Rapid, blitz or both?

After reading this I kinda got confused.

https://www.chess.com/blog/Avetik_ChessMood/chess-time-controls-which-is-best-suited-to-you-1

I have always heared that you should play rapid to improve the most. Games like 15+10 or longer (30+). As I won't always have the time to play those games (15+10. Longer isn't an option at the moment) I was looking into articles about blitz and improvement.

What Avetik writes in the article makes sense. Then again if someone made a case about bullet, that would probably also make sense to me Ä

Now I'm puzzled tho. Should I stick with a few games/week with 15+10 or also play blitz from time to time (5+5) for the time pressure and have a bigger gamelist to analyse for improvement?

So basicly:

"Best/fastest" way to improve --> Rapid (15+10 or 30+...), Blitz with increment (5+5) or a combination?

a mix of both......1 blitz game for every 3 15+10 games.the most important thing is to think and play and not on intuition. u can improve playing blitz as well,but u will need to think atleast a little deep which u would not 

Thanks!

The trouble with playing too much blitz is that it promotes superficial thinking that is not going in the position deep enough and working hard on the chess board, this is a problem if u r a regular OTB tournament player who plays mainly in classical time control events, however if u only play in rapid OTB events like weekend one day tournaments then playing too much blitz won't affect u adversely 

It's absolutely amazing that none of the guys who replied did bother to read the linked article. Or at least it seems they didn't.

I like the mix idea but I would stick to 15:10 because it gives enough time to think and the increment as the article tells will keep you from the urge to flag and fail to mate winning positions. 

It is amazing indeed!
Sadly I see it everywhere, where people ask questions. Also, be ware about telling people they didn't read or answered besides the question. They will be angry at you for not accepting their help ...

What you should go through the lessons, but I would not know for sure since I do not go through them enough.

If you want to improve, then play 15|10 and analyse your lost games.
If for fun, play blitz.

Play Longer Time Controls...
For many at the beginner-novice level, speed chess tends to be primarily an exercise in moving pieces around faster than your opponent while avoiding checkmate, in hopes that his/her clock runs out sooner than yours.  And/or hoping to notice and exploit your opponent’s blunders while hoping they don't notice yours.  The reason for this is that in speed chess there is little time to think about what you should be doing.

It makes sense that taking more time to think about what you should be doing would promote improvement in your chess skills and results.  An effective way to improve your chess is therefore to play mostly longer time controls, including "daily" chess, so you have time to think about what you should be doing.

This is not to suggest that you should necessarily play exclusively slow or daily time controls, but they should be a significant percentage of your games, at least as much, if not more so than speed games which, while they may be fun, do almost nothing to promote an understanding of how to play the game well.

Here's what IM Jeremy Silman, well-known chess book author, has to say on the topic...
https://www.chess.com/article/view/longer-time-controls-are-more-instructive

And Dan Heisman, well-known chess teacher and chess book author…
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627052239/http:/www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman16.pdf
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/dan-heisman-resources

and the experience of a FIDE Master...
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-blitz-and-bullet-rotted-my-brain-don-t-let-it-rot-yours

Learn what you should be doing...

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Rapid is good for not raging, however you get to play less games.
Blitz is good just for fun and you get to play more games. 
You should play both and also consider bullet.

rapid is the best way to improve chess level.

Blitz is the best way to lose chess level, strategy and other things.

When you have a good level in rapid, you can easily increase your blitz ratings

One of the things NOT considered in the articles is the use of dedicated/standalone chess computers for improvement. Indeed the idea of owning such a chess computer might seem laughable nowadays. However way back in Oct 22 I purchased six old dedicated computers, selected from the weakest to the strongest I could afford - they are all very cheap btw. Here is my experience:-

Whereas my chess abilities decrease very rapidly with lower time constraints - I have analysed lots of my games and this is very evident - the 'droop' is nowhere near as severe with chess computers. They seem to use the same algorithms to evaluate a chess position irrespective of set time allowances. This effectively means you can cut down your computer's time and give you more thinking time for your time spent. This is very efficient!

Even the weakest chess computers can be very mean with tactics, combined with strong positional algorithms they can't be played recklessly. They will not overlook a 2-move mate for example. The weakest have computer rating as low as 1000, but you can add 100 to 200 for human players as they are far more consistent.

Thirdly, almost all these chess computers will save the game till the next chess improvement session - this feature is sadly absent with on-line Bots where games once started need to be finished.

Fourthly, such old chess computers play more 'standard/solid' openings than on-line players. This enables more efficient learning as you don't need to deal with massive variety of anti-learning openings of real on-line players who are playing mainly for entertainment.

And lastly games played are of far more worth analysing than on-line real-player games as errors are more likely due to poor thinking than time hassles. Also note that these computer don't use Li-Ion batteries so there is no need to throw away your device when the battery has been recharged 500+ times!

The main drawback, of course, is the lack of automatic recording of the games.

If you are, say, a sub-1500 player than purchasing an old dedicated computer is well worth consideration as an improvement device/trainer, especially giving how unbelievable cheap such machines are. Modern chess computers unfortunately tend to be very expensive and frankly way above most player's levels - however even the cheapest commonly available Lexibook (in the UK) is still rated up to the 1800+ range and remains quite cheap - I don't own one but from it's hardware specs it would certain give 1500- players a very tough game if desired.

In the UK you can pick up for 20GBPs or less machines that would beat most chess.com players with a computer game setting limited to less than 5 seconds per move!

Indeed, giving my experience, I would say any beginner would be well advised to start off with a dedicated chess computer of some sort + a beginner's chess book (Soviet Primer!?), than suffer the speed-freakery of on-line low-level game play.  Just an opinion! 

BTW: My weakest chess computer is a Novag Solo - travel computer with rating of 900 to 1000. It's so cute! For value-for-rating and purchasable new I would recommend the Millennium ChessGenius.

PS: Chess.com needs to vastly improve it's low level bots, I have tried them and they suck in comparison for learning experience!