Blitzing on Correspondence Chess, a bad idea

Greetings everyone,

I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, and even though I realize my advice will probably receive little exposure, I think, if you fit the type of player I will be describing, it might be worth your while.

I started playing Online Chess here a couple months ago. I'm a tournament level player, and even though I'm still not FIDE rated, I recently had a 1750 performance on a recent OTB tournament. Nonetheless, here on chess.com, my live chess ratings are pretty low, and I'm really bad at blitz. 

However, I'm sustaining an effortless 14 game winning streak at online chess so far, and the reason for that is quite simple, albeit counter-intuitive. 

Correspondence chess is supposed to be a sort of play where you really take your time to choose the best move, to the point where you're absolutely sure what you're playing is the best you've got. You're allowed to research your openings, check databases, and really make sure you're playing a game to the best of your abillities.

However, ALL of my opponents, with no exception so far, have played some really bad moves, some as early as move 4, and in the vast majority of the games (95%+) I emerge at move 10 with a material advantage that goes from a pawn to a whole rook. However, when playing the same players at live chess, they seem to be much wiser, both tactically and positionally, and I could safely say their 5min blitz selves would easily bet their correspondence side. 

Discovering the reason behind this was actually very simple. ALL of them (again, no exceptions on a 14 winning streak) were playing 20+ games simultaneously, and the vast majority answered to my moves instantly after logging in. 

Instead of taking the opportunity to improve and play their best, they are actually playing at a big simultaneous display with the whole server, and actually reinforcing bad thinking routines that will probably get them stuck in the long run.

To sum it up, I'd like to offer the following advice:

1. If you're playing a correspondence game and you have access to a book/database, you have NO excuse not to play the opening PERFECTLY, and in case you're not sure if a move is really good, carefully study the line in depth before going into it.

2. Don't play more than 5~10 games at once, and NEVER move before thinking for at least 10 minutes. This will make your playing quality much higher than in live chess. If you don't have time to spend 100 minutes a day working on your moves, than you shouldn't be playing 10 games at 24 hour time control anyway.

3. Read Dan Heisman's articles on Real Chess. I'm pretty sure you can get a 1700 Online Chess rating by only avoiding to drop pieces.

Now I leave you with a freakshow from my own games. The blunders go as far as forgetting to recapture recently threatened pieces (which just indicates the player didn't even look at the position before making a move). There are also some nicer (but no more excusable) examples.

The most unsophisticated tactic I've played outside a bullet game:

The next one is just a cute combination in a completely winning position.

I hope my point was at least somewhat instructive, and wish you best of luck at your online chess advetures.

Felipe.

I agree completely. There's a reason that they give you days to make your moves.

I have about 120 games going simultaneously, but I don't blitz moves, unless there are obvious move. They are all 14 day games, so I musn't move in all of them in a day. I spend at least 5 minutes , but probably when the games went on I'll need to spend more time.

I completely agree with the OP. Playing 20+ games simultaneously is absolutely useless and, in my opinion, just a sign that the guy is dying of boredom. 

For my part, I like to take my time and think over the game for the duration of a whole day. Sometimes my best ideas come while in the shower or driving or gardening... And for me, 8 games simultaneously is the most that I am able to carry and even in that case the games are spread around the different phases of the game, that is, a couple in the opening phase, another couple in the middlegame and the rest in the terminal phase. I can't play > 6 middlegames simultaneously. It's hard for me to play more than that at the end of a busy day at work. 

Frankly, I don't think it's humanly possible to spend time thinking of good moves in more than a dozen games simultaneously and when I see a guy playing more than about 10-15 games I always have a suspicion about him using an engine.

And speaking about blunders in the correspondence chess, well... blunders are part of life, but if they appear regularly and are caused by blitzing due to the large number of games you play simultaneously then it's kind of insulting towards your opponent. I have received such "gifts" myself and didn't like them at all.

@nebunulpecal Paul Keres played about 150 simultaneous correspondence games in his youth

Well, here's the thing...

I normally have 20-40 games going, sometimes more.

I play fast, I almost never spend more than 1 minute on a position. I often make silly blunders, but sometimes I take out 18-1900's.

I don't play live, because my connection is dodgy.

I've been doing this for 4 years, and 6000 online games. I'm not gonna change now, because this is the way I like it. No opponent has ever told me he felt disrespected because of the way I play.

@ProfBlunderer

Young Paul Keres lived on an internetless small town, and was already an extremely strong player (champion of Estonia at 19), that was aiming at training pattern recognition, rather than deep analysis.

For people at this level (2300+), I would assume giving live simultaneous displays and playing blitz would probably be more efficient tools for that end, whereas they could also better benefit from a small number of very serious correspondence games. 

Why do you assume that he blitz in correspondence? Howewer he become very strong even he can't play so much tournaments because in his town chess wasn't so diffused, so playing a lot of correspondence helped him growing as a player, and I don't think he can become strong blitzing his moves.

@ProfBlunderer

I don't think he became strong by blitzing moves on correspondence. I do think however, that when he moved from playing a few correspondence games to dozens, he was already extremely strong.

Learning correspondence chess by playing the same amount of games an all-time prodigy played at his peak is like learning to play blindfolded chess by first giving a blindfold simul.

@rooperi

My post is aimed at people that want to use online chess as a means to improve OTB play, and are competitive about their ratings.

If you're goals are different that's perfectly fine.

I would just like to point out that if you ever feel like it, you could easily gain 300 rating points by playing 20, very careful, games.

Might part of the reason be that your average opponent rating is only 1471?

I think it is a rather personal decision.

I feel Correspondence chess is a great tool for chess development in general, especially if your using resources, since you are studying positions that you typically get into and have time to examine a wide range of variations and weight the pros and cons of each continuation. You don't have the pressure you normally have when your calculating a complex tactic during a blitz game. You always have time for blunder check. So I would imagine that the positional skills/endgame technique of the players more or less would decide the game in correspondence chess. 

can't be bothered to spend a long time analysing positions in CC.
If I was I would just play standard chess instead.

here is a perfect example of making really dumb moves when blitzing in CC. in this game i had a COMPLETELY won position, then i got excited cause i was sure i must have a mate in x and started blitzing moves. i made a huge oversight and ended up getting mated :O

http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=73681156