[washmyelbows]

"Only about 10% of players ever gain more than 100 points, and only about 1% of players gain more than 200 rating points given years."

This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study, just some light YouTube watching. 500->800 felt like all it took was learning a few openings and not blundering pieces. 800-1050 felt like it came mostly from getting familiar with the common patterns from those openings that led to advantages/disadvantages. Most of my learning here came from reviewing my own games and trying to understand why my mistakes were mistakes.

I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. The time constraints are too rushed to really think about what makes a move good or bad. I assumed it was a young person's thing, but the author said he plays these quick formats too.

[chongli]

If you follow the link to the data analysis [1] you’ll see that the argument is based on higher rated players. Low rated players have much higher variance in their rating and can improve by quite a lot, just by learning to stop blundering. That’s basically the situation you’re in.

Getting to 2000 rating is going to be quite a mountain to climb for you, unless you’re very young.

[1] https://github.com/jcw024/lichess_database_ETL/blob/main/REA...

[Someone]

But that’s not surprising at all if you assume every player has a ‘ceiling’ performance they can attain, isn’t it?

Higher rated players tend to be closer to their potential than lower rated ones, leaving less room for improvement, in any sport. They also will be more likely to get worse over time because, the nearer to the top, the more roads lead you downwards.

You’d have to pick a very peculiar metric to measure performance to compensate for that.

[Zyst]

I play competitive games in tournaments. I would disagree with your characterization.

Yes, people have a skill ceiling. However, it’s not something you’re ever going to get to by just playing most games.

People naturally improve at games when they start playing. Some factors being more familiarity with the game, and making less mistakes. However, people will stall out at different ratings at that point.

However, if you do deliberate practice in the game you will absolutely continue to get better. If you’re practicing specific scenarios, have focused areas of improvement, coaching, analyze your own replays, record your practice, and watch it: You will improve.

Yes, abstractly a “skill ceiling” out there exists for you, but you’re extremely unlikely to ever reach it in a game of skill unless you’re trying to go pro in it.

If putting time in were all that were required to reach your skill ceiling, we would have way more League of Legends Grandmasters. Unless you assume the people that go pro are all just more talented, and that their practice doesn’t make a difference.

[esrauch]

I'm not sure about Leagues rating system but I would definitely believe that the top echelon in most serious sports/games is reserved for people who are both more talented and also hardcore practice.

I play chess and the GM level is above the skill cap of some talented people who have put in dedicated practice since a child and are a full time professional dedicated player as an adult. The median talent at full time dedication for their whole life wouldn't reach that level, and no one who only started the game at age 20 has ever reached that level regardless of natural talent. Some of the most famous players never attain that level, including some full time professional players that are known figures today (like Eric Rosen) and historical chess theory leaders (like Jeremy Silman).

And in practice "just" GM level isn't even good enough to be a top tier player: the top 100 players can trounce the lowest GMs.

I would assume the same applies to any other game/sport that has the cache for people to train at it from childhood like Tennis, Basketball, etc.

[Someone]

> However, if you do deliberate practice in the game you will absolutely continue to get better

I strongly disagree. I think that, for a given amount of effort (hours and study intensity) you’re willing to spend, everybody has a ceiling that they can reach. If what you say is true, why hasn’t Magnus Carlsen reached ELO 2900? Lack of deliberate practice? ELO deflation requiring players to get better to keep the same rating?

Ignoring that, the discussion isn’t whether you’ll continue getting better, but whether you’ll keep improving at the same rate.

> Unless you assume the people that go pro are all just more talented, and that their practice doesn’t make a difference.

I don’t see how that follows. I think the top is both extremely talented, extremely motivated, and physically strong enough to do the hours of concentrated practice.

I think it’s easier to see in physical sports. If you’re 2m tall and have enough motor skills to run and catch a ball, you’ll likely be ‘good’ at basketball in high school, even if you don’t practice much or well. To make it in the NBA, you have to be 2m tall _and_ have above average motor skills _and_ be above average robust, so that you can play x games a year without getting injured, _and_ be more willing to exercise than mossy to get stronger and more agile _and_ be above average good at reading the game.

[jyscao]

>I think that, for a given amount of effort (hours and study intensity) you’re willing to spend, everybody has a ceiling that they can reach.

