15 ms·

"Only about 10% of players ever gain more than 100 points, and only about 1% of players gain more than 200 rating points given years." This seems like a wild c

"Only about 10% of players ever gain more than 100 points, and only about 1% of players gain more than 200 rating points given years." This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study, just some light YouTube watching. 500->800 felt like all it took was learning a few openings and not blundering pieces. 800-1050 felt like it came mostly from getting familiar with the common patterns from those openings that led to advantages/disadvantages. Most of my learning here came from reviewing my own games and trying to understand why my mistakes were mistakes. I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. The time constraints are too rushed to really think about what makes a move good or bad. I assumed it was a young person's thing, but the author said he plays these quick formats too.

kqr 3y ago
The author says specifically blitz/bullet is suboptimal for learning, for precisely the reasons you mention. The author plays these types of games to kill boredom.
vasco 3y ago
I love quick games, 3min blitz being my favorite and I suck at chess. It makes it almost a different game to me. I stopped playing for years because my memory of chess was slow boring waiting. Blitz is just full on, all the time.
chongli 3y ago
If you follow the link to the data analysis [1] you’ll see that the argument is based on higher rated players. Low rated players have much higher variance in their rating and can improve by quite a lot, just by learning to stop blundering. That’s basically the situation you’re in. Getting to 2000 rating is going to be quite a mountain to climb for you, unless you’re very young. [1] https://github.com/jcw024/lichess_database_ETL/blob/main/README.md https://github.com/jcw024/lichess_database_ETL/blob/main/REA...
- zelphirkalt 3y ago
  And not to forget to avoid disappointment: An online 2000 is maybe an offline 1800 or so. Online ratings are in general higher than what people actually have offline.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
    I am not sure if that is generally true. It’s true for lichess and chess.com (compared to ELO) It really has only to do with the formula they use. They have different formulas. I think e.g. lichess has a formula so that the median is centered around 1500. This is different from how ELO is calculated. I would assume if they all had the same way to calculate the rating, it should be somewhat close.
    - smatija 3y ago
      Yes and no - they use different systems, but even if they used same system ratings would be different. This is since ratings only measure player's performance relative to other players in the same poll. A lot more people (and a lot more begineers) play online than in FIDE rated tournaments. So playing poll in tournaments is stronger than online playing poll, so even if we assume same rating system in all cases, players will have lower ratings in tournament play than online. What complicates matters further is that playing polls aren't totally unified - in FIDE Elo ratings it's possible to see regional differences (indians for example are in general underrated), since playing poll is segmented by distance (due to travel costs not a lot of players play internationally). Additionally COVID19 made a total mess of ratings, since there was not enough events last few years, so majority of younglings are underrated due to not playing enough rated games, while improving as fast as the previous generation. FIDE is currently deciding on rating reform, which will be implemented in january, trying to handle this situation. What complicates matters even more is that FIDE Elo algorithm is not optimized for accuracy, but for calculations by hand (try calculating glicko2 rating change without computer!), so glicko2 more accurately predicts player performance. And finally, time controls differ a lot between online and tournament play. Online even 5minutes feels slow, while in tournaments 90min+30sec/move is one of shorter time controls. Performance between slow and fast play is in general correlated, but this correlation is weaker at higher ratings (since both sides of the game have some non-transferable skills, so blitz specialists for example exists).
imjonse 3y ago
You may learn up to a stage, when a complete beginner, by quickly and repeatedly being exposed to basic mistakes without having to think much. Afterwards it is probably detrimental indeed.
