Why 30/0 is, IMO, the best option for improving your chess…

My proposal is that 30/0 live chess, in which each opponent has 30 minutes to make their moves, is the best option available on Chess.com for improving your chess playing ability, particularly as it corresponds to over the board play. Although blitz, and in particular 5/0 blitz, is much more popular on chess.com, it has been fairly well established that blitz (while admittedly addictively fun) reinforces bad habits for low and medium ranked players (pretty much everyone who is not already a grandmaster).  Yes, once you are a grandmaster you can play very strong games of chess within 5 minutes, but even grandmasters do not claim these are learning experiences that make them stronger players.  Essentially everyone agrees that you have to play longer time controls to get better at chess.  The LONGEST standard time control offered on chess.com is 30/0.  You can offer seeks for longer custom games, but you may be forced to wait a long time to find a strong opponent who accepts your seek, and depending on your filter settings (if they are set too high) such an opponent may never come along.  So, for practical reasons, on chess.com we are stuck with 30/0 being the longest, and thus most useful, live game we can play. AHA! You announce with obvious gusto at the clear flaw in my proposal, why not play online turn-based games, these are INSANELY slow, you could take up to 14 days for a move under certain settings.  Yes, I agree, these correspondence games are indeed valuable, and the open opening-book and free use of the analysis board format of online correspondence games does allow you to penetrate very deeply into any particular game/position you choose (with little to no regard for time), but how well will correspondence chess prepare you for a “real” game of over the board (OTB) tournament chess? No, your opening database and analysis board will not be there on the actual day, and it is a very bad habit to become overly reliant on these crutches.  On that fateful day that you sit down, set up your pieces and actually play a real game of OTB chess, whether against a friend, or at a tournament, your opening book and analysis board will have to be in your head.  Sure, you can compliment your 30/0 games with some correspondence chess, but one who only plays correspondence chess is not preparing themself well for OTB play, IMO.  Ok, ok, you grudgingly admit, 30/0 games clearly have some merit as an option, but what about their downsides? What about the time-trolls that play a couple of moves and then walk away from the game, leaving you to watch their clock slowly tick down for over 25 minutes? Or what about all those filthy cheats who use all that extra time to plug the game into a chess engine and then play the moves the computer program suggests?  Well, those are fair questions, but we would do ourselves an injustice if we did not look at them a little more closely...  Time trolls certainly exist on chess.com, but they seem to disproportionately reside in the shorter time control sections, especially 5/0 blitz.  I remember when I played 5/0 blitz (back in my blitz addicted dark days) that every few games I would encounter someone get into a losing position and then walk away from keyboard (AFK) and let their time slowly tick away.  Very annoying!  However, having played the better of part of fifty 30/0 games to date, this has not happened to me ONE TIME YET!  I have had a player keep me waiting over 15 minutes on a single move, but I can not exclude that it was not just a “deep think”; and even if he was a time troll that is 1/50, very good odds when you compare it to 5/0 blitz!  And regarding cheats, unless you are playing opponents rated over 1800, the chance you are playing a engine-using cheat is close to zero percent.  For the vast majority of us cheating is simply a non-issue. Ok, ok, you hold up your hands, that’s all well and good, but I don’t have the time to play chess for an hour, 5/0 blitz only takes 10 minutes of my time, while 30/0 live can take up to an hour.  Yes, this is true, but I ask you to be honest with yourself.  Think about the last few times you played blitz… I’ll give you a minute… Perhaps you are indeed right and you really did only have 10 minutes for the single quick game of blitz.  But if you are anything like me, you played blitz, like I did, BACK-TO-BACK.  I understand, lay on the therapist's couch, I’m here for you… I’ve been there, blitz has an addictive quality.  In your heart you know it’s bad for you, but you can’t stop playing.  Maybe you only “blitz” for an hour, maybe longer, either way you know you did in fact have the time for a real 30/0 live game.  An honest honorable battle of minds, rather than a quick-fix blitz blunderfest.  For those of you who really don’t have an hour, please consider doing ANYTHING else other than blitz, read a chess book (Silman’s “reassess your chess” 4^th ed. being my go to when blitz addition rears its ugly head) or better yet, spend that 10 minutes doing chess tactical puzzles.  Your chess playing ability will get down on its knees and weep tears of joy if you manage to stop smoking that blitz pipe… Annnyyywayyyyy……

