Is it okay to suck at blitz chess?

Of course, now it makes sense...

I don't know if it's about the venue space or what have you but I think some of us are forgetting that sometimes blitz is a treat for others to watch.  Even a chess layman can get a kick out of trying to keep up with someone's blitz moves. 

Say what you want...but a GM's blitz has more logic and sense in it than my standard game...it's a treat sometimes to marvel at how fast they can take so many things into calculation. 

It might be fun to watch, but personally if I was in a tournament I wouldn't want to end it with blitz when it's been standard games the whole time. I mean, for an official tournament?

Oh I follow your point now.  I guess that's how footballers/soccer players feel about penalty kicks.  It's a crap way to determine a winner, but hey...can't play chess till the sun comes up.

I think that that should not happen with a TD

"This is why blitz deciding a championship is a horrible idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNQjXHjRkNQ

Pieces flinging, not hitting the clock and a huge controversy at the end. This is why I hate blitz so much. This is NOT chess."

That was not blitz, but Armagedon. The normal time control for OTB blitz is 3+2. As for blitz, yes, I know, usually those who can't play blitz hate it. What about bullet chess (1 minute)?

no harm will befall you

Great video AnthonyCG, it´s not often you get to see a proper ragequit in chess.

Is it okay to suck at standard time controls chess? 

I sure hope so.

I have the same thing -- there are many players that beat me easily in blitz, while I win the slow games. I play completely differently in blitz.

Presumably, it's because in slow chess I have some sort of a thinking process -- I'm looking for threats, checking whether some move I'd like to make is actually safe, etc. I'm thinking.

In blitz, however, I play the first move that comes to mind. A few times per game I may stop and think for a moment because nothing comes to mind, but by then it's usually already too late. Also I bluff a lot and sometimes attacks break through.

Probably the solution is to just stop playing blitz, that way it can't harm your slow chess.

CC players will tell you Blitz isn't chess. Blitz players will tell you CC isn't chess.

Blitz players = Cats

CC players = Dogs

The two styles really suit different chess temperments and talents. Blitz will favor the "natural" talent -- Usually players that are good at blitz have the natual calculating ability and steady hand under pressure that leads to good results at slower time controls too. But of course it's okay to suck at blitz... slow chess is different and patience is a virtue.

END OF FAIR AND BALANCED PORTION OF THE POST. 

ENGAGING RANT TURBO MODE:

I'm a dog. Cats suck.

Blitz is garbage chess.  CC players have stamina, discipline, deep creativity, a love of chess truth.. Blitz players have reflexes, memorized cheesy little unsound opening traps and bravado, blitz players don't love chess, they love action and winning.

Choose one: 

A) The 5 minute game is a wild free-for-all with a minor piece *gulp* hung to a one move tactic but *phew* your opponent missed it and then your outrageous queen for two minor pieces sac that was completely unsound but tricky provokes his second best defense and you win a bunch of pawns off the board and have a winning position but he plays a couple tricky moves you hadn't considered and recoups leading to a clearly theoretically drawn endgame  -- but with both sides having mating material and only seconds left it's a mad scramble to push pieces around in a race against the clock -- OH HELL YOU HANG YOUR QUEEN AND HE SNAPS IT UP... but you are a pre-move wizard and start pre-moving your king in crazy little death jig that takes no time at all off your clock while he struggles to find the mate -- he's amazed and startled by your instantaneous moves -- wait, there's a mate right there! he pauses to consider it just a moment too long and his clock falls --  His flag fell first. What fun! Your King and lone pawn mean you have mating material. YOU ARE THE WINNER.

B) The 3 days per move opening goes 18 moves deep in a closed Ruy Lopez down a line played at Linares last year but your opponent heads into uncharted waters on his 19th move and what follows is a tense slow battle with little in the way of action on the board -- underneath there have been game changing sac's lurking a half-move away, but each time you or your opponent has spotted the coming attack and made the needed unobvious adjustment to prevent disaster. The fireworks are in the notes.  Bit by bit the unessential is stripped away until all that is left is the stark bones of a game -- a tempo here, a king a step closer to the center there -- A vulnerable but mobile pawn majority on a wing -- a Bishop vs. a N. Just when it seems your opponent is going to convert his extra pawn into a win you sacrifice your N to deflect his pawn to the rook file, where, despite being a piece down, you know the technique to hold the draw. The game took 3 months to play. 1/2 -1/2

To me, A -- is an absolute waste of 5 mins (and did you notice I have you losing your Queen twice? Must have been a promotion).  B -- sounds like chess heaven. But I suppose for some it's the other way around.