mseidl 3y ago
I've been playing chess since I was 6, and I'm 7 now. You should learn endgame and tactics, the basics of opening and maybe a few openings. endgame will teach chess. openings teaches you openings. especially when you're a beginner people will make moves that don't make sense. Plus aren't there like over 4 or 5 quadrillion possible moves just within the first 10 moves?
- lostlogin 3y ago
  Are you able to confirm there isn’t a typo here? You’re 7?
  - ACow_Adonis 3y ago
    with comments back past 2018 i think it's safe to say its a typo xD
    - antaviana 3y ago
      Maybe they started to procrastinate in HN when they were 2.
      - psychlops 3y ago
        Exactly, the ageism here at HN is outrageous.
    - mseidl 3y ago
      It wasn't a typo. I was making a joke.
- kqr 3y ago
  Is this advice not going in the exact opposite direction to what looks like a well-researched TFA with an n=1 experiment to back it up? Why do you think your opinion differs?
  - bjornlouser 3y ago
scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
As someone who is at 1000 and also one of those people who only slam blitzes, I can confirm that one benefits from it only to a point, mostly developing skill in quickly reading the board and identifying the low-hanging-fruit moves.
- matsemann 3y ago
  Yup, starting to play 2+1 increased my 5+3 rating by 200 up to 1800 (lichess). But continuing to play 2+1 with no analysis or thought hasn't increased my rating further. I do only play for fun / to kill time, though. So a few games a day on a metro or whatever. So with no aspirations to actually improve I think I'm at the peak of my natural ability.
narag 3y ago
This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study, Is rating on chess.com similar to rating in lichess? The article mentions 1%, but you start with 1500 in lichess??? If you lose often, you quickly go down. But if you keep an even record, you stay in 1500. I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. As in the article, speed training helps recognizing patterns and dealing with them. At first it seems impossible to play significant moves with so little time, but you can try to just doing it. You'll adapt very soon. I recommend starting with blitz 3+2 and later bullet 2+1. There are tournaments of 1+0... or even less time. 30 seconds is really crazy.
- smatija 3y ago
  Rating on chesscom is wildly different than on lichess in lower rating ranges. 300 cc should be similiar to around 800 lichess. Around 2000-2200 ratings even out on both sites and on higher ratings lichess ratings tend to be lower than on cc. For improving longer time controls are better. The old adage, that if you want to play blitz better you should play rapid and that if you want to improve rapid you should play classical is still valid today. Blitz is beneficial only at higher rating ranges (2000+) to allow practising openings, and even that only in moderation. Players who don't play classical time controls (90min+30sec/move at least) tend to plateau around 2000-2200 online. This ofc doesn't mean that blitz isn't fun - vast majority of my games are in blitz time controls.
  - narag 3y ago
    300 cc should be similiar to around 800 lichess. 800 is very low in Lichess. If you can think just two moves ahead without losing pieces, you get 1000 easily. For improving longer time controls are better. Yes and no. There are different aspects to the game. Every variety is good for something. After playing a lot of bullet, I win easily in blitz just because the time advantage. But the reverse is also true. After playing more slower games, my fast games get better. And there are some parts of the game that you just need to sit down with a book and a couple of boards.
- VonGallifrey 3y ago
hinkley 3y ago
I’ve known this guy off and on for years. When we first met 15+ years he was slightly better at Go than me, which was middling amateur. All the Go books say if you want to be a pro you have to start as a child. But he studied, and studied, and last I knew he was 3 dan, which is about the point you can entertain the idea of becoming a pro (if I just worked harder). Kids have a lot more free time to sink into a singular concern. Warnings about how something are out of the reach of adults aren’t actually hard rules, they’re just really good rules of thumb. But if you can make the time, it’s not impossible. I don’t think chess is any different there. Small improvements may set reasonable expectations, but there are people who can blow right past them.