I disagree with your disagreement, because simply controlling for total studying time and intensity is too reductionist. Different players have different sticking points when it comes to chess, e.g. weak strategic planning, weak tactics, poor positional understanding, bad endgames, etc. Your implicit assumption is that most players at some playing strength, are at that playing strength in all aspects of their game. In practice, that's simply not the case for many.

To give a concrete example, my classical rating on lichess hovers around 1800, but if you look at my tactics puzzle rating it's well above 2000, suggesting it's the positional and strategic aspects of the game that I'm weak at, which anecdotally feels true based on how I both win and lose most of my games. If I were to get a coach or deliberately work on those weaker aspects of my game myself (something I have not done), so that they're no longer the bottleneck of my performance, I could very well break this rating plateau I've been stuck in for the past half decade or so, and shoot up another 100 or even 200 points. I also have a friend of similar strength level, who has the opposite profile as me: strong positional and strategic understanding, weak tactics. And despite more or less an even record, whenever we play against each other, his wins are almost always grinds, while my wins are usually some tactical shot he missed or blundered into.

The bottom line is, at my strength level, and I'd hypothesize even up to the low to mid-2000s rating levels, these unbalanced types of players are probably more common than balanced players with similar ratings in all aspects of their game to their overall rating. The latter kind, you might be able to argue, have reached their natural ceiling; but even here I'd be surprised if they cannot improve more by deliberately strengthening aspects of their game. Conversely, based on my experience of 10+ years playing chess regularly, the vast majority of players simply don't have a good understanding of their own weaknesses. Many unbalanced players like myself, with the correct type of training and practice, even if total time isn't too much, can absolutely make significant improvements to their overall performance.

>If what you say is true, why hasn’t Magnus Carlsen reached ELO 2900? Lack of deliberate practice? ELO deflation requiring players to get better to keep the same rating?

In the case of top-level IMs, GMs, and certainly super GMs, who don't have glaring weaknesses in any aspects of their game, it's likely the case that they indeed did reach their ceiling. But these are the only people I'd be at all confident in making such claims.

[zelphirkalt]

And not to forget to avoid disappointment: An online 2000 is maybe an offline 1800 or so. Online ratings are in general higher than what people actually have offline.

[Oreb]

That’s pretty much the opposite of how I feel. I can win against much stronger players over the board than online. It’s so hard to summon the same focus and energy in an online game.

[chongli]

It’s just a fact that online ratings are inflated. Hikaru Nakamura is rated 3231 (at the moment I write this) in blitz on chess.com but 2874 in blitz over the board, according to FIDE. That’s a difference of 357 rating points!

Of course, Hikaru has admitted that he deliberately works to inflate his online rating and has talked about the differences in the rules/mechanics online. For him, the lack of an increment in his online games (FIDE over the board blitz has an increment) and his well-practiced mouse skills help him a lot. Hikaru can flag a lot of people from a losing position, so he gets many more wins than he would have over the board. He also says he deliberately “farms” lower rated players to boost his rating by a small amount, and avoids games against dangerous opponents who are underrated (due to a lack of online play).

[_fizz_buzz_]

I am not sure if that is generally true. It’s true for lichess and chess.com (compared to ELO) It really has only to do with the formula they use. They have different formulas. I think e.g. lichess has a formula so that the median is centered around 1500. This is different from how ELO is calculated. I would assume if they all had the same way to calculate the rating, it should be somewhat close.

[smatija]

Yes and no - they use different systems, but even if they used same system ratings would be different.

This is since ratings only measure player's performance relative to other players in the same poll. A lot more people (and a lot more begineers) play online than in FIDE rated tournaments. So playing poll in tournaments is stronger than online playing poll, so even if we assume same rating system in all cases, players will have lower ratings in tournament play than online.

What complicates matters further is that playing polls aren't totally unified - in FIDE Elo ratings it's possible to see regional differences (indians for example are in general underrated), since playing poll is segmented by distance (due to travel costs not a lot of players play internationally). Additionally COVID19 made a total mess of ratings, since there was not enough events last few years, so majority of younglings are underrated due to not playing enough rated games, while improving as fast as the previous generation.

FIDE is currently deciding on rating reform, which will be implemented in january, trying to handle this situation.

What complicates matters even more is that FIDE Elo algorithm is not optimized for accuracy, but for calculations by hand (try calculating glicko2 rating change without computer!), so glicko2 more accurately predicts player performance.

