Playing Blitz has Dropped My Rating by 200+ Points

I think blitz Chess is a lot of fun. Lately I have been playing a lot of 3/0 on FICS. I have played over 1500 games over the last few months or so, and have over 2000 since I joined (November 2008). I believe I have gotten decent at Blitz. I generally play better Blitz than those who are about equal to me in standard OTB games. That said, my standard and correspondence games have suffered significantly as of late, and I believe the cause of this is the fact that I play so many 3/0 games.

Not too long ago, before I started playing Blitz a lot, my rating on RHP was generally in the low 1600s, and had been as high as 1684. Now I am barely 1400. I am struggling to stay there too. What has happened is that I now play all Chess as though it was 3/0. When I play anything longer than a 5/0 I get impatient. Now, I've never concentrated too much on RHP or standard games, but I used to put in some effort into calculation. I now play solely off of intuition. I have found that this is good in Blitz, but horrible in longer games.

I have, over the last week or so, forced myself to think more about every move when I'm playing here, and I have noticed that immediately my games have gotten better. This is of course common sense, but it is common sense that I ignored until being slapped in the face by being dropped 200 points.

So in conclusion I have learned a few things from this experience. 1. -- Playing too much Blitz can be dangerous. 2. -- I undervalued how much calculation makes your game better.

There is one positive thing, though, that I believe has come of all this. I believe my chess intuition has gotten slightly better. I think if I can harness this, and lose my impatience, my overall chess game will have improved because of my Blitz experience. That said, for me at least, this is not easy to do.

Just wanted to share my story.

Originally posted by amolv06
I think blitz Chess is a lot of fun. Lately I have been playing a lot of 3/0 on FICS. I have played over 1500 games over the last few months or so, and have over 2000 since I joined (November 2008). I believe I have gotten decent at Blitz. I generally play better Blitz than those who are about equal to me in standard OTB games. That said, my standard an ...[text shortened]... rience. That said, for me at least, this is not easy to do.

Just wanted to share my story.

Playing blitz is not the problem. The problem is not being able to switch from one time-control to another. Which is an important attribute if you want to play various types of time-controls, for the same reason I think it can also be trained.

Experience makes perfect.

I suffer from the same problem - in reverse, so maybe I'm wrong here?

Originally posted by orion25
Playing blitz is not the problem. The problem is not being able to switch from one time-control to another. Which is an important attribute if you want to play various types of time-controls, for the same reason I think it can also be trained.

Experience makes perfect.

I suffer from the same problem - in reverse, so maybe I'm wrong here?

I totally agree, I think your playing so much blitz games you either move too fast or take the same attitude at larger time controls.

blitz is a different game. the same exact move doesn't work similarly in slow and fast chess. if you take a complicated but 'correct' move to blitz, you'll lose because you can't work out the complications fast enough (even if you get it right, you still lose too much time to make decent moves to wrap the game up). and if you take the unsound but 99% crashing blitz sac into a slow game, the opponent WILL sort the complications out and beat the living crap out of you.

the moral isn't that playing a lot of blitz is bad for slow chess. it's playing slow chess like blitz that's creating the problem. there's a big difference regarding training.

Originally posted by amolv06
I think blitz Chess is a lot of fun. Lately I have been playing a lot of 3/0 on FICS. I have played over 1500 games over the last few months or so, and have over 2000 since I joined (November 2008). I believe I have gotten decent at Blitz. I generally play better Blitz than those who are about equal to me in standard OTB games. That said, my standard an ...[text shortened]... rience. That said, for me at least, this is not easy to do.

Just wanted to share my story.

Since you know that you're impatient - impose a rule for all of your regular RHP games - something like "I will not make a move until I have spent at least 30 minutes looking at the position" - or have regular sessions where you will ONLY look at the positions in your games without making any moves, and then come back at least a few hours later and make moves at that time.