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  You're right I think. Most adults really don't improve at chess very often. They do when it's a new hobby, but then they plateau. And it's not that they couldn't improve further, it's just that they're not able or willing to do the things necessary, which is usually a lot of exercise and study. It's just a hobby for most people at the end of the day, and they'd rather spend an hour at the club discussing and blitzing some silly openings with friends than spend an hour solving puzzles or studying endgames. We still all carry the illusion of some prospect of improvement, that's the human condition. But most people don't take it very seriously and are more in it for social reasons.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    It clearly aggravated some of the people at the Go club that I was not improving past hobbyist. But the thing I didn’t share with them is that all through my childhood, I would try new things and if I wasn’t instantly mediocre or better at it I would decide this was no fun and drop it. If you are good at enough things you can fill your weeks with activities and ignore the things you aren’t good at. Being bad at Go and still playing anyway was an exercise in personal growth.
- pmontra 3y ago
  A friend of mine devised an empirical rule to predict the highest Go ranking that a player will reach: the ranking after the first 4 years of play plus 4. You can check that on https://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/ https://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/ and pick some players at random. They have a nice date/rank graph and all those graphs start with an almost vertical growth which slows down and flattens. Some players play less often and get weaker but that's not the point. I have no idea if it applies to chess too, possibly with different parameters, but why not? They are both games played with the brain by humans.
vjerancrnjak 3y ago
I mostly played blitz with openings where queen is moved in the first 3 moves and got to ~2000 (no proof, sorry). I didn't study chess at all outside of playing it intensely for 1-2 years. Of course, my end game was also very bad. It was such a frustrating fun I had to stop. There are of course players that know how to fully exploit mistakes in the bad openings, but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matter, especially if the opponent has to exploit a weird opening you have. There's many more patterns related to pinning, tempo, that are worth much more for quick rating progress.
- drexlspivey 3y ago
  > but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matte No way you get to 2000 by cheesing, maybe 1000 max. 2000 rating is not low, it’s top 0.3% on chess.com
  - smatija 3y ago
    It's possible, if unlikely - wayward queen is not as bad as it looks (black has maybe a tiny bit more than equality), most players don't face it often (so probably don't have a lot of prep memorized) and in blitz time controls it's hard to find optimal punishment for subpar opening play. And 2000 is not that high again - top 0.3% on chess com is maybe top 50% of tournament players. Online chess has a lot of begineers, since its more approachable.
    - pedrekz 3y ago
      Everyone who’s higher rated than 500 can see that you’re lying, I don’t know why you insist. Yes, you’re not immediately losing the game if you play the right moves, but it stops being a “trick” waaaay before you’re 2000, even in blitz. You don’t need any “prep”. Edit: you’re not the same person from the comment above, my bad
      - smatija 3y ago
        2000 rated players of course won't get mated in 3 moves, but position after 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Qf3 is not unplayable for White - Black is equal or maybe just a little bit better. In lichess Blitz database for 2200+ rated players there are 13883 games with this position. White won 50%, drew 7% and lost 43%. Of course this position is nothing to write home about, but for online Blitz it's good enough.
shric 3y ago
> I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. The time constraints are too rushed to really think about what makes a move good or bad. I assumed it was a young person's thing, but the author said he plays these quick formats too. I'm 47 and started playing around 5 years ago. I only play Blitz and Bullet because I find it fun. In the first two years I went from around 1000 on lichess to around 1700. I've been "stuck" at 1700 plus or minus 100 since then. I know I could improve with puzzles and classical time controls and study and analysis but I have no interest in that. I play games for fun. If I improve then great. If not no problem. It's the same as breaking out a game of Tetris or something for 5 minutes to me.
