Is playing blitz a way to improve

My own coach told me that blitz is bad because you make mistakes and your opponent doesn't punish them. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to favor my coach over you. No disrespect meant.

He's inexperienced.

The whole point of blitz is that mistakes are bound to be made. However, I would think that it wouldn't be good for a beginner to try to learn by playing blitz. They should try to learn by playing slow chess. I did edit my previous post to add on a bit about blitz causing a player to misuse his time. I didn't find that to be the case. The point is that you should analyse your blitz games where you think you may have gone wrong even if you won, and find your own mistakes. I would trust me rather than your coach! No disrespect.

My coach at the time was an International Master...

Were you a beginner?

There were two IMs on one of the club teams I used to play for in England when I played club chess. The point is that titled players are human and there would be those IMs or GMs who agree more with him and those who agree more with me. His opinion makes most sense if you were a beginner, who should take it slowly. If you weren't a beginner, surely the idea that people don't punish mistakes in blitz would be obvious.

Do no IMs play blitz or are they immune to the idea that you can play the same in slowplay as you can in blitz? I think some IMs play blitz and I was never an IM but I won so many tournaments at around the 1800 FIDE level, both in slowplay and rapidplay, that maybe I was doing something right? I won dozens of tournaments and got prizes in many more. On one streak, I won prizes in eleven consecutive tournaments. I always played blitz between rounds and it helped me win games where I was very short of time. I remember once turning down a draw offer when I had three minutes left, in an exceptionally complex endgame position when I didn't quite know how to win but I knew it was won and I won it.

Yeah, I was rated 500. And his coaching caused me to improve to 650 in just a few weeks.

OK his advice to you was right. A beginner has to think deeply about the game in such a way they try to understand the reasons for moves. Well done. Hope you're still enjoying chess. I took it up when my son was born when I was aged 36. It was to try to keep me in one place because I had wanderlust. It worked.

edited, sorry for all my spelling mistakes. It's caused by trying to type too fast!

yeah but blitz is still too slow, play 10 seconds ultra hyper bullet.. the faster the better

That obviously isn't chess. It's about reaction time only.

I used to play table football. I was considered to be in the top four table football players in the UK so I have fast reactions. I don't play bullet and never have.

Blitz is fun, but not the best way to improve. Studying and playing longer time controls are better.

True.

update: its a way to improve

This is very true. Beginners should try not to play blitz (and definitely not bullet!) because they will not have any intuition yet. So they must develop a way to find moves, and that's why many coaches will tell you to play slightly longer time controls (15 + 10 at the very least, but mostly just 30 mins). Even if you get to 1600 rapid on this site, I still do not advise you play blitz.

Of course, being the slow coach I am, that's my opinion, but I feel there is just gonna be a lack of planning which is really bad. Once you do have a generally good positional feel (around 1700+ is when you start to build this intuition), then sure play a few blitz games from time to time if you want to.

But what do you guys think is the rating people can start blitz (and not just because of tilt)?

One thing I found (which is peculiar) is that for me, blitz actually helped a lot more for me when it comes to improving my OTB rapid! I guess time trouble is often the deciding factor in most of my fide rapid games, but also it helps for spotting tactics quickly.

So yes, blitz can in fact help you improve, but maybe only when you are actually ready for it, otherwise you will just get mega tilted

blitz gelps in a sense that you get through a lot more positions say in na hour, you can then analyze your games with an engine, memorize where not to make mistakes and what moves are best etc and then take that experience to longer time controls

If you play blitz then you are playing intuitively rather than analysing the position properly. This is probably not a good habit to get into if you want to improve at slower games.

I mean I feel that you will be able to handle time trouble much better if you have played a lot of blitz. but i guess you aren’t going to get into time trouble much in classical unless it there was a very sharp position earlier on in the game.

But you need an intuition in general for finding the right moves quickly, e.g the most annoying moves when trying to fight back in a worse position (although you may find it with a bit of time, it helps if you are able to find these quickly so that you have more time for analysis)

Blitz is mainly for building intuition in my view, but I suck at blitz so idk.

But keep up the good work @medelpad ! You seem to be enjoying the game a lot as shown with your quick improvement!