In the last few months, I lost games that I should draw against; I drew games that I should win. As a result, my USCF rating dropped ~ 200 points. Age catching up? Loss of focus? Worldly problems? I didn't know. For one or two matches, I didn't care so much. Actually any player can lose 200 points from the peak, no big deal. But, the player should know the quality of his game over a period of time.
Last week, I was playing a game against a player who was 300 points higher. I was unable to see more than 1 move ahead. I couldn't see any tactics. I very well know that is not who I am.
So, I put myself to a test. I opened chesstempo.com, started doing tactics. I don't practice tactics myself regularly. I teach tactics to students, analyze games but don't do tactics or puzzles as a habit myself. I do tactics occasionally though. When I started doing tactics on chesstempo.com, my rating dropped 250 points one day. I was shocked this time. Dropping points on USCF is one thing, because we can lose games based on many factors. But, chesstempo is another thing. It only involves your thought process to do tactics and nothing else. I looked back on what I was doing wrong....
looked at the big picture.
Like everyone else in this world, I am also a slave to my mobile phone. Not so much as everyone else, I think. I don't do texting, nothing. But, when we have a smart phone and we have tools that we can do, we won't sit quiet. Chess.com app, other chess apps made their way into my smart phone in the last few months. So, I started playing 30 min games on chess.com. Then, I started playing 5 min games. I played 100s of them in the last 2 - 3 months. It thrills to play speed chess. We don't waste too much time to finish one game, we don't need to wait for the other person for a long time. And we can play many games in one hour. I didn't give 2nd thought on what I was losing by playing Blitz games.....
If I am not wrong, playing blitz is what has been killing my ability to think properly. Hikaru Nakamura is the king of speed chess (he recently lost those titles as well), but many famous players are of the opinion that speed chess is what is holding Nakamura from becoming World No. 1.
So, what is the comparison between Nakamura and me? Nothing much except both of us are chess players. I think speed chess affects players of all levels. World class players to beginners. During speed chess, we don't have the time/ chance to frame and think tactics too much. We just play on our intuition. To be precise, it even kills our tactics skills.
Just my honest opinion.
So, are there no benefits to playing Blitz games? I think there are!! We want to practice openings. We could do that against a software in a computer. But, if we want to do it against humans, we can do by playing Blitz games. If you want to practice variations in long games against humans, it is possible but takes a long time. Other than this, I don't see much of value in Blitz games. At least to me, my style of game. Other players may have different thoughts, others may see value in Blitz. I respect their opinions......
I stopped playing lot of Blitz games immediately. I still do, because I have the craving but I reduced that habit a lot in the last few days. Instead, I am practicing tactics on chesstempo.com ....We will see how my rating graphs goes....
Ciao!
