My opinion on 1 minute games

A big part of bullet is literally trying to guess your opponent's move. Whether or not you are correct is sometimes largely based on chance. Isn't this luck?

Well again, the skills you train are the skills you strengthen.

Bullet chess does help with finding OK candidate moves fast, and spotting all the elementary threats fast.  If you can do this with some confidence, then you'll be able to manage time scrambles better.

Tactic puzzles help not because they happen to mimic real games (almost all puzzles are taken from real games), they help because you're training skills used at every phase of long games.  Visualization is IMO the primary one.  The timed tactic puzzles on chess.com focus on pattern building which is useful too.

You may argue that blitz exposes you to patterns too, but they're not very good quality.  There may be a fundamental flaw in a tactic or idea that is never brought out over the board in blitz, and when you keep playing it (or perhaps you guard against this non-threat repeatedly) you're reinforcing this bad idea/pattern.

But also, you're not pushing yourself in blitz... you really are able to see more and punish more, but because an advantage on the clock can so quickly trump an advantage on the board you're forced to make superficial moves.  If you seriously analyze your blitz games in an attempt to learn, you'll mostly find mistakes that you would have avoided if you'd had more time in the first place.

So to sum up, you're practicing the sacrifice of accuracy for time, many moves you think are good can be bad habits in hiding and the analysis to learn from your mistakes is of very low value.

Ok, now you're just trolling

I don't really care about the merit of bullet chess, I just play for fun.

@Bid_D_Clark: I'm mainly reffering to situations where you only have enough time on the clock for a few more pre-moves, and you are trying to guess you're opponent's move so that you can either mate without timing out or just make a legal move next when your opponent is checking you to avoid timing out.

That's the whole point...  play it for it's intrinsic worth, but don't try to justify playing it by make assertions such as it trains you for standard chess.  Just play it and have fun.

What I get sick of on tactics trainer is losing points for taking too long to find the answer.

Again, I think we have different precise definitions of "practicing chess," here

Anyway, wafflemaster's posts have nicely pointed out the problems of improving your chess with blitz or bullet.

Yes, but horse is not a type of time control (although if it was it would probably be classical time controls, because you have infinite time to make your shot, with no distraction).

Well, shooting is good, but never in a game will you be able to stand totally open with all the time you need to shoot.  Maybe this is a good drill for kids, I don't know basketball.

I think the best technique to practice shooting is having a guy toss a ball to you and you slap it into the net (the time control doesn't give you enough time to grab the ball and prepare a shot). If you can get it into the net that way, just imagine how easy it will be to actually shoot!

It's real chess to me as soon as it gives me time to actually think.

I would define real chess as chess played in a time control in which you play moves that you sincerely believe in. A lot of times I will play a move in bullet, but I'm not really trying to be creative, I'm just playing it because I know it doesn't blunder, etc.

In other words, I'm not going to make a sacrifice in order to put my opponent in check, as I might do in bullet.

Of course, it's relative, because something can be said for playing inferior moves for practical reasons even in classical games, but even then, if you think your move might not be objectively sound, you will have worked out lots of ideas to give the opponent problems in a classical game, whereas in a bullet game you are more likely to play it instantly and just hope it works out.

My arbitrary minimum for
"real chess" would be about 40 minutes with a 5 second increment or delay, but that's just my opinion. In such games I feel like I was going through the process of planning my ideas, and making sure they are good, even if it was in a more rushed manner than in a classical game. In bullet, rather, I feel like I am playing in a fundamentally different way (although I'm not sure if that's the way I should be playing it).

But I like any time control for what it's worth. If you were trying to test serious OTB skill, though, I would go with the above.

The chess of the gods, correspondence chess of course!

Heh, but seriously, that's a good point because the line is fuzzy.

You need time to bring your true skill to bear on the position.  If you're very quick and experienced, maybe you can evaluate several moves in blitz the majority of the time, but you're still making shortcuts because extra time helps anyone see more.

So "real" chess IMO would be something like when you're able to bring nearly all your ability to the board on the majority of the moves, in particular I suppose the critical positions.

I like this.  If I bring my best, and you beat me, I can only get stronger!

Makes tournaments a lot of fun (if not a bit stressful heh).

I don't think that's a great time control, but if that's the best you can find, that'll certainly suffice. OTB experience is very valuable.