- FartyMcFarter 3y ago
  If you analyse the blitz games after playing them, that can bridge some of the gap.
  - shric 3y ago
    Yes, but I have no patience for that. As soon as one game is done I've either had enough of chess for now or want the dopamine hit of the next game immediately.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    I would disagree with that on few levels. Blitz chess is already what a lot of people consider a variant. In Blitz format there are strategies and tricks that are outright blunders in longer time controls. The biggest improvement by far for a casual player (at stage where you have some higher chess concepts understood) is to memorise. Memorise and understand principles of openings lines (lines you want to play as white - few, more in depth, and most common lines you see being played - more, less in depth as black) Memorise mating patters, there are certain setups that occur on board, knowing them can help playing them when they happen, or better angling to set them up yourself. This was what made me drop chess as a teen. High level chess is a looot about memorisation. And that was when magic of chess disappeared for me :/ As a counterpoint to what you said, going back through your own game might not show you why and where you made a root cause mistake. If you dont have a background knowledge you will not know what to look for. And its rather a surface glance that you will 'get and forget' as soon as you start next game. Better approach would be to study the positions you played after you are done playing for the day, or coming back to them on some other day.
erfgh 3y ago
Some people just want to have fun and that's what blitz is for. Why are people so preoccupied with improving when it comes to chess? If any other game is mentioned the discussion will not be so centered on improvement as it is with chess. Maybe it is because chess has this air of a "thinking man's game" which does not really deserve. It's just a game like any other.
- nicky0 3y ago
  Because learning and improving is part of the pleasure of chess. It's a game you can enjoy to play, but also enjoy to study. As you improve, there's a tangible sense of progression which is rewarding. And the scope for progression goes very very deep. Not all other games have this feature. If I play Catan with my friends, it's fun, but then the game is over. I'm not going to analyse my game and discover new tactics or strategies, like I will with chess.
  - mathgeek 3y ago
    > Because learning and improving is part of the pleasure of chess. Important to remember this is not a universal truth for all people. > If I play Catan with my friends, it’s fun… Interestingly, you and I seem to be opposites here. I only play chess for fun and never care if I improve, but spent thousands of hours in my college years analyzing and improving at Catan. I wonder if this is simply a matter of whether one prefers deterministic or stochastic games for optimization.
- cyrillaw 3y ago
  Once a certain acumen is reached, chess becomes a much better spectator sport. Older games become interesting to watch, mate in 6-8 puzzles become tenable, chess books about specific openings make more sense. Once a player knows how to finish basic endgames and accord himself properly in the middle game, they have the tools to grasp opening theory. From there on, there is a huge body of information about opening theory, playing styles, control and leverage of center, etc etc. Much of the ink spilled about this game is a bit impenetrable without some acumen. But with enough appreciation to the past and present trends, one can fine tune one's playing style and really make the game your own.
david927 3y ago
I can only speak from my experience but blitz worked for me. I would make occasional, furtive attempts to learn but nothing ever worked. Then one day I started playing a single five minute lichess game with coffee in the morning at work. And when I would make a mistake, I would do a takeback to see what I did wrong and how I should have played it. Sometimes I would play the puzzles. Doing this and nothing else, I went up about 100 points a year for five years, from 1200 to 1700. (And then I stopped but I also could tell that I would have to start approaching it differently to go further.)

