Curious why someone would play 50+ daily games at one time

I enjoy playing games with ‘daily’ time controls. I like the unhurried aspect of the games, and I like having plenty of time to think. But I’ve noticed that some of my of opponents, in addition to playing against me, are also playing 50 or more other games AT THE SAME TIME. This would seem to eliminate the slow, mellow, thoughtful aspect that I like about the daily time control. It seems like it would reduce the daily games into something closer to rapid or blitz. I don’t mean that as a criticism. The more chess the better, and people can certainly play whatever makes them happiest. But I’m struggling to understand why someone would want to play so many daily games concurrently. Can anyone help me understand the attraction? I mean, why not just play rapid or blitz? I’m just curious to hear what it is about this kind of playing that people enjoy. Thanks for any comments. 

Years ago on another account.  I played someone that had over 1700 daily games going at once.

Wow. 1700 games at once is insane. 

No comments from any of the multi-gamers out there? I’m curious about what the attraction is. Why play so many games at one time?

I once had 1500+ daily games and I got all off the games from tournaments, but then lost pretty much of them because of timeout so i decided to stay by 50 daily games.

You can score a lot of points for your club to rise in the ranks, so they're probably a die hard club member.

I don't quite try to do 50 but I try to keep it in the mid-high 20s so I usually have moves to look at when I'm somewhere with not much to do for a few minutes. A lot of those games are going to be in phases where they don't require much analysis. If I have 50 games going probably 30+ are going to be in the opening or playing out a simple endgame. 

Mine gets around 50+ sometimes because I only play tournaments and sometimes misjudge when a tournament/ tournament round is going to start so I start another tournament and all of a sudden everything fires off. 

If I had way more dead time in my days I'd probably go nuts and open some absurd amount of games now and then. At some point it is like doing puzzles because every position might as well be new. 

I too love daily. I don't want to play bullet or blitz because I want to play quality chess and take my time, but I have a full time job, a wife, and 3 kids, so I can't dedicate a consecutive hour or more of guaranteed uninterrupted time like a proper classical game would require. I like how I can take my time with daily, but the truth is I am usually only going to spend somewhere between 2-20 minutes (and much less if there is a forced move)looking at a position, proposing candidate moves, and trying to refute my candidate moves with a self analysis board. If the position is unclear I may spend closer to an hour, or step away from the game for a few hours and look at it again later.  But at least for me, there gets to be a point where the longer I look, the more likely I overthink it and do something dumb. And that point is certainly less than a day. Now, I like having the cushion that 3 day games provide, since I don't know what life will throw at me and whether or not I will even be able to look at a game, but for the most part, I will have more time in a given day than I need to make a move to my satisfaction. So that means I will need to add more daily games to my slate to not be bored with my "chess time". Obviously there is a point of diminishing returns to adding more games, but if my opponent plays at a pace similar to my own, juggling 3-4 games at a time is not hard. But if every opponent I am playing routinely waits until the last 24 hours to make a move, then I am going to need to have 12 or so games to keep me busy. Now the reality is that I have a mix of opponent types, so 6-8 games is where I usually am at, but again, not hard for me to imagine hitting double digits. And I don't think that I really dedicate all that much time to chess. Now if I was younger, had more time on my hands, I wanted to stick with playing only daily games, spent more time on games and less time studying GM games/articles/tactics puzzles, and got really good at using pre-moves/conditional moves, I could see myself being able to play quite a few games at once. Perhaps even up to 50.

 I am currently playing 47 games on another site, and that's my record low. I used to play between 50-80 games at once, and almost every day it was my turn to move in around 30/40 games. I've played people there who have 150+ games going on at once. 

 The great thing about it (for me) is that I always had a position to look at at any point of the day. 

 However, I noticed that playing half the games and focusing more on the positional aspect of my play rather than the tactical, has helped my rating rocket from 1400-1600 to the 1700-1900 range, and I've have even managed to get some draws against some people on the low end of 2000 (though not many).

 I don't think I would be able to do that with 80+ games at once - I would not have enough time to look at a position enough to be able to analyse it positionally - if I took 2 minutes to think about a move per position, I would easily be making moves for more than 1 hour non-stop with my previous game load.

 So I realised that even if I cut down my number of games, I would still have positions to work with at any point in time, so Im keeping it low in the 40/50s for the time being.

oh thats why they timed out vs me, i had 10 going on then (mostly unrated vs good players)

That's a lot to keep up with? I never played one lel

These are some good responses. It’s certainly true that a lot of moves take no time at all to think about, especially in the opening. I can see how having a number of games to cycle through would make things more interesting. And having a bunch of games going on at once means you’ll always have a chess move to make for any moments of downtime throughout the day. Waiting at the dentist office isn’t a good time to start a rapid game, but it’s great for making moves in a few daily games. That makes perfect sense.

Using Daily games as a sort of ‘positional puzzles’ is also a neat idea. With 50+ games happening at once, when each game finally rolls back around the position might seem ‘new’. Any previous plans or ideas may have been forgotten, and it’s just a matter of evaluating the position and trying to find the best move. This is a cool idea. 

Very true, ErwinDuncan. This is why I first posted this question about playing 50+ games at once. I recently encountered an opponent of this sort, one who would wait literally until the final minutes before playing a move, even on the very first move. They can certainly within their rights to use their full time, but it’s rather annoying on move#1.

Another side that hasn’t been mentioned is timing-out on games. If a person is playing so many games that they’re regularly timing out, that seems like too many games. I guess like anything else in life, people find ways to overdo things. If 20 concurrent games is good, somebody will go overboard and start 1000 games at once. I suppose everybody has their comfort zone - what is the best number of games to have going for them personally. But if a person is losing games because they’re failing to make a move in the given time, it might be a sign that they’re playing too many games at once. 

It’s all new to me. I recently joined my first online tournament, and suddenly found myself playing 5 games at once. A record high for me.  

lol i have only 400+ games going on

Ah … gone are the members who sported records of 700+ wins and 0 losses with 1000+ on- going tournament games. Somebody figured out it’s not humanly possible. Such members no longer exist. 

Um do you lose on time with some of those dang it... like come on lol

lol i don't but yeah sometimes i have like 50 games where i have no more than 10 mins remaining

so rush rush lol

Father time always wins ... father time undefeated

wait father time??

Lol lol just a time reference lel

Like in boxing when older boxers lose etc... "father time undefeated" or mother time lel