The Cons of Blitz Chess - A More Critical Examination

Intro

Blitz chess is the most popular time control in chess in the entire world. It's quick thinking and intensity make it a very fun and competitive environment all around the chess world. However, its not healthy to play all the time. Sure, coaches say the same thing about blitz "it's too fast of a time control for chess" but there is a deeper examination which restates the negativity of the time control if played too much. This has affected players at all levels - from beginner and intermediate levels who are learning about tactics and openings - to the highest titles and rating range and the best players on the planet. Here are some reasons why blitz is bad for your chess and some examples of miniature games that show that.

Game 1: GM Judit Polgar vs GM Boris Spassky

Game 2: GM Hikaru Nakamura vs Anonymous

Game 3: GM Magnus Carlsen vs GM Daniel Naroditsky

A Simple Collection of Graphs to Show the Accuracy Change with help from Google Gemini

As you can see, there is a major contrast between the accuracy of games in bullet, blitz, and rapid, and then classical and long time controls. The average of the Super GM in Classical and the Super GM in BBR (Bullet, Blitz, Rapid) are 96.7% for Classical and just 89.5% for Bullet, Blitz and Rapid. That's a whopping 7.2% for a range at the Super GM level! While you might think that this is obvious that the accuracy is less, here is another chart that shows the contrast of accuracy. This next chart will show the contrast between the accuracy of classical games collected where master level players use 75% of more of their time that they have, and then another situation where players use less than 75% of their time.

This shows that with the regular blitz and bullet mindset that master level players incorrectly implement in classical games results in a slightly lower accuracy than when master level players actually evaluate the position well and understand the point of each move.

Outro

Thank you for reading my blog post. I hope you understood that utilizing the time that you have and not getting addicted to fast time controls is extremely important for your overall chess development. Playing blitz is fun to do once in a while, but don't let it take over your entire environment of the board game where the entire point is strategy.