And finally, time controls differ a lot between online and tournament play. Online even 5minutes feels slow, while in tournaments 90min+30sec/move is one of shorter time controls. Performance between slow and fast play is in general correlated, but this correlation is weaker at higher ratings (since both sides of the game have some non-transferable skills, so blitz specialists for example exists).

[Suffocate5100]

"unless you’re very young."

You mean, "unless you have unlimited time."

[hinkley]

I’ve known this guy off and on for years. When we first met 15+ years he was slightly better at Go than me, which was middling amateur. All the Go books say if you want to be a pro you have to start as a child.

But he studied, and studied, and last I knew he was 3 dan, which is about the point you can entertain the idea of becoming a pro (if I just worked harder).

Kids have a lot more free time to sink into a singular concern. Warnings about how something are out of the reach of adults aren’t actually hard rules, they’re just really good rules of thumb. But if you can make the time, it’s not impossible.

I don’t think chess is any different there. Small improvements may set reasonable expectations, but there are people who can blow right past them.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

You're right I think. Most adults really don't improve at chess very often. They do when it's a new hobby, but then they plateau. And it's not that they couldn't improve further, it's just that they're not able or willing to do the things necessary, which is usually a lot of exercise and study. It's just a hobby for most people at the end of the day, and they'd rather spend an hour at the club discussing and blitzing some silly openings with friends than spend an hour solving puzzles or studying endgames. We still all carry the illusion of some prospect of improvement, that's the human condition. But most people don't take it very seriously and are more in it for social reasons.

[hinkley]

It clearly aggravated some of the people at the Go club that I was not improving past hobbyist. But the thing I didn’t share with them is that all through my childhood, I would try new things and if I wasn’t instantly mediocre or better at it I would decide this was no fun and drop it. If you are good at enough things you can fill your weeks with activities and ignore the things you aren’t good at.

Being bad at Go and still playing anyway was an exercise in personal growth.

[nebulous1]

> but there are people who can blow right past them

Ultimately, I think this is what's often downplayed in these conversations. Just because your friend was able to excel at Go in those 15 years, doesn't imply that any other specific person would be able to do the same, even with the same study. You'll find many people who attempted this but simply couldn't get past a lower plateau.

So, when you say "if you can make the time, it’s not impossible", I'm not sure that that's true. My suspicion would be that for a significant portion of the population, it would in fact be literally impossible. (edit: I was reading a different thread where somebody was asking about becoming a FIDE CM, that's what I was referencing here as being impossible for many, I don't know anything about Go ranks).

[hinkley]

I’ve known too many people who get into their own heads about certain topics. They lock up and become impervious to new information.

There are certainly people who need new genes. And there are people who need a new teacher. But boy oh boy are there a lot of people who would get better at difficult tasks if they got therapy.

[pmontra]

A friend of mine devised an empirical rule to predict the highest Go ranking that a player will reach: the ranking after the first 4 years of play plus 4.

You can check that on https://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/ and pick some players at random.

They have a nice date/rank graph and all those graphs start with an almost vertical growth which slows down and flattens. Some players play less often and get weaker but that's not the point.

I have no idea if it applies to chess too, possibly with different parameters, but why not? They are both games played with the brain by humans.

[prometheus76]

I think this might be related to the pareto distribution of productivity in my line of work (steel fabrication). Our most productive employees are literally 10 times more productive than the least productive. And it's always the same people at the top of the list, and always the same people at the bottom. If you pair them together, the productive employee loses 10-20% of productivity while they're together, and the less productive employee improves by 5-10%, but as soon as you separate them, they go back to where they were before.

[pmontra]

I'm curious about this.

One question is what happens if you pair two of the top performers or two of the bottom ones? My prediction is that nothing changes.

The second one is related to the point of my comment. Can you build a graph date/performance? That could show curves similar to the ones of the go players and show how long it takes to flatten the curve.

[prometheus76]

If you pair two top performers, they get slowed down by 10-20% because they each have their own way of approaching the work, and there's usually conflict as they are each convinced of their own way. They work even faster, however, if you put them next to each other, but working separately. They watch each other and start tacitly competing. You'll get another 10% out of them generally.

As for pairing the two lowest producers, they'll sink even more as they are confused by what the other person is doing and it slows them down.

