board for hours.

 I was told when learning to not do Blitz, and after reading some stuff here, I guess I should go play rapid xD

This is why I feel that bullet and blitz skills can be useful at players of all levels, but perhaps in a healthy and balanced mix together with rapid and standard games. Because of bullet and blitz,, my tactical play across all time controls have improved significantly.

Quite often players very new to chess will start off playing slow games, before they become experienced enough to play more fast-paced games. Using DavidHHH's example, new players playing only blitz will be like very young children trying to sprint when they just recently learned how to walk. Or, using another example, sitting for a timed examination paper full of algebraic and geometrical questions when you just learned how to calculate one plus one and one plus two.

Oooh I see I see. Hopefully this change will help me with my frustrations xD

when a 15xx advises a 2xxx, i get reminded of this scene

LOL.

Also, you cannot look at a phone or tablet at a tournament. Does anyone seriously not know this?

Also, I'm on chess.com under my real name. It takes 2 seconds to look at my profile and know if if I'm a "mister" or a "miss". Spoiler: "mister".

Attention to detail is very important in chess.

I thought I'd give an update on this thread. Not sure if anyone cares, but just in case some people were interested.

I mentioned I had a tournament coming up. It was a club championship, 6-player round robin, 1 game/week, classical time control (40/90, SD/30, 5-sec delay from move 1).

In the month or before the start of the tournament, I cut out blitz and bullet almost entirely (I allowed myself to play 1 game/week) and spent all that time that I had been wasting on speed chess doing the tactics trainer instead.

Well, it worked.

I won the tournament. In fact, I didn't just win, I swept it, 5/5. This was a group of 2200+, 2300+, and 2400+ players. There were no blunders, and no one gave me an easy game. 4 of the 5 games went past 40 moves, 2 past 50. It was the first clean sweep in the history of this championship. In every game, I had to (and was able to) find creative and difficult tactics to win. Also, my time management was good. I wasn't in serious time pressure in a single game.

So I put my money where my mouth is, and changing the time spent on chess from bullet and blitz to tactics training made a huge difference. I will now have the highest rating of my life, crossing >2450 USCF for the first time.

If anyone is interested, I can post a game or two from the tournament. I'm pretty proud of the quality and artistic merit of the games.

I care.  Congrats. Please post games..

I agree. Whoever posted this needs to put some games up and explain.

Explain what?

Congrats. Please post those games. Love to see them. 

But, I am not sure if this strategy will work for others. Because, only doing tactics will not give game experience. I had tried this method in the past and it had not worked for me.

"In the month or before the start of the tournament, I cut out blitz and bullet almost entirely (I allowed myself to play 1 game/week) and spent all that time that I had been wasting on speed chess doing the tactics trainer instead.  Well, it worked."

Hearty congratulations!

I love it when careful self-analysis followed by disciplined corrective behavior yields the desired results.   

Well done, sir!

True. 

Congrats on the results, Chuddog.

Your tale also makes intuitive sense.  If someone wanted to get better at basketball, say, and spent all of his time playing 3v3 pickup at the park, he would get better ... but not as good as he could get.  If he instead spent that time practicing exact drills and techniques approved by a coach, ones that mimicked real game scenarios, he would improve much faster.  Pickup basketball is fun, for sure, but not the main road for improving one's game.

The same is true for chess.  Blitz can be very fun, but we all know training tactics is probably the most important thing you can do for your chess.  If your goal is to have fun, playing blitz is fine.  If you seriously want to improve, study tactics instead.  And if you want a bit of both, do both.  Makes perfect sense.

I'd love to see a game or two, chuddog.