I can quit chess now - hit 1600 blitz!

Hit a dream milestone today for me. 1600 blitz rating!

Seemed utterly, ludicrously impossible as of 2 years ago, when I was barely cracking 1200 despite committing to learning the game.

I'm not going to quit chess (whew!), but if I had to quit today, I'd be happy with my rating and journey to get here. It's been a fun ride!

I'm going to gloat now, because I'm absolutely positive that once I get on a bad blitz run, I'll be back under 1500....

Yes gloat now. I was over 1400 before playing today and now..... just one of those days😳

Don't worry, I'll probably back in the 1400s again once I hit a bad stretch of blitz. I just checked my game archive, and I seem to have had an extremely lucky (and rare) stretch of 9/10 wins against some of the strongest opposition I've faced in blitz on chess.com. That's def not gonna last...

Yeah I went on a tear like that a few weeks ago. I think I won like 12 games in a row and was pushing 1500. I swear once I finally hit 1500 I'm not playing blitz for a loooooooong time.

hhnngg1 wrote:

Don't worry, I'll probably back in the 1400s again once I hit a bad stretch of blitz. I just checked my game archive, and I seem to have had an extremely lucky (and rare) stretch of 9/10 wins against some of the strongest opposition I've faced in blitz on chess.com. That's def not gonna last...

how were you able to get to 1600? I am about 1400 and have kind of leveled off for years now. 

Any pointers or tips you can share?

I've been on a pretty consistent improvement curve ever since I had a huge plateau at 1200 which required correction of some really basic positional oversights I was making, esp in the opening. 

After 1400+, I've been studying a little of everything, hoping that stuff will stick, and that's always a pretty good study policy.

However, I will summarize for me the highest yield things, in order.

1. Basic positional knowledge. I got a lot of this stuff from watching Akobian youtube videos. We're talking stuff like no-calculation basic opening moves. You might think you know it cold, but try and guess Akobian's first 15 moves in his youtube videos when he does a review, and you'll probably find you miss a few here and there (which are important.) Once I got those moves down, my play got a lot more solid. I can still improve on this - and mastering this is really, really key in blitz since you reduce wasted calculation time and make good, solid, FAST moves intuitively, even if they're not the absolute best.

2. Tactics. I've posted a lot on how I actually LOST rating points whenever I studied nothing but tactics, which is true, but tactics+positional stuff and game review is pretty important. I haven't done the chess.com tactic trainer, but I think chesstempo is particularly good - I find it much better than the tactical books I have as well as better than lichess's tactics server, in terms of coming up with tactics that are relevant to actual play. I can solve some pretty complex tactics on lichess's server, but they don't seem to occur much in my games. I will admit that tactics improvement played a big role in my recent jump from 1500 to 1600, as I didn't do much except drill a lot of chesstempo. I do think you have to choose your source material correctly - I don't get quite as good a tactics jump when I do some of the tactics books I have (like 1001 Combos by Reinfeld). Chessstempo is really good - highly recommended.

3. Playing regularly. Contrary to what people post repeatedly, I never play long games anymore and ONLY play blitz. And I'm still improving. Granted, I def woudln't say that you'll continue to improve without studying and just playing blitz, and my study is not time-constrained and more like long games, but for sure, playing regular games, even short blitz games, is key to staying sharp in actual chess play. I play at least 20 minutes of blitz every day, and try to keep it less than an hour of total blitz, and the act of playing daily def give you practice in time management and speed of thinking in blitz. At least a few of my recent 9/10 win streak were won on the clock where I was in a totally lost position with a piece or more down, but I managed to grind down his clock by putting up annoying timeburning defense. That's a lot easier to do if you play regularly.

3. Alas, endgames seem to matter very little at my rating. I took a bunch of time to really learn the fundamental endgames (which I don't regret), like Philidor rook draw, basic king+pawns endings, minor piece endings, etc., and even can do the NBK vs K checkmate against the engine. I'm sorry to say that I can probably count on one hand the number of times I actually got to use my endgame techniques that I studied. I do think studying 'not quite endgames' (late middlegames) would benefit me a lot,  and I'm looking into getting Dvoretsky's manual to get some practice with it, since the pure endgames are so theoretical that I'm not encountering them in play.

SOrry bout the long post. As you can see, I actually enjoy the process of improving as much as winning, which is why I post a lot on it!

Hey! I read the whole thing. My endgame is terrible. I feel like i have many games in the bag and then i give a free piece up. And i am not a good opening person. I never took the time to memorize openings. 

Well, at least now you know what to study! 

If you've never studied openings, it's definitely worth picking a few openings to specialize in as black and white and actually try to learn the mainlines from them, and then eventually the main variations. Helps a lot in blitz where you can't waste any time needlessly calculating book moves. Even if you're out of book soon, the overall strategy will overlap, so you'll figure things out much faster.

so you finally decided to stop sandbagging, good.And 1600 is not much., People still blunder pieces or sacs like crazy and play for time even up to 1700 rating in 3 min pool which most of you consider hardest. Ofcourse there are still sandbaggers with rating 1600 who have many wins vs 1900-2000 rated.

