After watching a few fast games at the Internet Chess Club (ICC), I was amazed how fast some people can play and still make reasonable moves - I observed two grandmasters playing a 3 minute game (3 0 in ICC lingo) that ended with only seconds on each clock and nothing than the two kings left on the board! I decided that it is probably best for me to start with relatively slow time controls. After all, my goal is to improve my play and not my mouse handling. Furthermore, if I manage to get as far as the endgame, I want to be able to finish it without running into a hard time limit. Therefore, I started to play games with a 12 second time increment (3 12 in ICC lingo). This way, an average game takes about 15 minutes, a time that I can squeeze in before work or in the evening and having 3 minutes on the clock at the start of the game gives me some buffer time to make some (somewhat) decent decisions in the transition from opening book moves to the middlegame.

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blitz

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correspondence chess

What are the reasons for me playing so badly in blitz games? And how can I improve? I have found a few that apply for me: 1) Nerves. I noticed that I felt stressed during my very first games, simply because I did not know what to expect but also because I had expectations after having spend so much time practicing tactics this year. This problem solved itself quickly after playing a few games, though. 2) Even in tactically quiet positions, I sometimes put one of my pieces en prise. I believe that is a problem caused by my limited experience that sometimes makes me forget to visualize the position after my move, which seems to be the essential blunder-check. I hope that I make less of these blunders after having a few more games under my belt. 3) Time management. I observed that I sometimes spend a lot of time thinking over non-critical positions and, even worse, making really quick moves which often result in blunders even if I have a decent amount of time left on my clock. For instance, I was ahead one game and my opponent had only a few seconds left on his clock while I had more than one minute left. Nevertheless, I made my move within seconds giving him a nice opportunity to fork my king and rook. A deadly mistake, particularly in the endgame! Keeping in mind that the clock can give me an advantage, too, will hopefully prevent this from happening too often in the future (along with getting more experience). 4) Underestimating (counter-) attacks. This is a problem that I have also in slower games. The reasons for this problem can be divided in three parts: a) missing basic strategic knowledge; b) very limited defensive tactical skills. The latter is probably caused by the way I practice tactics. I go over tactics problems at the Chess Tactics Server almost every day, but most of the problems shown there train to win material and only few are designed to learn to defend against attacks. I should probably take a look at the chess tactics problems at John Coffey's site again which also has a range of problems where one has to find out what the opponent can do; and c) it seems that during the game I worry much more about ways to capture my opponents pieces than about the safety of my own. Safety first!

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written by Blue Devil Knight, November 30, 2006

My blitz rating is usually around 200 points less than my standard rating. I've noticed that this is pretty typical for 'serious' players who tend to play standard slow games. OTOH, those who usually play blitz typically have a higher blitz rating than standard rating (I have noticed they tend to move too quickly in standard games).

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written by Sciurus, November 30, 2006

Thanks for the comment. May be I should take my abysmal blitz rating as a sign that I am a "serious" chess player?

I also noted that players with roughly the same strength compared to myself play quite differently during blitz and slow chess games. Most people I play during slow games are careful to develop their pieces during the opening while the majority of my blitz opponents starts attacking very early to provoke some blunders from my side. I hope if I continue to go for reasonable opening moves and most importantly learn to avoid blunders (although it seems that even world champions are not perfect ) I will win more of my fast games.

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