The Psychology of Blitz Chess

Making Adjustments from Slow to Fast Time Controls in the Royal Game

For thousands of people, the real test of chess skill lies not in the tournament hall, where single games routinely last five, six, and even seven or eight hours each. Instead, these people, primarily made up of the hardcore veterans of Internet Chess Servers, feel that blitz chess with games lasting only a few minutes are the real test of chess prowess. While this is much a matter of opinion and personal taste, the differences between blitz chess and chess classical time controls are worth noting and studying because they can help you play better in both your fast and slow time control games.

As chess is a mental game, the majority of changes you have to make in your play when going from fast time controls to slow time controls (or the other way around) are mental ones. However, there are a few physical things to keep in mind, and I think exploring these are a good way to start thinking about how we should change our play.

First, it's obvious that your frequency of moving is going to be increased. In fact, you're often going from making two or three moves every ten minutes to making hundreds of moves in ten minutes time. Being physically alert is a top priority for this very reason: you don't want to outplay your opponent, but lose on time just because you took your time to make your moves slowly. That is, once you decide on your move, which will usually just take seconds, you should move it quickly and also quickly hit the clock. I've seen hundreds of people in my lifetime who could have improved their blitz results dramatically by just moving their hands faster when they were playing.