To summarize, neither blitz chess or online correspondence chess prepare you as well for OTB play as 30/0 live chess.  And regarding those of you, and there are MANY, who stick with blitz because they don’t want to get cheated during 30/0 live games, and I know I have said this before, so apologize to those of you who have already heard me “preach” this, IF your goal is to get better at chess then you are, in fact, CHEATING YOURSELF by playing blitz which will reinforce a plethora of bad habits and will not improve your game. This has been both my experience and is the overwhelming consensus of everyone I have discussed this with to date.  Think about it, and then come and join all the serious chess players in 30/0.

Paragraphs are your friend.

Even 30/0 is not sufficient time.In complex positions(tactically sharp) and closely fought endgames with positional advantages oftentimes time trouble destroys the game.Maybe some increment per move would have been good.

tl;dr

30 minutes is still fast

For a standard game 90+30 is the way to go

i think 60 mins is more than good enough. but yeah, the thing is that in 90 30, you get to really get into the endgame properly.

I've taken the advice of several members here and stopped playing blitz completely. I have not had problems getting 30|30 and also 20|15 games when I don't feel I have more than an hour to sit down and play. I think the time increments are the key to getting long time controls that players are willing to play at. It seems they're more willing to play games with 20, 30, and even 40 minutes with a big time increment of 30 seconds or more than starting the game with 60 or more minutes.

I plan to now play only 20|15 or higher in Live chess and will try to analyze the games on the weekends or when I have time. Maybe even post them at Chess.com to seek other players advice and thoughts on them.

30/0 is good, but not enough compared to a real life chess game. But it is true that there is not better option here.

The correct answer is to play in long time controls over the board, and spend half the time you are spending playing chess on here doing more productive things, like studying chess books.

I have not yet have time trouble in a 15/10 game, so why play 30/0?

NO GAME should be played without (at least) a 5 or 10 second bonus.

Game in 15/10 will give you everything that Game in 30/0 does.  And the potential for a "time scramble" seems lower as well.

Surely this site permits Game in 30/5, Game in 30/10, or longer?

The OP likes long-winded paragraphs.  Yes indeed.

He also (apparently) sucks at Blitz, which might explain his diatribe above.  Whatever. 

Improving your english is a better option, walls of text cannot be good..

Standard 30-0 minutes Club.  Please join here, all levels welcomed:

http://www.chess.com/groups/home/standard-30-0-minutes-club

Yes, you have a good point... There is always room for more improvement... However, all things should be considered as being relative, and my long term stagnation in blitz was not helping my chess playing ability. Indeed, it seemed that the better I got at blitz the worse I got at regular OTB chess... To much reliance on unsound openings, cheap tricks and time-burners... None of which helped OTB.  I recently changed to 30/0 and have seen around a 200 Elo point improvement on chess.com, and have had much more success OTB.  I hope this answers your question...

does anyone want to play 45 45 or 75 30 right now?

I can't right now (must finish a grant then go to bed) but I would be willing to play 45 45 in the near future...

True. When I play long otb chess games (90/30) I have to THINK. I play blitz and bullet too much and not really learn anything. And in the turn based games I have full acces to chess books, openings explorer but that not alloed in otb games. Maybe I should try 30/0 more often!

Hopefully you will and perhaps we will have a game, 30/0 is all I play now... However, the actual number of games I play per week has dramatically reduced recentely (I won't go into the details), but unless you are rated between 1400 and 1500 and play on Saturday early afternoons (Pacific Standard Time) the chance of us being matched on chess.com 30/0 live is remote; but you should join the 30/0 pool anyway, it really is the best option for improving your chess...

*looks around*

I shall have to push up to 30|0 games sometime soon. Used to play hours-long games and now I am at 10|0 ha