kqr 3y ago

The author says specifically blitz/bullet is suboptimal for learning, for precisely the reasons you mention. The author plays these types of games to kill boredom.

vasco 3y ago

I love quick games, 3min blitz being my favorite and I suck at chess. It makes it almost a different game to me. I stopped playing for years because my memory of chess was slow boring waiting. Blitz is just full on, all the time.

chongli 3y ago

If you follow the link to the data analysis [1] you’ll see that the argument is based on higher rated players. Low rated players have much higher variance in their rating and can improve by quite a lot, just by learning to stop blundering. That’s basically the situation you’re in. Getting to 2000 rating is going to be quite a mountain to climb for you, unless you’re very young. [1] https://github.com/jcw024/lichess_database_ETL/blob/main/README.md https://github.com/jcw024/lichess_database_ETL/blob/main/REA...

zelphirkalt 3y ago
And not to forget to avoid disappointment: An online 2000 is maybe an offline 1800 or so. Online ratings are in general higher than what people actually have offline.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
  I am not sure if that is generally true. It’s true for lichess and chess.com (compared to ELO) It really has only to do with the formula they use. They have different formulas. I think e.g. lichess has a formula so that the median is centered around 1500. This is different from how ELO is calculated. I would assume if they all had the same way to calculate the rating, it should be somewhat close.
  - smatija 3y ago
    Yes and no - they use different systems, but even if they used same system ratings would be different. This is since ratings only measure player's performance relative to other players in the same poll. A lot more people (and a lot more begineers) play online than in FIDE rated tournaments. So playing poll in tournaments is stronger than online playing poll, so even if we assume same rating system in all cases, players will have lower ratings in tournament play than online. What complicates matters further is that playing polls aren't totally unified - in FIDE Elo ratings it's possible to see regional differences (indians for example are in general underrated), since playing poll is segmented by distance (due to travel costs not a lot of players play internationally). Additionally COVID19 made a total mess of ratings, since there was not enough events last few years, so majority of younglings are underrated due to not playing enough rated games, while improving as fast as the previous generation. FIDE is currently deciding on rating reform, which will be implemented in january, trying to handle this situation. What complicates matters even more is that FIDE Elo algorithm is not optimized for accuracy, but for calculations by hand (try calculating glicko2 rating change without computer!), so glicko2 more accurately predicts player performance. And finally, time controls differ a lot between online and tournament play. Online even 5minutes feels slow, while in tournaments 90min+30sec/move is one of shorter time controls. Performance between slow and fast play is in general correlated, but this correlation is weaker at higher ratings (since both sides of the game have some non-transferable skills, so blitz specialists for example exists).

imjonse 3y ago

You may learn up to a stage, when a complete beginner, by quickly and repeatedly being exposed to basic mistakes without having to think much. Afterwards it is probably detrimental indeed.

mseidl 3y ago

I've been playing chess since I was 6, and I'm 7 now. You should learn endgame and tactics, the basics of opening and maybe a few openings. endgame will teach chess. openings teaches you openings. especially when you're a beginner people will make moves that don't make sense. Plus aren't there like over 4 or 5 quadrillion possible moves just within the first 10 moves?

lostlogin 3y ago
Are you able to confirm there isn’t a typo here? You’re 7?
- ACow_Adonis 3y ago
  with comments back past 2018 i think it's safe to say its a typo xD
  - antaviana 3y ago
    Maybe they started to procrastinate in HN when they were 2.
    - psychlops 3y ago
      Exactly, the ageism here at HN is outrageous.
  - mseidl 3y ago
    It wasn't a typo. I was making a joke.
kqr 3y ago
Is this advice not going in the exact opposite direction to what looks like a well-researched TFA with an n=1 experiment to back it up? Why do you think your opinion differs?
- bjornlouser 3y ago

scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago

As someone who is at 1000 and also one of those people who only slam blitzes, I can confirm that one benefits from it only to a point, mostly developing skill in quickly reading the board and identifying the low-hanging-fruit moves.

matsemann 3y ago
Yup, starting to play 2+1 increased my 5+3 rating by 200 up to 1800 (lichess). But continuing to play 2+1 with no analysis or thought hasn't increased my rating further. I do only play for fun / to kill time, though. So a few games a day on a metro or whatever. So with no aspirations to actually improve I think I'm at the peak of my natural ability.

narag 3y ago

This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study, Is rating on chess.com similar to rating in lichess? The article mentions 1%, but you start with 1500 in lichess??? If you lose often, you quickly go down. But if you keep an even record, you stay in 1500. I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. As in the article, speed training helps recognizing patterns and dealing with them. At first it seems impossible to play significant moves with so little time, but you can try to just doing it. You'll adapt very soon. I recommend starting with blitz 3+2 and later bullet 2+1. There are tournaments of 1+0... or even less time. 30 seconds is really crazy.

smatija 3y ago
Rating on chesscom is wildly different than on lichess in lower rating ranges. 300 cc should be similiar to around 800 lichess. Around 2000-2200 ratings even out on both sites and on higher ratings lichess ratings tend to be lower than on cc. For improving longer time controls are better. The old adage, that if you want to play blitz better you should play rapid and that if you want to improve rapid you should play classical is still valid today. Blitz is beneficial only at higher rating ranges (2000+) to allow practising openings, and even that only in moderation. Players who don't play classical time controls (90min+30sec/move at least) tend to plateau around 2000-2200 online. This ofc doesn't mean that blitz isn't fun - vast majority of my games are in blitz time controls.
- narag 3y ago
  300 cc should be similiar to around 800 lichess. 800 is very low in Lichess. If you can think just two moves ahead without losing pieces, you get 1000 easily. For improving longer time controls are better. Yes and no. There are different aspects to the game. Every variety is good for something. After playing a lot of bullet, I win easily in blitz just because the time advantage. But the reverse is also true. After playing more slower games, my fast games get better. And there are some parts of the game that you just need to sit down with a book and a couple of boards.
VonGallifrey 3y ago

