Long chess games

So, today I decided to come back and play long chess to improve my otb play and overrall chess skills. So my questions our: does playing longer chess games help improve your chess or is it just a hoax. Also, I'm addicted to playing blitz games. (3min games). I'm trying to break this habit and get into playing longer games. How do I break this habit? Last, when I'm playing long games I tend to move really fast and lose. This is a on going problem for me. How do I break that? Thanks in advance for your comments.

Timeless

You will get both yes and no answers from all the different people on the site about it being a hoax or not.  Only you will be able to answer that by playing longer games and seeing for yourself, by watching you're ratings and improvement as time goes on.  The only way to break the habit is by staying away from blitz games for a few months and dedicating yourself to OBT play.  If you are serious about breaking the habit you have.

To break the habit of playing fast and loose on you OBT games, you will need to re-educate yourself in playing slowly and consider all you're moves before making them.  That is the best advice I can give you.  I hope it helps.

The rest is up to you.  

Thanks, I just get excited and move after I see my first good move.

Don't we all...lol

lol

Long time controls will actually improve your blitz.  Playing tons of blitz will improve your long chess but very very slowly.  One way to break the habit is to get a collection of games (either a book like the Zurich 1953 or lets say 50 games off of chessgames.com of a favorite player or WC match which is free) and take the games and play guess the move or otherwise analyse them.

Guess the move is you take the side of your favorite player (or maybe the side that won or the side that uses an opening that's interesting) play out 10 or so moves on the board, and the cover up your sides moves with a piece of paper.  Use a notebook to write down the best moves and series of moves you see (it's important to not move the pieces on the board when doing this as if it were a tournament game).  Also note which side has the advantage and why and what each side is playing for ect.

After you give it a lot of thought check to see if you were right by uncovering the move and also play the opponent's response (you're only guessing for one side here).  Silman suggests a similar method using his imbalances and notes that at first this may be a very slow process, but as you fill up your notebook you'll get better at it.  I've noticed some games are a bit boring and some are exciting, if you commit yourself to 5 games only just to get the feel of it, it may help to get over the hump of running into a few boring ones at first -- if it happens at all.

After you get the book or DL some of the game onto your computer, unplug your modem and put it away or in some way make a commitment to only get online an hour a day or something.  If you challenge yourself to find the best moves for a month like this it will naturally slow your play down (even after a week), and as an added bonus when you go back to blitz, you'll have learned a ton of new patterns and ideas you can throw into your play.

When I see a good move in blitz I automatically play it, but in a long time control I find myself agonizing over small details sometimes, and I almost always run low on time.  You can get used to playing both ways

I play turn based here pretty much exclusively.  I find it's fantastic for my chess and horrible for my time management capabilities when I switch to a shorter time control.