Changing someone's level of productivity is essentially untrainable in my experience. It's not a training issue. The people at the bottom know how to do the work, but any attempt to show them a more efficient way of doing it is overwhelming and confusing to them, and they shut down.

[me_me_me]

They say you need to start as a kid for 2 main reasons, one as you mentioned time. Second is survivor bais. There are way more kids that suck as chess/whatever and stop playing than prodigies on path to become grandmasters.

[shric]

> I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. The time constraints are too rushed to really think about what makes a move good or bad. I assumed it was a young person's thing, but the author said he plays these quick formats too.

I'm 47 and started playing around 5 years ago. I only play Blitz and Bullet because I find it fun. In the first two years I went from around 1000 on lichess to around 1700. I've been "stuck" at 1700 plus or minus 100 since then.

I know I could improve with puzzles and classical time controls and study and analysis but I have no interest in that. I play games for fun. If I improve then great. If not no problem. It's the same as breaking out a game of Tetris or something for 5 minutes to me.

[FartyMcFarter]

If you analyse the blitz games after playing them, that can bridge some of the gap.

[me_me_me]

I would disagree with that on few levels.

Blitz chess is already what a lot of people consider a variant. In Blitz format there are strategies and tricks that are outright blunders in longer time controls.

The biggest improvement by far for a casual player (at stage where you have some higher chess concepts understood) is to memorise.

Memorise and understand principles of openings lines (lines you want to play as white - few, more in depth, and most common lines you see being played - more, less in depth as black)

Memorise mating patters, there are certain setups that occur on board, knowing them can help playing them when they happen, or better angling to set them up yourself.

This was what made me drop chess as a teen. High level chess is a looot about memorisation. And that was when magic of chess disappeared for me :/

As a counterpoint to what you said, going back through your own game might not show you why and where you made a root cause mistake. If you dont have a background knowledge you will not know what to look for. And its rather a surface glance that you will 'get and forget' as soon as you start next game.

Better approach would be to study the positions you played after you are done playing for the day, or coming back to them on some other day.

[shric]

Yes, but I have no patience for that. As soon as one game is done I've either had enough of chess for now or want the dopamine hit of the next game immediately.

[narag]

This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study,

Is rating on chess.com similar to rating in lichess? The article mentions 1%, but you start with 1500 in lichess??? If you lose often, you quickly go down. But if you keep an even record, you stay in 1500.

I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games.

As in the article, speed training helps recognizing patterns and dealing with them. At first it seems impossible to play significant moves with so little time, but you can try to just doing it. You'll adapt very soon.

I recommend starting with blitz 3+2 and later bullet 2+1. There are tournaments of 1+0... or even less time. 30 seconds is really crazy.

[VonGallifrey]

> If you lose often, you quickly go down. But if you keep an even record, you stay in 1500.

Is that actually true? You start at a 1500 in lichess, but that is a provisional rating and the outcome of your first few games are going to cause BIG swings in your rating. After your rating is no longer a provisional rating then that is going to slow down.

Losing a few games at the start might take a lot more wins to "even out" in rating. Just keeping an even record might not be enough to stay 1500.

[narag]

After your rating is no longer a provisional raing and the outcome of your first few games are going to cause BIG swings in your rating.

The rating algorithm is suppossed to be predictive. It's only natural that the first data points cause big swings, but the amplitude will narrow after a few games.

Then, providing you win the same number of games that you lose, you stabilize. Will you keep around 1500? I think so, because the algorithm selects oponents with similar rating and with my own mediocre ratings over 1500, lichess tells me that I'm better than 60% of blitz players and 65% of bullet players.

There's a caveat though. Ratings in Lichess are not "lineal". There are annoying discontinuities. I get stuck at some level but, if I manage to go up 50 points, I get easier (but better rated) oponents and raise another 100 points. Conversely, if I get down a certain level, I can expect to sink even more.

[getoffmycase]

I am currently in a run playing rapid 5|5 because I found myself consistently running out of time in longer time controls. To me, improving at rapid is making significant progress in my overall chess abilities. I developed a better understanding of end games and openings , so that I can spend more time being careful in the middle game. Recently I noticed that I don’t run out of time in Rapid, and that’s progress to me, regardless of my ELO

[smatija]

Rating on chesscom is wildly different than on lichess in lower rating ranges.