A bit fast for my taste, but I think they have value... it drives me crazy that they're duel rated though... duel ratings don't make sense in the first place anyway.

I like games at least G/90 myself.

Just my opinions :)

Just the fact that you're thinking a lot more in correspondence chess makes up for all of that, though, in my opinion. Moreover, at least you can learn from those databases and engines (not on this site of course) as you play.

Personally, though, I have stopped using the analysis board entirely, and try not to use databases because I want to figure out the moves with my own logic. I do not limit the amount of time I take thinking however

One doesn't need to use such devices.  I'm sure it's more common now with the internet and chess engines making it easy to find examples of these games, but one doesn't need to.  I'm sure there are many people who play these games without computer assistance.

One thing that CC doesn't have is pressure.  Sitting at the board and havng to look at your opponent as they trash your position is a lot different than having it done miles apart.  Here's one I read from Fischer, but don't know if it's really his:  "It's pretty tough because of all the tension and all the concentration, sitting there hour after hour."  Of course, we all know "I like to make them squirm."

In considering about time controls in chess, I think one has to look back to the 19th century when chess was played without time constraints. This is probably chess at its purest.  A common complaint back then was that some players simply tried to out-sit their opponents, adding an unsavory ingredient to dilute that purity. Around mid-nineteenth century, suggestions for controlling this problem by imposing some sort of time constraints was suggested and experimenally implemented.  The purpose was never to add time in as a factor, but to prevent abuse.  It was also believed that a person could only calculate so far in his head regardless of the length of time given. The use of timers and clocks wasn't universally applauded and in many cases only grudgely accepted - but accepted it was - though not so rigidly as today.  It was around the turn-of-the-century, when clock were becoming affordable, available and practical, that time really started becoming a factor.  But, at the heart of it all, clock time is truly not meant to be the deciding factor in standard chess although it's very existence quite often makes it just that.  So, if pure chess has no time control, then the more time becomes a factor, the less pure the chess contest becomes - i.e. it becomes less about the moves and more about the time as the balance shifts.  This doesn't make faster games less chessic, just more diluted and once time becomes the "prime" factor, as can happen even in blitz but most decidedly in bullet, then the entire texture of the game of chess has been altered.  Being altered means it's changed, but doesn't qualify those changes in the least since the two opponents agree to play that way.

CC chess adds far too many outside factors and possibilities for my tastes.  While I can appreciate that many people like using objective, static data to seek out the best possible moves - again, a very pure form of chess (primarily about the moves, not some external element), - I feel it numbs the competitive aspect, something that OTB, blitz and bullet has in abundance and another consideration that makes chess more than merely a science.

In considering about time controls in chess, I think one has to look back to the 19th century when chess was played without time constraints. This is probably chess at its purest.  A common complaint back then was that some players simply tried to out-sit their opponents, adding an unsavory ingredient to dilute that purity. Around mid-nineteenth century, suggestions for controlling this problem by imposing some sort of time constraints was suggested and experimenally implemented.  The purpose was never to add time in as a factor, but to prevent abuse.  It was also believed that a person could only calculate so far in his head regardless of the length of time given. The use of timers and clocks wasn't universally applauded and in many cases only grudgely accepted - but accepted it was - though not so rigidly as today.  It was around the turn-of-the-century, when clock were becoming affordable, available and practical, that time really started becoming a factor.  But, at the heart of it all, clock time is truly not meant to be the deciding factor in standard chess although it's very existence quite often makes it just that.  So, if pure chess has no time control, then the more time becomes a factor, the less pure the chess contest becomes - i.e. it becomes less about the moves and more about the time as the balance shifts.  This doesn't make faster games less chessic, just more diluted and once time becomes the "prime" factor, as can happen even in blitz but most decidedly in bullet, then the entire texture of the game of chess has been altered.  Being altered means it's changed, but doesn't qualify those changes in the least since the two opponents agree to play that way.

CC chess adds far too many outside factors and possibilities for my tastes.  While I can appreciate that many people like using objective, static data to seek out the best possible moves - again, a very pure form of chess (primarily about the moves, not some external element), - I feel it numbs the competitive aspect, something that OTB, blitz and bullet has in abundance and another consideration that makes chess more than merely a science.