A 2100 FIDE player once told me that ‘there is no calculation without intuition’ which always stayed with me. Blitz can be a good way to train the neural net in your head to handle different positions in chess. This of course carries the caveat that you analyse your games.
I pretty much agree with every word you said. For years, I exclusively played bullet (1minute) and became rather good in it. But it didn't contribute that much to my elo in longer games and thus it was more "having a good time" than serieus chess studying. The rush however is intense😂
blitz is good to see how far your mental representations have come. The more you improve at chess the more quickly and easily your brain can ''read'' and interpret a chessboard, and blitz has you evaluate how good this evaluation has come
I personally feel like there just needs to be a balance of practice with different time controls. Too much classical and you might be better at calculating longer variations or combinations, but you might struggle more with time pressure and chess perfectionism when it comes to finding candidate moves and then selecting which move to play. On the other hand, faster time controls like blitz can help you become better at playing under pressure and streamlining your thought process to make it more efficient so that you don't run out of time or get low on time as easily, but you might also develop habits of playing "ehh looks good" chess and make more tactical errors or blunders. So the way I see it, if a significant amount of your losses are due to time control issues like running out of time or constantly being lower on time than your opponent, then you might benefit from some blitz practice to improve your speed and quicken your thought process. On the other hand, if a significant number of your losses came down to tactical errors and misses, especially when relating to longer combinations, then it could be your calculation skills that need more improvement in which case, you might benefit more from practicing in longer time control settings.
As a beginner the idea of Blitz scares me. I do understand it's great for practicing and learning openings. I refuse to play on computer screens as I use screens all the time already, so playing Blitz on an electronic board is already a downside as I have to also move the opponent pieces. I'll stick to my 30 and 15 minute for now, probably for a long time.
I actually never played any chess above the 5min. Got to 1200, but tbh I feel a little stuck. Maybe temporarily shifting to longer games might allow me to see some new ideas that I might then spot faster through 5m practice. Idk just an idea. What do you think?
Thanks for the video! How do you prepare to start playing blitz? Other than doing puzzles, is there anything else we can do to train ourselves before playing blitz games?
There are exercises on chess sites, where you do puzzles against time (puzzle rush etc). With regular puzzles, it might take as long to do a single puzzle, that it takes for a full game of blitz, so the tempo is very dissimilar. For me at least, I play slow games and do slow (regular) puzzles, or I play fast games and easy puzzles against time, but not both during the same day.
I think the biggest aspect of this question is how well you can adapt to different time controls, e.g.. if you play blitz and feel it makes you play too quickly in rapid, that can become an issue as each time control has it's strategy
I am playing blitz, but I think the trackpad on the Macbook is really not well suited for that kind of fast chess. I rather stick to rapid with the current setup.
Im 700 and only really play blitz because I can’t handle the shame in rapid when I play a very nice caro kahn and my opponent just puts all the pawns on the third rank and I still lose.
I'm very new to chess, but I think classical chess is needed to learn to calculate, to see tactics, at least for beginners. When I play online blitz I totally panic, so I do need a basis that I won't get with fast games. Chess is becoming very popular the last few years, many new players (me include). But you only see chess on UA-cam, streaming sites. Chess should be able to make it on television as well. Then classical chess would be too boring for most (even with the brilliant commentators we have online), bullet would be way too fast. I think then blitz and rapid would be exciting to watch, it doesn't take too long, but even new players can understand and follow the moves.
“Playing blitz means that mathematically you can get in more -openings- blunders per hour.”
Blitz is cool for practicing openings, but if you want some real chess play hyperbullet
I have to moderate Blitz. It gets me in the habit of not thinking.
I am enjoying all of your videos. Look forward to the next.
love this content ... great video. thank you.
A 2100 FIDE player once told me that ‘there is no calculation without intuition’ which always stayed with me. Blitz can be a good way to train the neural net in your head to handle different positions in chess. This of course carries the caveat that you analyse your games.
I pretty much agree with every word you said. For years, I exclusively played bullet (1minute) and became rather good in it. But it didn't contribute that much to my elo in longer games and thus it was more "having a good time" than serieus chess studying. The rush however is intense😂
blitz is good to see how far your mental representations have come. The more you improve at chess the more quickly and easily your brain can ''read'' and interpret a chessboard, and blitz has you evaluate how good this evaluation has come
I've just started playing and I think I can plan well in Rapid.
I personally feel like there just needs to be a balance of practice with different time controls.
Too much classical and you might be better at calculating longer variations or combinations, but you might struggle more with time pressure and chess perfectionism when it comes to finding candidate moves and then selecting which move to play. On the other hand, faster time controls like blitz can help you become better at playing under pressure and streamlining your thought process to make it more efficient so that you don't run out of time or get low on time as easily, but you might also develop habits of playing "ehh looks good" chess and make more tactical errors or blunders.
So the way I see it, if a significant amount of your losses are due to time control issues like running out of time or constantly being lower on time than your opponent, then you might benefit from some blitz practice to improve your speed and quicken your thought process. On the other hand, if a significant number of your losses came down to tactical errors and misses, especially when relating to longer combinations, then it could be your calculation skills that need more improvement in which case, you might benefit more from practicing in longer time control settings.
As a beginner the idea of Blitz scares me. I do understand it's great for practicing and learning openings. I refuse to play on computer screens as I use screens all the time already, so playing Blitz on an electronic board is already a downside as I have to also move the opponent pieces. I'll stick to my 30 and 15 minute for now, probably for a long time.
I actually never played any chess above the 5min. Got to 1200, but tbh I feel a little stuck. Maybe temporarily shifting to longer games might allow me to see some new ideas that I might then spot faster through 5m practice. Idk just an idea. What do you think?
Playing with faster time controls can help you with running out of time on longer games
Thanks for the video! How do you prepare to start playing blitz? Other than doing puzzles, is there anything else we can do to train ourselves before playing blitz games?
There are exercises on chess sites, where you do puzzles against time (puzzle rush etc).
With regular puzzles, it might take as long to do a single puzzle, that it takes for a full game of blitz, so the tempo is very dissimilar. For me at least, I play slow games and do slow (regular) puzzles, or I play fast games and easy puzzles against time, but not both during the same day.
I think the biggest aspect of this question is how well you can adapt to different time controls, e.g.. if you play blitz and feel it makes you play too quickly in rapid, that can become an issue as each time control has it's strategy
I've probably gone too far down the blitz rabbit hole and need to start playing longer games.
Even when I was a young man, my brain worked too slowly for Blitz. It's just how my brain works in chess and outside of chess.
I am playing blitz, but I think the trackpad on the Macbook is really not well suited for that kind of fast chess. I rather stick to rapid with the current setup.
Im 700 and only really play blitz because I can’t handle the shame in rapid when I play a very nice caro kahn and my opponent just puts all the pawns on the third rank and I still lose.
I'm very new to chess, but I think classical chess is needed to learn to calculate, to see tactics, at least for beginners.
When I play online blitz I totally panic, so I do need a basis that I won't get with fast games.
Chess is becoming very popular the last few years, many new players (me include).
But you only see chess on UA-cam, streaming sites.
Chess should be able to make it on television as well.
Then classical chess would be too boring for most (even with the brilliant commentators we have online), bullet would be way too fast.
I think then blitz and rapid would be exciting to watch, it doesn't take too long, but even new players can understand and follow the moves.
good video
Just played 10mins and apparently I play better than 5min blitz I’ve been playing for years
I feel that Blitz helps me with pattern recognition. Which helps with intuition.