300 cc should be similiar to around 800 lichess. Around 2000-2200 ratings even out on both sites and on higher ratings lichess ratings tend to be lower than on cc.

For improving longer time controls are better. The old adage, that if you want to play blitz better you should play rapid and that if you want to improve rapid you should play classical is still valid today. Blitz is beneficial only at higher rating ranges (2000+) to allow practising openings, and even that only in moderation. Players who don't play classical time controls (90min+30sec/move at least) tend to plateau around 2000-2200 online.

This ofc doesn't mean that blitz isn't fun - vast majority of my games are in blitz time controls.

[narag]

300 cc should be similiar to around 800 lichess.

800 is very low in Lichess. If you can think just two moves ahead without losing pieces, you get 1000 easily.

For improving longer time controls are better.

Yes and no. There are different aspects to the game. Every variety is good for something.

After playing a lot of bullet, I win easily in blitz just because the time advantage. But the reverse is also true. After playing more slower games, my fast games get better.

And there are some parts of the game that you just need to sit down with a book and a couple of boards.

[erfgh]

Some people just want to have fun and that's what blitz is for. Why are people so preoccupied with improving when it comes to chess? If any other game is mentioned the discussion will not be so centered on improvement as it is with chess. Maybe it is because chess has this air of a "thinking man's game" which does not really deserve. It's just a game like any other.

[cyrillaw]

Once a certain acumen is reached, chess becomes a much better spectator sport.

Older games become interesting to watch, mate in 6-8 puzzles become tenable, chess books about specific openings make more sense. Once a player knows how to finish basic endgames and accord himself properly in the middle game, they have the tools to grasp opening theory. From there on, there is a huge body of information about opening theory, playing styles, control and leverage of center, etc etc.

Much of the ink spilled about this game is a bit impenetrable without some acumen. But with enough appreciation to the past and present trends, one can fine tune one's playing style and really make the game your own.

[nicky0]

Because learning and improving is part of the pleasure of chess. It's a game you can enjoy to play, but also enjoy to study. As you improve, there's a tangible sense of progression which is rewarding. And the scope for progression goes very very deep.

Not all other games have this feature. If I play Catan with my friends, it's fun, but then the game is over. I'm not going to analyse my game and discover new tactics or strategies, like I will with chess.

[mathgeek]

> Because learning and improving is part of the pleasure of chess.

Important to remember this is not a universal truth for all people.

> If I play Catan with my friends, it’s fun…

Interestingly, you and I seem to be opposites here. I only play chess for fun and never care if I improve, but spent thousands of hours in my college years analyzing and improving at Catan. I wonder if this is simply a matter of whether one prefers deterministic or stochastic games for optimization.

[vjerancrnjak]

I mostly played blitz with openings where queen is moved in the first 3 moves and got to ~2000 (no proof, sorry). I didn't study chess at all outside of playing it intensely for 1-2 years. Of course, my end game was also very bad. It was such a frustrating fun I had to stop.

There are of course players that know how to fully exploit mistakes in the bad openings, but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matter, especially if the opponent has to exploit a weird opening you have.

There's many more patterns related to pinning, tempo, that are worth much more for quick rating progress.

[drexlspivey]

> but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matte

No way you get to 2000 by cheesing, maybe 1000 max. 2000 rating is not low, it’s top 0.3% on chess.com

[smatija]

It's possible, if unlikely - wayward queen is not as bad as it looks (black has maybe a tiny bit more than equality), most players don't face it often (so probably don't have a lot of prep memorized) and in blitz time controls it's hard to find optimal punishment for subpar opening play. And 2000 is not that high again - top 0.3% on chess com is maybe top 50% of tournament players.

Online chess has a lot of begineers, since its more approachable.

[pedrekz]

Everyone who’s higher rated than 500 can see that you’re lying, I don’t know why you insist. Yes, you’re not immediately losing the game if you play the right moves, but it stops being a “trick” waaaay before you’re 2000, even in blitz. You don’t need any “prep”.

Edit: you’re not the same person from the comment above, my bad

[smatija]

2000 rated players of course won't get mated in 3 moves, but position after 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Qf3 is not unplayable for White - Black is equal or maybe just a little bit better.

In lichess Blitz database for 2200+ rated players there are 13883 games with this position. White won 50%, drew 7% and lost 43%.

Of course this position is nothing to write home about, but for online Blitz it's good enough.

