Saturday 19 August 2017

How fast is fast

I've been playing a bit of online chess recently, which is a little surprising, as I am pretty hopeless at it. Part of the difficulty for me is finding the 'sweet spot' of time controls for a player of my age. Bullet Chess (1 min) is way to fast, as I tend to move too slowly. If I'm not mating by move 25 I'm normally doomed. On the other hand 5 minute chess isn't fast enough, as the games tend to drag on (NB in OTB chess, 5 mins is barely enough!).
So at the moment 3 minutes seem to be the mid point, although even this isn't perfect (the first half of the game is fine, its just the last 15 seconds where it all goes wrong). My early experiences at this time control seem promising, but it may take a larger set of games for me to be sure.

2 comments:

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adamponting said...

Hi. What about increment?! You didn't even mention that. Personally, 2 12 is as fast as I go. I ask for 2 17, 5 14 etc. I hate the feeling of being a monkey having to move every 1-2 seconds. Thats not fun, not for me anyway, and it's not chess. Its ridiculous watching GMs doing that. Also I hate that whole 'flagging' thing which Ive learned about from watching banter blitz etc. Yech. Playing with 12+ seconds of inc entirely does away with that awful 'game' of trying to play any move at all, just faster than opponent. Try inc, you'll never go back. Every move is chess, not those other 'variants'. :-) Also, then if it's a 100 move game, you are given more time, every game doesn't end in a pointless time scrabble lottery. 5 minute games with no inc never get to that part of chess.