I have made several one move blunders in blitz in the last week and I am 1800+

Yes i just blunder whole rook versus 1400~ rated in other server... and he did not saw it , he had enough time, its funny becouse i was pressing him so hard with black, he was in psychological pressure whole game and in absolutely losing position , it might be that, becouse first 5 moves of the game i moved my king 4 times. But thing was he made a move that attacks my rook , then i moved a pawn and rook was free and he did not took it, he was afraid of that pawn move... So even 1800+ players can blunder and those much below 2-3 times in a single game.

Only when both players are strong enough and equal rated , they can play real chess, with ideas, with sound attacks/sacs etc.

But blunders happen in blitz even by title players. GM Simon Williams have blundered few times (not in single game) during his stream , but he was talking , not his full potencial.

Pretty hard to sandbag here, imo. If you only play weaker opponents, it's a lot easier to lose rating points than gain them.

As well, while blunders do occur at every level, they're wayyyy more prevalent when you're playing stronger opposition, as they put more pressure on your position giving your many more opportunities to blunder. 

Against weaker opposition that doesn't squeeze you quite so much positionally, it can even be hard to blunder, and even if you do, your position can be still so strong that it's still winnable.

I watch games on occasion and I see titled players blunder all the time. It's really funny watching an IM scurry about after a couple blunders, they try to clock their opponents in losing positions just like everybody else lol.

some great content here. ty. and congrats to hhnngg1.  I love your posts and post #5 is one of the best I have ever seen about how to excel at blitz.

I once did a big survey- look at over a hundred people to ask whether there was a consistant improvement over time.

and whether this improvement was higher in lowrated chess player or highrated chess players.

suprised myself.  chess improvement is very apparent with low rated players as they play.  past 1200, fewer and fewer people improved. playing lots of games wasn't helping many 1300-1800 rated players at all.

so, if you go much over 1200 blitz you are doing dramatically better than the average chess.com player.

It shows here average blitz rating is 1100. Thats from what.. 10 million acounts or something. But most of them never ever come back or they play 2 games, they lose and they quit and thats why average rating is so low. Which can lead to confusing. Actually average rating should be around 1400-1600. I am not sure but i think most players at clubs (OTB) are exacly somewhere there, right? And playing internet chess, which is considered easier than OTB, and  with so many new low rated players to steal points from them 1500-1600 rating is just middle rating or just barely above that. But compared to a random person on street thats some 300-400 rating higher than him. But then again, that person hardly play more than 20 games for a year or something, and for some who play over internet and has 15 000 ~ around games should be a lot more higher rated... for example at least 1800+.. If he plays only for fun, then why he care about rating..

I have improved a lot, I was <1400 blitz last year

 the average rating is 1100, and I think a great of people do only play a few games, a win & several loses and they give up.

I think many people would fall further in rating and go much lower if they kept playing.  so I don't think think you can conclude that the average beginner is anywhere near 1100 in chess.com blitz rating.

In this conversation it is easy to forget that rating is a performance and NOT a strength- and as such the Time Control means everything.

1500-1600 might be Intermediate in uscf OTB, but in chess.com blitz- its advanced imho.

This pretty much sums up the ratings on this website:

https://www.chess.com/blog/smarterchess/chesscom-rating-comparison-2015

An 1100 blitz rating on chess.com corresponds to about a 1249 UCSF rating on this list, which sounds about right. 

Per that poll, chess.com blitz and bullet ratings are significantly (about 100 points) TOUGHER than UCSF and FIDE OTB ratings. Meaning if you're 1200 rated in 5-min blitz on chess.com, your UCSF expected rating is around 1343. 

SO contrary to what a  lot of blitz haters say about 'blitz isn't real chess', 'blitz has no correlation with OTB games', 'you can be masters at blitz but still be like 1200 in UCSF' - that's all a bunch of bull mainly spouted by people who haven't taken the time to develop their blitz and chess skills to the point where they can really get a feel for it.

Most common is the 1300 UCSF_rated person who finds that they're played even by 1200-rated players in 5-min blitz on chess.com, and quickly concluding "I suck at blitz" or "blitz isn't real chess", when in reality, they're playing EXACTLY where a UCSF 1300 player is expected to play at given the chess.com ratings distribution.

Honestly i was 1600 blitz when i joined this site ~14 months ago. And before that all that i was playing was 1 min bullet chess. My tactical rating probably 1400 or lower. I was extremely bad calculating and seeing more than 1-2 moves ahead. I just could not do it. All i knew was to move quickly. I did not knew any theory. Basic stuff king and pawn vs king forget about it, i just learned it few months ago. Opening knowledge - None. Only common 2-3 moves that everybody play and general principles, develop castle etc. I did watch many master videos playing bullet/blitz. What i did better than most of the players was i was checking after every move if i am droping a piece and keep an eye on whole board. I had no plan, i pushed all of my pawns - making unsound sacrifices and win on time...

But i could easily lose to more experienced 1250-1450 who knows some theory for example.. Many games i was lost out of openings. If that was the case, how come i am advanced player at 1600?! How about those who still drops pieces to lower rated and after 3days they are back at 1450 rating..