Live Blitz Rating Improvement

Hello chess.com community, I am a relatively new player. I've always been familiar with chess and the rules but never started seriously playing until about early November of last year. In my opinion, I have made some decent progress but I know that my Live Blitz score which hovers around high 800's to low 900's is very poor on the overall distribution. I am looking for advice on how to get to the next level, say closer to average around 1300s. What are some things you have learned, (opening strategies, tactics, etc) that helped you show immediate improvement? I know that more experience and more gameplay will definitely help, but I am looking for advice on which parts of my game I should focus on and which resources I should pursue and study to really improve my chess knowledge. Thank you!

The best way to get better in blitz is to get better in slower time controls. If you can't see tactical or positional ideas when you have plenty of time,  you won't see them in blitz.  Just work on all facets of your game and play some slow games to practice what you learn. 

Of course,  I suck at blitz. 

Okay, so should I allocate more of my time to studying rather than playing or should they be equal? And how should I study, through books? YouTube videos? 

If you haven't studied openings or developed a semblance of a consistent opening repertoire, doing so will quickly give you much better play in blitz. No, it won't win you any games, but you'll avoid getting into lost positions very quickly or losing most of your clock on known early positions.

In long games, I'd say the importance of knowing opening lines is reduced since you can calculated playable lines OTB, but in blitz, a big part of the game is playing into positions and lines your are very skilled and comfortable at. And the way to do that is to start using an opening repertoire of sorts. 

I play at 1500+ in my favorite white d4 system. I play at 1400 in my not-so favored but still played black system. I play at 1250-1300 if I try stuff I'm totally unfamiliar with in blitz. I'd say a lot of my blitz games revolve around steering opponents out of their pet opening and into my favored setups, as I play hundreds of points better in those systems.  My blunder rate in foreign positions remains astronomically high!

If you are rated around 900 then you are almost certainly losing games because you drop whole pieces regularly.

Taking that little bit longer to check even just one move threats to your pieces should help avoid this.

Obviously even at my level I hang pieces from time to time in Blitz chess, but generally when you move to higher levels games are won and lost more on tactics, combinations and the edge of a pawn here and there or better placed pieces than by someone just losing a whole Rook to a one-move tactic.

When you are happy you aren't dropping piece to one move tactics then you clearly want to start looking deeper at 2+ move tactics.

Remember that it is as important to stop your opponent's threats as to make your own.  A lot of low level players ar happy to attack, but they basicaly just have a race with each other who can throw pieces at the king with sufficient cohesion to checkmate rather than taking some time to consider their opponent's threats and defend against them too.

start with longer time games.then cut down , see what time frame you are most confrontable with.

I seem to agree with you galmdring27, I am almost always willing to trade evenly for pieces in an attempt to get to an end game where I think I am confident. I started playing on standard but I felt like blitz would be better for me for some reason. I have some standard openings I am comfortable with and use, but I will occasionally make mistakes in the speed of the game. 

tactics trainer....definetly lots of tactics trainer. like glamdring above me said, you are most likely dropping whole pieces so you probably need to improve in that area, also at the lower levels (mine included) games arent so much a positional battle but a tactical one.

I would also look into reading Silmans endgame course.  Not the whole thing, just the first couple chapters where you learn to the ideas behind converting a winning advantage.  

At that level the opening just means developing your pieces and following the general opening advice, e.g. not moving your Queen 4 times and all that.  You definitely don't need to worry about specific openings.

Hello. I have a doubt, i have 1408 points in blitz chess, i play 5-5 usually. What I would like to know is how  enter new points to the system. For example, when i play to the computer in chess HARD (1541) 3-2 i can't win, it is extremely fast, won't let me think strategically and then lose. But there are people who have 1600, 1800 and until 2000 or more points. In addition to gaining to other players, the points should exit from either side, to beat the computers options i guess ?, is as well ? But someone with 2000 points, wins the computer in impossible ( 2300 3-2 ). 

Can you explain where it exits the total universe of points that have all the players, and how to add more points to those who are already in game. Without beating the computers i suppose that it is impossible to reach values as high as 2000-2100 or more points. If you are gaining to computers, could not add computers with times of 5-5 ? x example or more 10 min/0 x example ?, which is blitz, not standard, but not 3-2 which is very fast for most of us. Thanks!!

Most players never play the computers on this site I wouldn't think.  Certainly I very rarely play them.  I'm not really sure what you are asking though.  Generally one player gains points as another loses them and the players who gain climb the ratings.  It is true that of the pool of human players points will be "introduced" by those beating the computers and "lost" from the pool by those losing to them.  But given there are accounts being opened and closed every day on chess.com that gain/loss of points to computers is insignificant.