A quick glance at your games tells me that (despite your fairly high TT rating) you are losing your games due to simple tactics and the like. This is because in TT, you know there is a tactic there, but you are not aware of their existence in an actual game.
This is where pattern recognition comes in. The only thing I can recommend is practice!
Yeah it's about learning the clock. You get to find the rhythm that you need use to be making moves rapidly enough. It's about balance: too quick and you're likely to play at a lower strength than you could, too slow and you will hit time trouble.
Watch your opponents clock.
Its useful to be aware of roughly how long on average you have for each move. 5 mins is 300 seconds. the average game is 40 moves but if it goes into an endgame it could reach 60 or 80. So 300 divided by 60 is 5. So make obvious moves quickly and use up to 20 seconds at the most for more difficult moves. Of course there are exceptions to this and it takes practice to get the hang of it.
There are lots of tricks you can use to try and win on time (when necessary), saccing pieces in a time struggle , pre moves, random moves etc. It takes practice to figure these out.
Many opponents you are facing that are the same strength as you in turn-based or slow time control have played literally tens of thousands of blitz, lightning or bullet games so don't be disheartened if they smack your bum lol. I played more than 30 000 speed games during the middle of this decade and I'm still only 1600-1800 online blitz (depending on the site)
You have to learn how to make alot of moves on auto-pilot.
NM Dan Heisman mentions this predicament in his articles. This is also why he feels practicing multiple-motif tactics yield less dividends than simple tactical shots which, if properly trained with, can have you running on "auto-pilot" as the previous post suggests. Remember => it is far more likely that the patterns you encounter in simple tactical shots (1 or 2 motif) are going to keep re-occuring in your actual games more often.
Another way to look at it is this => If you don't see a single/double motif shot within 3 seconds, you're no different than the guy who spent a full minute and eventually got it right. You'll both miss the same shot in a real game.
Yeah if you know your openings better than your opponent you can sometimes gain a time advantage right at the beginning. If you feel your opponent struggling you can really use the clock to pressurise them.
Not making mistakes is important but using time as a weapon or maintaining some kind of parity on the clock is equally important.
A quick glance at your games tells me that (despite your fairly high TT rating) you are losing your games due to simple tactics and the like. This is because in TT, you know there is a tactic there, but you are not aware of their existence in an actual game.
This is where pattern recognition comes in. The only thing I can recommend is practice!
I agree, and I find this quite apparent to me. For example, I check my long games, and I rarely blunder away victories, but I do all the time in Blitz. I think I just feel overwhelmed when people immediately attack (which appears to be the norm). I miss simple tactics this way.
NM Dan Heisman mentions this predicament in his articles. This is also why he feels practicing multiple-motif tactics yield less dividends than simple tactical shots which, if properly trained with, can have you running on "auto-pilot" as the previous post suggests. Remember => it is far more likely that the patterns you encounter in simple tactical shots (1 or 2 motif) are going to keep re-occuring in your actual games more often.
Another way to look at it is this => If you don't see a single/double motif shot within 3 seconds, you're no different than the guy who spent a full minute and eventually got it right. You'll both miss the same shot in a real game.
That's like saying "play chess".
Oh, you adorable troll, you :)
Why do you blow at blitz? So you can be just the same as all the rest of us (who also suck when we have to come up with a bunch of moves in a few minutes).
Yes but one can "suck" less than their opponent thus win and gain fame and glory.
Well jdilley if you consider yourself to be above average standard then you should have a better win than loss percentage at blitz, my tactic is to blame disconnections for most of the live chess losses which a few months back was fair comment however my last few blitz efforts have not disconnected. Age is indicated within the profile as 22?, if you have played chess for a few years then blitz at your age should be as ok as it will ever be. Do you balance Internet use with club play eg some 5min otb games as a sharpener.
>:)
Well jdilley if you consider yourself to be above average standard then you should have a better win than loss percentage at blitz, my tactic is to blame disconnections for most of the live chess losses which a few months back was fair comment however my last few blitz efforts have not disconnected. Age is indicated within the profile as 22?, if you have played chess for a few years then blitz at your age should be as ok as it will ever be. Do you balance Internet use with club play eg some 5min otb games as a sharpener.
>:)
I started playing Chess regularly in January. I had only playing 10-20 times before that I would estimate, but knew all the rules. So, I have been playing for less than a year. I have poured a lot of time into it, lots of chess books, tactics trainer, and chess mentor. Pretty much spent my entire summer break studying the game. I find it easier to think slowly through each variation, and I generally play with a real board in front of me making the moves. This is also more difficult to do in blitz games..
I also generally play 30 minute with 10 seconds per turn long games. Plenty of time to think and relax I find.
Stop blowing at me.... You have onion breath.
study openings
for some reason i always run out of time in online blitz but rarely OTB
study openings
for some reason i always run out of time in online blitz but rarely OTB
I find that openings come quite naturally to me in anything but blitz, cause frequently other people stray from the lines I know quickly and often! In long games I usually get to play out variations of the caro-kann (my prefered black response to e4), with relative accuracy. I get flustered when presented with a pre-emptive attack. I have a very methodical approach to chess I find, and this doesn't seem to transfer over well to a speed method.
Study openings less.
Study openings less.
Shutup. That soup smells good. Now walk over to my room and lets watch Two and a Half Men. It's finished downloading!
Men, men, men, men, manly man men
(but legally downloaded!)
Hell, who am I kidding?
Men, men, men...
Thanks very much for the background information. It seems that you have only recently started playing and therefore your turn based grade is impressive. Perhaps as mentioned some otb play may help with online blitz. Also not sure about using a board and pieces as back up for online play, I tend to gaze at the screen, each to his own though.
Good Luck.
>:)
I found that I got better at blitz with just practice (Not saying that I'm a GM just that I can hold my own. haha.) Rather than trying strict opening lines focus more on position. For example, focus on exchanging your weaker pieces, doubling or isolating their pawns, while controlling the center and keeping a strong pawn structure yourself. I haven't played the carokann much but i like that you can keep 2 center pawns if they choose e4xd5.
I would consider myself a strong chess player, at least by the average player's perspective. I'm nearing 2000 on turn-based, and have a 1600+ rating on Long. However, my blitz rating is just awful! Which is odd, because with the timed Tactics Trainer I hover around 2000ish.
Any suggestions? I think it's mainly I have trouble managing the clock with my emphasis on playing Long/Turn-based games.