Most of those world champions didn't have the internet where every blitz game can be saved and quickly referenced against a massive database and a few positions checked with an engine.
It doesn't replace deep study, but it's instant feedback.
You would never be able to get this from blitz 50 years ago.
Blitz chess is just another symptom rather than the problem. In the modern world people are impatient. Whether they impatiently play Blitz chess or are just impatient in other ways is the same thing.
Either someone has the patience to learn longer chess or they don't. Blaming Blitz chess is Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc.
I agree. Botvinnik had the right idea. When asked if he played blitz, didn't he say on a train ONCE?
“Yes, I have played a blitz game once. It was on a train, in 1929.” So Mikhail Botvinnik once famously told Genna Sosonko, but as it turns out that wasn’t entirely true. At the recent evening to mark the centenary of Botvinnik’s birth Mark Taimanov revealed that he once played a blitz match against his mentor.
85-year-old Mark Taimanov was among the 11 legendary chess players who recently took part in a veteran's tournament in Suzdal, near Moscow (10 played rapid chess, while the 89-year-old Yuri Averbakh was the arbiter). On the day that Botvinnik had been born 100 years previously a commemorative evening was held, where Taimanov spoke for almost 15 minutes.
He never wrote all that!
Wow, so many people with seemingly no control of their brains! You move fast when you play Blitz chess and you move slowly and think when you play slow chess. If you can't do that then you can blame the Blitz chess if it makes you happy to be in self-denial. It doesn't translate well to the real world though saying "Oh sorry, I can't do my job properly today because I have time to work whereas yesterday I had to work a lot faster".
a moustached guy clearly overestimated blitz's potential ... it didn't kill ideas, killed people ... :/
That was an interesting list of three GMs. Acs and Lautier both play(ed) blitz online. They are both semi-retired from any tournament chess.
I don't know much about Gyimesi so I can't really comment on his practice.
I play chess only online. Back in 2002 yahoo chess some 5 min games or so for a year. Big brake. In 2007 i started again this time 3 min games for a year. Again brake. Somewhere 2013 i started 1 min games and 3 min games. No theory, no books no study. Just watching videos online from masters like chess-network. Only this year i started to take chess more serious and play... 5 min games and some 15 min games. And here i am with rating majority of chess players can only dream for it for all 3 categories bullet blitz rapid.
Blitz and bullet allows you to play many games in short amount of time. A beginner with correct chess principles can gain so much experience and overall idea of the game, many patterns, openings, endgames, tactics. You get better and better at chess overall. Maybe not you calculation, but chess is more patterns than calculation.
If someone ask me whats fastest way to improve? Easy. Play 3 min games - a lot of them. At the end see engine what will say in key positions. Watch Masters how they play bullet and blitz like GM Eric, IM Aman Chessbrahs & NM ChessNetwork, CM Kingsscrusher, IM John youtube IM chess exlained
I think Fischer spoke accurately when he said blitz chess kills your ideas. I think the controversy comes from the common interpretation of his meaning. Fischer was himself an avid blitz player, and I don't believe he would have been so if he thought it made his long game any worse. I think his intent with the aforementioned assertion was to put the game archetypes in perspective. Long time-control chess is your chance to be creative and plan some really solid and deep themes, where blitz is highly reactive and the game quality (while frequently interesting and creative) does not offer as much depth for analysis. Certainly a top blitz player makes regular use of much deeper themes than an average long game player, but that same top blitz player could play even better, given the time to formulate and execute a stronger plan. Simply put, if two players of roughly equal strength were to play, one player has 3 or 5 minutes on his clock, the other has 2.5 hours, the player with more time will win even if the other player doesn't completely run out of time.
There's no such thing as "real" chess, there's just chess with different time controls. It's the same game.
Nakamura, Vachier-Lagrave, Andreikin, etc, etc play higher quality bulet chess than > 90% of the people on this site play however much time they have on their clock so claiming blitz chess isn't 'real' chess is just like putting a quality threshold in and saying anyone below a certain rating doesn't play 'real' chess.
Sometimes, it's important to see what people do, not what they say. Fischer was a renowned blitz player. He was known to play blitz quite often. His comment is true if all you do is play blitz. But GMs paly blitz as part of well-rounded diet. Just as fruits and sweets serve a purpose in our diet, you shouldn't eat all sweets.
It's important to include blitz as part of your chess diet. Blitz is an excellent way to gain experience quickly. Too many people play only blitz, and that will kill your chess ideas.
"Speed kills."
Sign seen on a US highway before the Internet was invented. If Fischer even said this, he was not talking about internet blitz, but if he had been, we would call him Nostradamus.
If 5-minute chess is chess on speed, 1-minute chess is chess on crack!
Blitz teaches you to be resourceful in time pressure. If you're not occasionally in time pressure in standard chess, you're not taking enough time.
Alexander Kotov found value in blitz:
When I stayed behind at school with my school friends after lessons, and managed to play up to a hundred games in a single afternoon, the strategy was simple enough: I castled on the opposite side in the middle of violent (and mutual) king attacks. Whoever got his attack in first, won. The result was that I acquired an unfailing mastery of those positions where castling takes place on opposite sides, and from that time on I knew how to find my way about them.
I mentioned this quote in my blog this morning: http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2016/01/read-critically.html
I have no chess-ideas to kill, so I wouln't tell the difference if.
Every single world champion except Botvinnik not only played blitz, they excelled at blitz. Every elite player today plays blitz. Almost every young GM today plays tons of blitz online.
Blitz alone won't make a player a GM. But, blitz is an extremely useful tool when used in moderation. The problem is that it's so addictive that many people never get around to studying positions deeply.