What Value Does Blitz Chess Have?

Is this form of chess (particularly the really short time duration type) have any bearing on how good one is at "real" chess?  How should we view blitz chess and what, if anything, can be gained from it? 

(I sometimes get sucked into playing it more than longer chess games, because of work/school time constraints, but I found myself making so many silly mistakes I would probably not make under time pressure and likewise for my opponents.  I wonder if it actually fosters bad habits - hurting you in standard chess - rather than good ones?) 

Blitz can be very useful. I used it for the past couple of months to really work on my opening knowledge. But to make it useful I actually had to study the games afterward.

And it seems to be working. Today I played in a USCF tournament, lost to a 2080 in a really good game (I was black), beat a Class C, then beat a 2040 as Black before drawing with a strong class A. In the past few months I've gone up over 200 rating points and much of this is getting stronger in my opening theory.

I've also done correspondence, 15/10, 45/45... the only thing I won't do is bullet because I simply cannot move my mouse fast enough.

Good point.  I've actually realized this recently and have stopped playing Blitz for now!  

I just realize it's better for me to play online "correspondence chess" (or whatever you call it when you have days to move) rather than Blitz or even a 30 minute type of game.  I'd love to play a longer type of timed game, but just don't have time and realize now that playing poorly in Blitz isn't so great for my game development.  

On the other hand, I actually agree a bit w/ E. Fleet in that it can help you in openings, by rapidly getting to explore many of them and see lots of variations played out.  It still takes work after games to do analysis on them as EF pointed out, but volume can sometimes add up to more experience versus limited quality experience.  

Or who knows...maybe these perceived effects are just in my mind.  lol.

Lastly, I do agree that regardless of what settnigs you play, you still have to put in work outside of the game to analyze what went on.  So, in any case, I just wanted to thank you guys for your thoughts!  Sometimes it's just nice to bounce ideas off of people.  So thanks!!

Happy Playing! 

It's useful for working out any repertoire problems, or trying new openings. Past that, it could be used for practice for when you run short of time, but other than not there isn't much point to it.

Of course, some people may find it more fun than standard.

I play blitz to help develop my pattern recognition and intuition.

Possible, however it's equally likely that your opponents wont correctly punish a bad pattern played by you thus reinforcing it in your intuition. Leading to 'worse' quality intuition than if you had played longer games.

That is why you study your games afterward. By reviewing and studying the moves you made mistakes on (whether punished or not) you get the reinforcement that you need.

I used to play standard time control on other sites, but the problem is too many people CHEAT. And when they cheat, you just wasted like....all your hours playing a chess program. I'd rather be playing a chess program by myself!

So blitz has a very important role in online chess. But 1/0 bullet is just plain stupid.

Depends on the site. If you play on a site where everybody pays and they care more about chess (they care more about getting good than about appearing to be good), it will be much rarer. I've never experienced cheaters, despite having played quite a lot of slow games -- whereas I definitely experienced some cheaters when I was a diamond member here and used to play here.

+1

There seem to me to be two distinct skill sets, related but not very related.

A good opening in blitz is one which allows very quick subsequent moves w/o risk. Maybe the pieces need to be got out (to reduce the risk of mate) but that is secondary to the need to accomodate speed.

The value of both games, of course, is that they allow us gamers to have fun playing. :)

You don't need your opponent to always punish you to learn correct pattern recognition Godlike. While a speculative sacrifice is something to review afterwards to see if your opponent just missed a refutation of it, practicing and seeing tactical combinations and mating nets don't, neither do winning king and pawn end games. By I agree with Ericfleet, you can review the games or positions if you want to completely avoid developing bad habits from blitz. I think it's a great tool for developing intuition in chess.

I sort of thought of another potential value of Blitz:  

Experimentation

What I mean by this is that it allows you to play in volume a ton of games (full ones) very quickly, while trying out what is possible.  Like a young kid first exploring a sport, he or she will often not be focused on perfecting technique or winning the game per se, but just exploring what is possible and what happens when you do X or Y.  That kid in the drive-way dribbing may not care if he loses the ball in attempting some fancing dribble or if his weird layup misses.  He just wants to see what happens if he does something one way vs. another or to see if he can pull off some move.  It's possible kids just trying to see what is even possible.  

I can see how maybe someone just exploring the game of chess is trying out various things with no regard for winning per se and doing so in a Blitz game that lets them play a full game and also doing so in volume.  You might argue that you can just play unrated, but I think there's maybe something to playing rated that makes it more "real."  So I think it's the volume of games over quality in Blitz combined with an opportunity to try out new things - and assuming you go back over them with so work to analyze things - that can maybe make Blitz useful.  

Or it all could just be wishful thinking.  lol ...and again, a lot of value is in doing some analysis afterwards.