hinkley 3y ago

I’ve known this guy off and on for years. When we first met 15+ years he was slightly better at Go than me, which was middling amateur. All the Go books say if you want to be a pro you have to start as a child. But he studied, and studied, and last I knew he was 3 dan, which is about the point you can entertain the idea of becoming a pro (if I just worked harder). Kids have a lot more free time to sink into a singular concern. Warnings about how something are out of the reach of adults aren’t actually hard rules, they’re just really good rules of thumb. But if you can make the time, it’s not impossible. I don’t think chess is any different there. Small improvements may set reasonable expectations, but there are people who can blow right past them.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
You're right I think. Most adults really don't improve at chess very often. They do when it's a new hobby, but then they plateau. And it's not that they couldn't improve further, it's just that they're not able or willing to do the things necessary, which is usually a lot of exercise and study. It's just a hobby for most people at the end of the day, and they'd rather spend an hour at the club discussing and blitzing some silly openings with friends than spend an hour solving puzzles or studying endgames. We still all carry the illusion of some prospect of improvement, that's the human condition. But most people don't take it very seriously and are more in it for social reasons.
- hinkley 3y ago
  It clearly aggravated some of the people at the Go club that I was not improving past hobbyist. But the thing I didn’t share with them is that all through my childhood, I would try new things and if I wasn’t instantly mediocre or better at it I would decide this was no fun and drop it. If you are good at enough things you can fill your weeks with activities and ignore the things you aren’t good at. Being bad at Go and still playing anyway was an exercise in personal growth.
pmontra 3y ago
A friend of mine devised an empirical rule to predict the highest Go ranking that a player will reach: the ranking after the first 4 years of play plus 4. You can check that on https://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/ https://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/ and pick some players at random. They have a nice date/rank graph and all those graphs start with an almost vertical growth which slows down and flattens. Some players play less often and get weaker but that's not the point. I have no idea if it applies to chess too, possibly with different parameters, but why not? They are both games played with the brain by humans.

vjerancrnjak 3y ago

I mostly played blitz with openings where queen is moved in the first 3 moves and got to ~2000 (no proof, sorry). I didn't study chess at all outside of playing it intensely for 1-2 years. Of course, my end game was also very bad. It was such a frustrating fun I had to stop. There are of course players that know how to fully exploit mistakes in the bad openings, but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matter, especially if the opponent has to exploit a weird opening you have. There's many more patterns related to pinning, tempo, that are worth much more for quick rating progress.

drexlspivey 3y ago
> but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matte No way you get to 2000 by cheesing, maybe 1000 max. 2000 rating is not low, it’s top 0.3% on chess.com
- smatija 3y ago
  It's possible, if unlikely - wayward queen is not as bad as it looks (black has maybe a tiny bit more than equality), most players don't face it often (so probably don't have a lot of prep memorized) and in blitz time controls it's hard to find optimal punishment for subpar opening play. And 2000 is not that high again - top 0.3% on chess com is maybe top 50% of tournament players. Online chess has a lot of begineers, since its more approachable.
  - pedrekz 3y ago
    Everyone who’s higher rated than 500 can see that you’re lying, I don’t know why you insist. Yes, you’re not immediately losing the game if you play the right moves, but it stops being a “trick” waaaay before you’re 2000, even in blitz. You don’t need any “prep”. Edit: you’re not the same person from the comment above, my bad
    - smatija 3y ago
      2000 rated players of course won't get mated in 3 moves, but position after 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Qf3 is not unplayable for White - Black is equal or maybe just a little bit better. In lichess Blitz database for 2200+ rated players there are 13883 games with this position. White won 50%, drew 7% and lost 43%. Of course this position is nothing to write home about, but for online Blitz it's good enough.