Nice post, JG27Pyth.

FaulknerFan wrote:

"CC players have stamina, discipline, deep creativity, a love of chess truth."

What is that, exactly?

To prefer to find out what the correct plan was, who is really better or winning, instead of just winning a game due to say winning on time or because of time pressure blunders and bragging about it, not caring about their own mistakes.

I don't know it's very hard to explain, but somehow I know what he's talking about. I am a good cc player after all.

Many OTB games, with long time controls end up with a blitz. On another hand, you make a huge confusion between blitz games and bullet games. In bullet games you can see some players hanging their queen. In blitz this happens only in games between players who would normally hang their pieces, no matter the time control.

The whole point is given by the wrong opinion that chess is all about number crunching. A GM is just a better calculator, nothing more, nothing less. Those who played chess more seriously know that chess is about pattern recognition and evaluation, rather than calculation. Most of the time spent during a game is not used on calculating lines, but on evaluating the position and devising plans of actions. A patzer, when asked "why did you move that?" answers "because my opponent will probably move that after which I move that and so on". A master, to the same question answers something like "that move is the starting point of a 4-move maneuver at the end of which I improved the position of my bishop".

In the end the answer to the original question: if you are bad at blitz, then you are bad at chess. OTB chess at least, where you don't have the opening books and the computer to find the moves for you. Anyway, don't be discouraged, important is to enjoy your game, regardless of how well you play it.

"The whole point is given by the wrong opinion that chess is all about number crunching. A GM is just a better calculator, nothing more, nothing less. Those who played chess more seriously know that chess is about pattern recognition and evaluation, rather than calculation. Most of the time spent during a game is not used on calculating lines, but on evaluating the position and devising plans of actions. A patzer, when asked "why did you move that?" answers "because my opponent will probably move that after which I move that and so on". A master, to the same question answers something like "that move is the starting point of a 4-move maneuver at the end of which I improved the position of my bishop"."

What you're describing is longer time controls, not short ones.

"In the end the answer to the original question: if you are bad at blitz, then you are bad at chess."

Yeah right. Maybe I'm bad at crunching my knowledge into a little ball and just playing the first sac I see in an effort to mate. CC chess on the other hand rewards understanding of the game. Standard chess is somewhere in the middle, usually more of a tense than intense struggle, and you have to play it in one sitting.

Blitz is all about crude play (takes the complexity out of the strategy), and cheap, usually simple tactics played quickly and hoping your opponent falls for one. I've tried playing blitz positionally: it doesn't work well.

The idea that blitz is nothing more than crude mate attempts hoping the opponents walks into a mate in two. And that cc chess are perfect positional battles is nothing more than rubbish. At the top, there are, both in blitz, normal time controlls and cc, both positional, and tactical players, with their prefered playing styles.

If you think that blitz it's about playing the first cheap trick you have in mind, you are terrible wrong. You talk about simple tactics played with the hope that your opponent falls for a trap. Clearly you are at the level where such simple tricks work. Of course, this does not imply that all the blitz games are based on such things. Most likely you have never seen a blitz game between two GM's.

This is my own experience. Basically I can't play my same game and succeed nearly as much if I'm playing blitz, which must mean I have the wrong style for it. There were times where the strategy meant zero and a weak player made many simple tricks and I just happened to fall for one, perhaps in time pressure.

Well yes, in blitz, if there are enough of them. Not in long. And who are you to talk? You're not by any means necessarily a better player than I am. You are better at blitz. I am better at standard and cc, it seems.

Ok, at the top, but amateur level is different. I can fight these tricks in standard and then outplay my opponent, but not necessarily in blitz. the only reason that might work at top level is because they are so exceptional at tactics. I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, when I play blitz, this is almost always what my opponents do.