Tip For Beginners: Play A Lot Of 5/0 Blitz

I'd recommend playing 1/0 instead of 5/0. The best way to improve in chess is to play chess, so a beginner who wants to improve should play as much as possible. In the time it takes to play one 5/0 game, you can play five 1/0 games, so the latter is clearly a better use of your time, and a more efficient way to improve.

All I can say is, when I was an absolute beginner as well, I, too, played a lot of blitz.

And yes, you can making improvements by doing mainly that. However, it wasn't until I took time to actually study chess (reading books, mainly, but also just sitting down with a board and analyzing moves, rather than spending time just playing blitz over and over) that I started to really improve—at a much faster rate than from just playing alone.

Time away from playing, time spent studying and reviewing—this is when your understanding improves and your playing strength rises.

Time playing (such as blitz, or even standard) is when you practice and reinforce what you've already learned.

So if you're really serious about improving, I recommend doing a lot of studying on the side. You can still play blitz all you like—but I recommend spending as much time, if not more, studying.

I spent several years topping out at around 1100 by playing only blitz, and doing nothing else (no reading, no reviewing, no anything). Once I picked up a few chess books and started learning, though, everything went uphill.

I even stopped playing for a while, and spent my chess time only studying—never playing. When I finally came back to playing several months later, I rose a few hundred points almost immediately, beating with ease opponents that used to be out of my league—I'd gotten stronger from learning, not from playing.

Just some food for thought. Best of luck!

Because the ubiquity of "don't play blitz if you want to improve" is right up there with "study tactics if you want to improve."

When I was a beginner, I played nothing but blitz for years. No books, no long games, nothing but blitz. For YEARS. I know exactly how useful it is. Don't come in here with your 5 months BS

As Blunderlots says you can improve with just blitz, it's not as if it's some curse, but improvement is comparatively slow, and you set yourself up for roadblocks in the future (at least I did with how much of it I played). You improve much more with study and long games.

Blitz probably is good for getting your first 100 or so losses out of the way. A true beginner, who has played lets say less than 10 games in his entire life, needs to just play. If blitz is fun, then go for it! No problem. But after that introductory period, you'll need something more.

Hey Ricky I just looked at your game archive and I see you just won your 15th game in a row. Congrats darling.

Randi

Oh well. There goes my winning streak Randi.

Contrary to the popular opinion, I think beginners should play a lot of blitz, because they get to play a lot of games this way and develop intuition pretty rapidly, as well as get to be exposed to a large variety of game situations and opponent styles.

However, you HAVE to play serious games as well. Playing blitz only, or mostly blitz, develops a very bad habit of looking at chess superficially: since you get used to making moves quickly and relying on your intuition, rather than deep analysis, you do not really learn all that makes a strong player: positional understanding, deep opening and endgame theory, etc. Playing serious games positively affects your blitz games, because what you learn from deep analysis of positions translates into your subconscious mind and can be used later on; playing blitz games, however, has a limited effect on your serious games, and can even affect them negatively, for the reasons mentioned above. Once you get used to looking at chess superficially, there is no remedy to that, other than effectively reconsidering your whole approach to the game - and the more you will delay that reconsideration, the more the bad habits you learn from playing blitz will prevent you from ever going down that route.

Daily games are an excellent way to play deep, long games, without the limitations standard time control provides. Not everyone has a time or patience to play a long 30+ minute game outside OTB tournaments, but everyone can find 20-30 minutes across the day to make 3-4 quality moves. Just be careful about playing them like you do blitz; spend time actually thinking on your moves, and don't overuse the analysis board, try to see as many variations in your mind as possible, before starting to move pieces - you won't have such luxury in a live game.

I see some people playing 100+ daily games at the same time, and, of course, it invalidates the whole point of daily games. Making 100 superficial moves in 1 day teaches you little; making 5 deeply thought through moves in 1 day teaches you a lot.

I think 1 min may be a little to slow for the OP. Perhaps 1/2 min chess?

Playing a little blitz is great, of course, but um only in very small amounts at the beginner level.

If you don't have time to study and play slower games, all I can say is good luck

Ok but

 So yeah, I think that's reasonable and actually most people would agree with you. A comparatively small amount of blitz is fine. Gives you experience like you said.

That's exactly what I have been doing Blunder.

Thanks.

Totally agree.  [Though it's perfectly acceptable, obviously, for people to play "superficial" chess (or any kind of chess) if that's what they enjoy. Not everyone is trying to be a master.] 

My personal peeve with Daily chess is that it can sometimes be hard to manage the number of concurrent games. I mainly play tournaments (in the hope of getting opponents who take their games more seriously) and with the huge delay between rounds it's common to all of a sudden be swamped with 10 new games.  Very annoying to jump from 5 games to 15. 

Your right about playing daily chess. I really had not considered that option. Thank you havelock3

The OP is in no position to recommend anything about chess.

1)  Play Game in 5/5 -- or whatever slower speed you need to reach the end of the game "on the board," not on the clock.  [N.B.] The bonus time of 5-seconds or 10-seconds will align well with your expanding chess knowledge from the additional steps below.

2)  Study tactics and endgames, via books or exercises.

3)  Learn at least one "universal opening system" that you can play with both colors.

4)  Repeat the steps above, and make time for slower, OTB, games at your local club.

Learn to win via "pawn promotion," instead of via dazzling checkmates (that usually depend on your opponent making bone-headed moves).

And save yourselves a lot of keystrokes in nutty thread, of which there have been hundreds on the very same topic.  End of Story.

I would rather suggest playing blitz than daily chess. Daily chess can improve your long term calculation (for witch i recommend solving tactics without timer) but daily will harm your chess more than blitz. 

- No time pressure... is like you are playing some variant of chess, not real chess. Like 3-check chess or anti-chess. Chess is completely different game when is played from move 1 to last move without interruptions aka 15 min or 30 min game.

- Using analyse board. No comments here, to real chess this is like cheating.

- Rating of opponent is fake/not real most of the time 1600~ daily are no more than 1200 in real life.

- You or your opponent will lose on time and whole experience of the game becomes even more meaningless.

- You will waste time playing boring endgame positions (huge mat advantage) with days/weeks, your opponent wont resign.. or you will have unlimited time on endgame positions where in real situation you will have just several minutes left for whole game.

- Your opponent does not really care about the game and most likely does not remember his thoughts as if it was real game

- Your opponent probably spends seconds on his move or 20 min with help i know players who does it.

- Your opponent probably is using help. Again no comment here..

- On daily chess you can't feel the game, you can't feel your opponent and you will make tons of blunders in real game that you wont in daily chess, its really so far away.

- Even if you play few games only, you won't really remember your plans as if it were real game and will harm your chess in long run.

- Daily chess is farther away from what blitz is to real chess.

For improving your calculation i will suggest solvin tactics on chesstempo.

Daily chess is NOT for improving your chess. Daily chess is for people who want and plays for their club/city in leages OR  like to play 1 move per 3 or 5 or more days and they like to play a lot or several games at same time, because they don't have much time for starting new 15-30 min game without interruptions or dont like waiting for opponent move or solving puzzles. So after they go back to home they want their game ready and to make a move right now or whatever they feel like it.

I know people with limited acces to internet who have net only when they go to city once or twice in a week which makes 5-10 days per move perfect for that choice.