[vjerancrnjak]

edit: what the other responder says

I'm not saying I'm mating people in 3 moves. There are many unique mating opportunities in queen openings and many ways to create immense pressure on the king's side if the player does not defend well. Try it yourself and you'll quickly see that -2000 rated players (online) struggle with it. Similarly, you're not sacrificing development and you castle at the same moment (sometimes after black).

For example, many games I would get my queen attacked on F3 and then I would lose my rook. But this 3 move knight play on the opponents side gives you a lot of moves to create pressure, in one case you can have 3 pieces developed, while opponent has 0 (excluding the knight stuck in the corner). With the queen on king's side, you have a lot of options to equalize. If opponent is focused on saving the knight, the moves are just bad.

In 2+1 and 3 min blitz it's unlikely you'll get someone that won't make the position almost even after 10 moves.

The biggest hurdle to progress was my endgame and in blitz I found that being a piece down is rarely an indicator of loss at that level. + I did win a lot on time.

I was playing 200-250 blitz games a day and would analyze many, but I never bothered with openings. I quit because it was obviously too much.

[bongodongobob]

No one is saying you won in 3 moves. You didn't accidentally get to 2000 by playing trash openings, period.

[bongodongobob]

I don't believe this for a second, sorry. 2000 is very highly rated and you're not getting there by pulling your queen out right away.

[kqr]

The author says specifically blitz/bullet is suboptimal for learning, for precisely the reasons you mention. The author plays these types of games to kill boredom.

[mseidl]

I've been playing chess since I was 6, and I'm 7 now.

You should learn endgame and tactics, the basics of opening and maybe a few openings. endgame will teach chess. openings teaches you openings. especially when you're a beginner people will make moves that don't make sense. Plus aren't there like over 4 or 5 quadrillion possible moves just within the first 10 moves?

[FartyMcFarter]

It doesn't necessarily matter that there are quadrillions of possible openings. Studying traps that occur often in the openings you play is definitely helpful.

For example, if you're an 1. e4 e5 player you'll want to learn how to counter the Fried Liver attack, as it's one of the most popular lines at the beginner to intermediate level.

You don't need to know many lines 7 moves deep either, just a couple of moves is already very helpful.

[lostlogin]

Are you able to confirm there isn’t a typo here? You’re 7?

[ACow_Adonis]

with comments back past 2018 i think it's safe to say its a typo xD

[antaviana]

Maybe they started to procrastinate in HN when they were 2.

[psychlops]

Exactly, the ageism here at HN is outrageous.

[mseidl]

It wasn't a typo. I was making a joke.

[kqr]

Is this advice not going in the exact opposite direction to what looks like a well-researched TFA with an n=1 experiment to back it up? Why do you think your opinion differs?

[bjornlouser]

TFA mentions that their openings preparation didn't help much, and mentions next steps as learning "Basic Endgames".

The minute you stop blundering pieces you find yourself in a nearly even endgame.

[david927]

I can only speak from my experience but blitz worked for me. I would make occasional, furtive attempts to learn but nothing ever worked. Then one day I started playing a single five minute lichess game with coffee in the morning at work. And when I would make a mistake, I would do a takeback to see what I did wrong and how I should have played it. Sometimes I would play the puzzles.

Doing this and nothing else, I went up about 100 points a year for five years, from 1200 to 1700. (And then I stopped but I also could tell that I would have to start approaching it differently to go further.)

[vasco]

I love quick games, 3min blitz being my favorite and I suck at chess. It makes it almost a different game to me. I stopped playing for years because my memory of chess was slow boring waiting. Blitz is just full on, all the time.

[imjonse]

You may learn up to a stage, when a complete beginner, by quickly and repeatedly being exposed to basic mistakes without having to think much. Afterwards it is probably detrimental indeed.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

As someone who is at 1000 and also one of those people who only slam blitzes, I can confirm that one benefits from it only to a point, mostly developing skill in quickly reading the board and identifying the low-hanging-fruit moves.

[matsemann]

Yup, starting to play 2+1 increased my 5+3 rating by 200 up to 1800 (lichess). But continuing to play 2+1 with no analysis or thought hasn't increased my rating further.

I do only play for fun / to kill time, though. So a few games a day on a metro or whatever. So with no aspirations to actually improve I think I'm at the peak of my natural ability.