What helps you most: tournaments or seeks?

On Chess.com what do you think helps you most: playing in a tournament or seeking for folks to play against you?  Some tournaments I have entered have had folks of all ratings. And sometimes that is good and challenging, and sometimes it is discouraging when they are 400 points or more above you.

If you do a "seek" do you usually try to get someone your level or do you try to get someone just a bit above your level?

How hard is it to play 10 games at once?

I am in a tournament now and have learned so much and am having fun. But there is an upcoming tournament that will have folks at my level. And I'm thinking about it because I love to play  - but 10 games at one time????

What would you do? Join the tourney or find people through seeks?

stwils

I wouldn't think that 10 games at one time is so terrible. Maybe just make moves in your games twice per day?

Ten games is manageble. It will of course depend on the speed of the tournament.

For whatever reason I have played better in tournaments than in general; I aways grab high rated seeks when I can.

I always seem to play slightly less well in challenges. I really enjoy tournaments - I learn a lot from themed tournaments (those that start with a specific opening). The buzz of trying to move up the tournament group helps me give 100%.

10 games is easy to manage on 3 days/move time controls. I personally start to struggle at 30+, but everyone is different.

Most definitely geeks.

I find I try harder and have more motivation in tournaments, I hardly ever play seeks, when I do I just have them open for anyone regardless of rating.

I play much more random moves and openings in seeks and often experiment with certain moves for fun even if I know there are sometimes better moves, i actually enjoy this to an extent as I do sometimes get bored with playing the same four or five first moves every game.

Sometimes I set out in a seek to push a wall of pawns as far as possible and sometimes I try to play with knights or bishops etc...

I also really dont care about my rating.

In short, I use seeks as a way to play differently than I would if I was trying to stay in a tournament and dont usually care if I win or lose in a seek.

I dont find it hard to play 20 games (turn based) at once, and I like playing against opponents far better than me, I set out to last as long as possible rather than set out trying to win, these games are valuable for learning how to defend, the experience is more valuable than the winning for me in these cases.