The Downside of Blitz, and Using Structure to Improve

The fundamental challenge with chess growth is this: you don't magically get better by playing thousands of blitz games. Actually, the growth comes from everything but the games. This conundrum shouldn't be understated - blitz games are fun, addictive, and extremely easy to fire up the moment you get online. But they are probably the least helpful thing you can do with an hour in terms of actual chess growth. And trust me, I'm right there with you, I have played tens of thousands of blitz games (mostly 3-0, so especially useless).

Here are, in my view, are some of the fundamental problems with blitz games:

1. We build bad habits. The bad blitz cycle looks like this: play a bad opening or bad moves that include inaccuracies or outright blunders, find some tactical shot that leads to a win, or wait for our opponent to blunder, don't bother to review the game, rinse and repeat thousands of times. That is not a scalable model. In fact, not only is that process not helping you improve, it may be hurting your growth because you are now subliminally associating a win with that trash opening you played, which means you may repeat it in the future.
2. You rarely have to convert an actual win (especially in non-increment games). The likelihood of a blunder is so high with shorter time controls that we only learn how to win by having our opponent blunder. Really good players win chess games by using small edges to gain some type of advantage (typically a material advantage, but not always), and then converting that advantage. Learning how to convert that advantage is important, and we can't do that if every game ends with a blunder or someone timing out.
3. The faster the game, the less likely we are to conceptualize a position and remember it in the future. If we are forced to really consider a position and think through our options, we are more likely to remember it (I promise there is science to back up this claim, but I'm not going to cite it). Context is key for memory, and we don't get any context if we have to make a move in ten seconds.
4. We aren't particularly invested in the game, and we're less likely to analyze it.
5. We start a blitz downward spiral. We reached a peak rating. Great! But now our rating dropped, and we can't stop playing until we get back to our peak rating (because we hate looking at a rating that isn't as high as it should be), so we can't do any actual chess studying. This spiral just keeps going and going.

Actual chess improvement comes from critical thinking. Assessing what went wrong, what went right, and attempting to internalize those concepts so we can recreate them in the future. Better players aren't just magically better than us. They are better than us because their pattern recognition and positional understanding are more advanced (and yes, they are probably better at tactics too).

So how do we get ourselves to do things other than mindlessly playing blitz?

Structure.
If your only means of measuring your progress is your online blitz rating, it's pretty hard to get excited about doing anything other than blitz. We have to flip the incentive structure. A successful chess session has to be a measurement of progress made on actual study.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s677/res/724ac169-9765-4437-be9c-4c8af5318454

My chess teacher and I (for some context, I am about 2200 blitz on Lichess) use Asana to assign tasks that I should complete before our next session. This builds accountability and allows me to feel like I achieved something besides wins in blitz games. Everyone talks about what to study, but the answer (similar to what most physical trainers will tell you) is to study whatever book or tool that you will actually do. Chessable, physical books, lichess openings, etc. All are great options. But let's be honest, what's holding us back is not a lack of resources for improvement. It is simply getting ourselves to actually study. Try to add some structure to your learning. Use actual due dates and find a way to build accountability on actually getting your assignments done.

Good luck on the grind!

-Tommy Flynn
Moron2Master