How many games?

What is the most games that anyone has had going at once? Do you believe having so many games open at one time helps improve your game or slows down your way of thinking?

Having so many games going at once is not good for your chess game. How much time can you spend looking at each game. On turn based games opening moves are important so you should do some reasearch. Moving too quickly one misses tactics and alos subltiies. I am amazed that people can play 50 or more games at once--and there are people who play much more.

I currently have a game going against an Hungarian player named ANIKO, when I first checked out her stats she was then playing over 3000 games simultaneously, now it is a mere 890.

It's whatever your time and inclination allow. If you are really wanting to study your positions in detail, fewer games would lend to that style. If you love the speed of blitz chess but want the ability walk away from the computer from time to time, playing a huge number of games is one way to keep the action going. I basically load up with the number that feels comfortable to my recreational interests.

As for Aniko, I'm well aware of her/his stats & have this individual in some of the groups I'm involved with. I have played this person I think twice and have lost both games.

When looking through my groups I notice many people vary in game structure between small amounts (10-12) games and others between (20-35) games, but there are some who enjoy the competetion and have seen their numbers (100 or above)games.

I'm still interested to find out if the majority of individuals think that increasing your number of games actually helps develop your game structure by obtaining game experience through numerous practices. On the other hand, do you feel it necessary to slown down the gameplay and analysis more detailed games to get the most out of each game.

i think the most games i've had going was about... 30ish?

i like running between 20 - 25 games

going through more games gives me more experience

i'm not looking to run a perfect game ~ i'm interested in practicing defensive / aggressive strategies

i don't care if i lose as long as i understand why i lost

developing effective strategies through lots of practice is what i enjoy

i don't feel it takes away from my thought process (most of my games are 13+ days)

i'd like to work up to 50 games comfortably... i think it's a great mental workout

(btw - how can ANIKO run so may games..? i've thought about this and i think it's a group of people who play this account in shifts... there is no way it's a single person... it's either a group of people or some form of computer programming... curious nonetheless)

I prefer running 20 to 30 games at a time. Aside from a move in most games when i first log on, I still am usually only playing around 5 at a time consistently.

As far as ANIKO. I was curious if that was a real person at first also. In my first game she(?) was only playin about 300 at the time. I said Hi she responded with hello. Then i asked why so many games and never got another response. It made me curious if i was playing a real person or a machine. The 2nd game i was playing with her she timed out and last i looked she had timed out of close to 800. I thought maybe some1 turned off the machine lol.

maybe ANIKO is an acronym for a pet project run by chess.com to test real time games? oh the conspiracies

I was playing around 50 games and now have kicked it down to about 15 only for detailed wins within the groups I'm involved with.

20 max

agreed

When I get down to 40, I make new games back up to 50. But I play fast, my avereage time per move is about 12 minutes, and I completed over 700 games in my 1st month. I find it useful for learning new opening lines, so you get the maximum variation in the lines you want to play. It also improves sight of the board, it is a good mental execise to try to reconstruct a game you have not seen for maybe a day or more, and figure out the dynamics.

if you want to play a lot of games i think it is better to play "live" chess rather than stack a pile of correspondence games.  when you play live you focus on one game for a short period of time, and your opponent is under the same time restrictions making it even.  correspondence games properly played require a deal of analysis.  30 is best for me, though i've played around 50 to disaster.  reason being is i have to totally refocus every time i click to a new game and i can scarcely walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone sleep and breath at the same time without considerable concentration.

I'm always advised to study tactical puzzles, beit on-line or books or whatever. Having a lot of games going is similar: look at the screen, make your move, move on to the next screen. But somehow lots of games is critisized when lots of tactical training is praised.

I thinking it improves your way of thinking but the only problem on having lots of games is can you avoid to run out of time?

there is no one big thing the taticks sharpens your attacking if u can understand the moves and why in  that positon you broke thrugh then u can use memory and similar positions will be guarenteed to have simalar solutions playing lots of gsmes need analysis but the same thing eventually you will play similar games all the time you then are able to work out good from bad

i can make a record of 5000 games at once.. that is if i put 14 days per move, and have 0% timeout but it would be way to hard and over months of work just to complete them.

I find it pointless and you learn nothing from it.

The other day I had about 120 games going, now it's down to 40.  I just get bored if I don't have games to move in when I'm logged on.  I find that my toughest opponents are those who keep 10 or less games going at once because they obviously spend a lot more time on the game than I do. 

The top people at this site are not necessarily great, they just spend a lot more time on each of their games and care a lot more about their rating than others.

I think experience is key in chess, once you have a fundamental understanding of the game and of the style you like to play, the more games the better.  If you are sitting around on a couple of games a month, analyzing each one forever, I don't think it's as effective in improving your overall game.  There are billions upon billions of positions out there.  Finishing a small amount of games a month/year, even if exhaustively analyzed, won't cut it in my opinion.

Personally I don't like to go above 30 too often, because then I start to miss obvious stuff. Less games definitely leads to better quality of games. I have never understood how people who run 100+ games at a time find time to analyze every move.