Online chess should not be rated

There are people with a false sense of strength in all the formats here.  With higher ratings, come bigger egos.  Personally, I'm more inclined to listen to what a person with a 2000+ correspondence player has to say as opposed to a 2000+ blitz player.  While both are impressive in their own right, I have more respect for strong correspondence players.  I don't play correspondence myself, but I can see that it's more of a science than it is a battle of tactical/quick thinking positional skill.  It's the people w/ attitude problems (of all ratings) that I am not interested in reading.

Certainly my ego inflated like a defective airbag once I reached 2100.

Haha.  Not everybody of course, and it may be more common in bullet and blitz players, though many are quite cool

"There are people with a false sense of strength in all the formats here.  With higher ratings, come bigger egos."

Absolutely. Still, it's tempting psychologically. But yes when a person who is lower rated than me OTB is a few hundred points higher than me in blitz, I'm more inclined to think it's because they were willing to spend hours treating blitz like a science so they could see a nice big number rather than because they are better at chess than me. That's not to say a high blitz rating isn't impressive; it very much is. But not quite in the same way.

People really like to use the fallacy of saying that strong OTB players are more likely to be strong blitz players than weak OTB players; therefore, blitz is pure chess skill. There is no necessity for that to be the case. Chess skill merely has to be a constituent of blitz skill for the above observation to be true; it does not have to be the only component -- other more blitz specific skills also contribute to a high blitz rating.

Maybe so, but a blitz game is more likely to be more superficial than a correspondence game, or a 90 minute game.  While thematic ideas hold fairly true for all time controls, it's in the longer time controls that nuances play a bigger role.  Take a complicated endgame for example.  In a blitz game, you can play it fairly quickly, and accurately enough to win, but in longer time controls, a player has more time to find a more accurate way to win.

I've been a member on ICC on and off, and after using it's tacticaltrainer bot, and it's trainingbot, i've come to appreciate the need for accuracy on the chess board.  While there are plenty of ways to win some tactical problems (especially on tactics trainer on chess.com) there is only one fastest way in most cases.  In the bigger picture, a win is a win, and a loss is a loss, but in critical positions, or situations, accuracy can be the difference between a win and a loss, a win and a draw, etc. 

I failed to point out that accuracy is my main reason for picking a strong CC player as opposed to a strong blitz player earlier, only because I didn't really put a whole lot of thought into explaining my reasoning (a bad habit!).  All in all, I am more inclined to view a strong CC player as a more overall accurate player, despite a strong blitz players' ability to find the better moves quicker.

"I failed to point out that accuracy is my main reason for picking a strong CC player as opposed to a strong blitz player earlier, only because I didn't really put a whole lot of thought into explaining my reasoning (a bad habit!)."

Oh ok. So like finding really precise moves instead of just playing natural moves on intuition perhaps?

I kind of view blitz as sort of a showcase of what you already know, more than what you are able to figure out, if that makes sense. The only ideas you can do quickly are ones you have learned to death. I still find it cool though. You also, if you want to play blitz well, need a lot of concentration, much more intensity than you would in a standard game, although for a much shorter period of time. You can't really afford to daydream even for a moment.

Yooz ull gut trolld!

Yeah, because it's a big secret SuperQueen500 is a troll ;)...

I'm not sure I can agree that blitz/bullet is not generally just sloppy chess. It seems most of the games I look at, and many I play, the winner seems to be the one who makes the least self-destructive blunders. Plus there is the fact that most of the games seem to end on time so all kinds of crazy moves can be made that would not hold-up under any real scrutiny.

I do agree though, that it is good for exercising pattern-recognition. I play blitz some mainly for this reason.

In many cases, the winner is just the one who makes the next-to-last blunder.

I've heard that saying before. I have used it often when I play a game where we have both blundered but I still find a way to win. I think someone famous coined that phrase. (I mean more famous than you Emu)

More famous than me?

But... but... I've contributed a new word to the English language!

( Google : Emu'd ) and check the Urban Dictionary link.

How many people can make that claim?

Okie, there is 6.5 minutes of your total 15 minutes of allowed fame.

Some positional elements can sneak in blitz. For example, I had some rotten french positions last night and I was the one who had to constantly defend pawns and squares. I saw many defenses but it was inevitable I would crack. If my opponent were in the same situation he would probably crack too.

Still a pretty high majority of blitz is not making large mistakes, even if you're not making the best moves.

"After hundreds/thousands of games pattern-recognition gets beat into the brain. You can't help but get instinctively better."

I can't say I agree here, though. Blitz may help with blitz, but it's not very helpful with long chess. It's not impossible to improve with blitz, but it is quite unlikely, and it may even give you bad habits if you're not careful. Slow chess helps with blitz, but I don't think the converse applies. The problem is the brain can't learn things that fast. It can eventually do things fast, but that's because they were learned. The only thing it may help with is openings, because given that you're not playing in a tournament, you can play moves you might not normally play, and if you play lots of games you will get experience with a variety of positions for that opening.

Perhaps another reason for serious chess players to make blitz part of their repertoire.

I guess it can warm you up a little bit. Sometimes when your mind is sluggish you can think of really deep plans but miss obvious tactics because you're just not alert.

...but they invented Alzheimer even before that.

That's probably why I "almost" remember it.

I've been playing bllitz (almost) exclusively for the past couple of months. It has made me a much better player OTB in longer time controls. One of the keys is to study all of my games and treat them like they were a normal time control. My openings have improved mostly, with some improvement in middlegame planning and endgame execution.

Yeah, sometimes my games still end with a blunder, but much less often than it used to. And I am no longer afraid to go to a time scramble OTB.