Is blitz chess hurting our children?

Every time I go to watch and play over the board (OTB) chess at my local chess park I can't fail to notice that five minute per side blitz is by FAR the most popular variant of chess played among the younger age groups (i.e. “our children”). While I have seen many adults playing longer or no time controls, it is very rare to see younger chess players (under 21) playing these longer time controls; I would estimate that it is at least an order, if not several orders, of magnitude rarer. In this younger age group blitz reigns supreme! On chess.com blitz is again by far the most popular version of chess played, and I would not be in the least surprised if here too it is particularly popular among the younger age group. So I felt obliged to ask, is all of this blitz hurting our children? Specifically, is it making them worse chess players?

As far as I can tell, it is almost universally agreed that exclusively playing blitz is bad for one’s chess playing ability.  I have yet to find a single higher rated player who can say with a straight face that playing exclusively blitz will help one’s regular time control OTB games.  I know for personal experience when I only played blitz that the better I got at blitz; the trappy openings, the unsound tactics, the reliance on time-burners, the worse I got at regular chess.  It was only once I stopped playing blitz and started analyzing longer games (specifically 30/0 live on chess.com), solving tactical puzzles and reading chess books and online articles (such as Silman’s “Reassess your chess” book and Dan Heisman’s “Novice Nook” online articles) that I saw a significant increase in my Elo of a couple of hundred points (from the 1200s to the 1400s), and I started to get better results in regular OTB chess games. Yes, I know, 1400s is not amazing, but everything is relative in chess improvement, and I only got there by stopping blitz. That exclusive blitz is bad for your chess ability does not appear to be disputed by any strong players; I have yet to see exclusive blitz advocated by any master level chess player, they all advise us regular players to either limit or eliminate blitz.  The controversy stems from whether moderate amounts of blitz are "OK".  Here, advocates suggest that moderate blitz: 1) may help us quickly spot tactics, 2) may help us practice lots of openings and 3) may help us practice playing very quickly for OTB tournament games where time is running out.  I would suggest that it is far more likely that blitz will: 1) mentally reinforce us looking for superficial tactics, find and make a quick move, rather than try and find the best move, 2) receive a poor understanding of openings, their strengths and weaknesses, specifically, a trappy opening that seems great in blitz, due the opponent having insufficient time to take advantage of the weaknesses, may well get destroyed under regular time controls, and 3) provide a poor substitute for playing endgames rapidly under tournament time controls, which would, one would assume, be much better served by actually playing regular 30/0 live games, which can indeed, like tournament games, run into time crunches in the end game; and then practicing playing those 30/0 live endgames fast like you would play tournament endgames fast.  The claim that practicing playing openings and mid-games fast in 5/0 blitz might help playing regular time-control tournament endgames fast seems, at least to me, to be a stretch.  Blitz seems to offer NO BENEFIT for our regular chess playing ability.

Yes, I know blitz is addictive, as a recovering blitz addict myself I can of course attest to this, but is ANY blitz actually good for us? Even a single blitz game starts to lay down neurological pathways in our brain that tell us “MOVE FIRST, THINK LATER”, “MOVE or DIE” etc. etc. Sure, the negative effects of a single blitz game may be negligible, but it is still NEGATIVE and CUMULATIVE, and the more blitz we play, the worse it is for our regular chess ability. Yes, of course, as adults we have the right to do all sorts of things that may not be in our own best interests, as it corresponds to our chess ability, but, I would argue, it is also our duty, as members of the global chess playing community, to think of the children…

I don't know, I started playing serioursly on january and improved a lot in all time controls!  I play blitz 90% time

Children just want to have fun. Can't blame them being attracted to blitz with their youthful hormones. Blitz may not help them improve chess skills but it's alright as long as they don't have ambitions to be a titled player. I myself would prefer to see children playing active games like baseball, football, etc. in the outdoor.

Won't someone please think of the children!

I like bullet.....so poor me. p.s......im 15

I was trying to play along actually (just like I played along with his drunk chess topic).  What kind of post do you expect?  Maybe your next post can be on topic and set a good example for me.

I'm not a member of the RSS.  Although apparently I post often enough to get mixed in with that conspiracy theory stuff.  Maybe I should be honored

On a serious note: I enjoy blitz, specifically 1 min. I am better at long time controls (~4 hours) than anything else, and blitz seems to be improving my play at all time controls. Dunno why, but it works for me.

Apparently it doesn't work as well for everyone else, so blitz should be banned.

Sorry, forgot to add "On a less serious note:"

Someone, please protect our children!!

Oh, well the beer thing made me think you were always goofing around so I didn't bother wading through that monstrous OP (where you even repeat yourself... a once over isn't a bad thing before you post).

I tried to pull the little bits of seriousness out of this.  Here we go...

Worse than they could be?  Yes, of course.  Also the stupid USCF dual rated crap of G/60 and G/30 (barf).

It can build skills able to deal with time trouble.  In today's world of chess that may be a useful skill.  Here's what Pogonina had to say: http://www.chess.com/article/view/playing-blitz

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Now that that's out of the way, I hope those who have never encountered this topic before (because it's been on rerun for years) can feel satisfied with some actual info and we can get back to enjoying the topic.

The belief that blitz hurts or at least does not improve chess ability is an exaggeration. Though the odds are that blitz does not make one better at longer time controls as efficiently, playing blitz is still better than doing nothing. Possibly your serious chess regresses when you play blitz, but no more than it would regress by just staying away from the game.

Blitz is great if you like tactics.

Blitz chess is the best way to attract the young population to play chess. Very few youngster would want to play long time control, sitting until their butt hurts, staring at boards and pieces as if someone would take one or two away, putting their chin on their hands, etc. And blitz chess is the only hope  chess would get TV time. Very few  would want to watch 2 players in still motion.

Some blitzes can be harmful to both children and adults.

In contrast to LIM, it didn't help my tactics at all, instead solidifying some opening systems and familiarizing me with endgame concepts. This is why I think blitz should be a case-by-case decision.

Blitz is convenient to get a game played and done. but I always make it a point to analyse my game after the match. Kinda kicks the side effects of blitz away

He who analyzes blitz is stupid. – Rashid Nezhmetdinov

I didn't say that, that guy did. Just sayin.

lol ok

who's that anyway?

Ouch.

You could at least have googled.