shric 3y ago

> I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. The time constraints are too rushed to really think about what makes a move good or bad. I assumed it was a young person's thing, but the author said he plays these quick formats too. I'm 47 and started playing around 5 years ago. I only play Blitz and Bullet because I find it fun. In the first two years I went from around 1000 on lichess to around 1700. I've been "stuck" at 1700 plus or minus 100 since then. I know I could improve with puzzles and classical time controls and study and analysis but I have no interest in that. I play games for fun. If I improve then great. If not no problem. It's the same as breaking out a game of Tetris or something for 5 minutes to me.

FartyMcFarter 3y ago
If you analyse the blitz games after playing them, that can bridge some of the gap.
- shric 3y ago
  Yes, but I have no patience for that. As soon as one game is done I've either had enough of chess for now or want the dopamine hit of the next game immediately.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  I would disagree with that on few levels. Blitz chess is already what a lot of people consider a variant. In Blitz format there are strategies and tricks that are outright blunders in longer time controls. The biggest improvement by far for a casual player (at stage where you have some higher chess concepts understood) is to memorise. Memorise and understand principles of openings lines (lines you want to play as white - few, more in depth, and most common lines you see being played - more, less in depth as black) Memorise mating patters, there are certain setups that occur on board, knowing them can help playing them when they happen, or better angling to set them up yourself. This was what made me drop chess as a teen. High level chess is a looot about memorisation. And that was when magic of chess disappeared for me :/ As a counterpoint to what you said, going back through your own game might not show you why and where you made a root cause mistake. If you dont have a background knowledge you will not know what to look for. And its rather a surface glance that you will 'get and forget' as soon as you start next game. Better approach would be to study the positions you played after you are done playing for the day, or coming back to them on some other day.

erfgh 3y ago

Some people just want to have fun and that's what blitz is for. Why are people so preoccupied with improving when it comes to chess? If any other game is mentioned the discussion will not be so centered on improvement as it is with chess. Maybe it is because chess has this air of a "thinking man's game" which does not really deserve. It's just a game like any other.

nicky0 3y ago
Because learning and improving is part of the pleasure of chess. It's a game you can enjoy to play, but also enjoy to study. As you improve, there's a tangible sense of progression which is rewarding. And the scope for progression goes very very deep. Not all other games have this feature. If I play Catan with my friends, it's fun, but then the game is over. I'm not going to analyse my game and discover new tactics or strategies, like I will with chess.
- mathgeek 3y ago
  > Because learning and improving is part of the pleasure of chess. Important to remember this is not a universal truth for all people. > If I play Catan with my friends, it’s fun… Interestingly, you and I seem to be opposites here. I only play chess for fun and never care if I improve, but spent thousands of hours in my college years analyzing and improving at Catan. I wonder if this is simply a matter of whether one prefers deterministic or stochastic games for optimization.
cyrillaw 3y ago
Once a certain acumen is reached, chess becomes a much better spectator sport. Older games become interesting to watch, mate in 6-8 puzzles become tenable, chess books about specific openings make more sense. Once a player knows how to finish basic endgames and accord himself properly in the middle game, they have the tools to grasp opening theory. From there on, there is a huge body of information about opening theory, playing styles, control and leverage of center, etc etc. Much of the ink spilled about this game is a bit impenetrable without some acumen. But with enough appreciation to the past and present trends, one can fine tune one's playing style and really make the game your own.

david927 3y ago

I can only speak from my experience but blitz worked for me. I would make occasional, furtive attempts to learn but nothing ever worked. Then one day I started playing a single five minute lichess game with coffee in the morning at work. And when I would make a mistake, I would do a takeback to see what I did wrong and how I should have played it. Sometimes I would play the puzzles. Doing this and nothing else, I went up about 100 points a year for five years, from 1200 to 1700. (And then I stopped but I also could tell that I would have to start approaching it differently to go further.)