practice question

What's better for a new player (900-1100 elo) to learn? Quick or long games?

For your level: try 5+3 games PLUS 15+10. When you get better (e.g., ~1600), then mix 5+0/5+5/10+5 games (but do not ABANDON the longer time controls w/ increment), when you're 1800 put it in the mix 3+0 and/or 3+2 games.
Before you go to sleep, repeat to yourself: 'Bullet is cancer!'

P.S.: If you have the opportunity to play anything longer than 15+10, say, in a simul vs. a titled player, DO.

Long games are better but you can get more games in the same time playing Blitz. So it is up to you as long as you learn something from them i.e. analyze them.

Classical games and analyze them . And reducing time step by step

The longer, the better.

900-1100 elo? All you will learn by playing bullet, blitz and short time format games are bad habits. Just look at the number of games probably the majority of online "blitzers" have under their belts...Often thousands of games and still stuck at 1400-1600. So, unless you are a person with exceptional ability, blitz is perhaps the worst possible form of chess for you. My own experience is a case in point. When I started playing again less than one year ago, all I played was blitz and I learned absolutely nothing. When I switched to correspondence I quickly rose to a highest rating of 2038 and was astonished how many players don't even understand basic opening principles and chess fundamentals. Blitz just swept me up in its current and I pushed pieces and pawns like a 6-year-old. Correspondence chess gave me firm ground to stand on and properly survey and evaluate the game as it evolved on the board.

Analysis? The vast majority of players never develop that very useful art and you should definitely try your hand at it from day one. Never mind concerning yourself with "inaccuracies" and "simple mistakes". Just limit yourself to finding blunders during your post-mortem and understanding how they could have been avoided...That will be more than sufficient for you as your focus should be to play safe, solid, blunder-free chess at this level.

As for bullet and blitz, you will get your lot of thrills out of them but the time would certainly be used more productively studying a book like "Smithy's Opening Fundamentals" which is a free interactive book on

Chess is a thinking person's game and unless you have a vast store of patterns in your brain you can recall at a moment's notice during bullet or blitz, you are essentially "reinventing the wheel" if your knowledge is simply "experienced-based": you will therefore always get into time pressure and will no longer be able to dedicate your mind to thinking which is necessary to playing well and improving.

What you really need to learn at this level are:

1- "opening principles and chess fundamentals", not openings. The quickest way to learn these is to either get them through a YouTuber, a book or one-pager pdf if you absolutely hate to read...Another way is to play through the first 10 moves of master games. Soon enough you will understand that multiple pawn moves in an opening are a rather rare occurence and that the masters develop their pieces as quickly and as accurately as possible before starting offensive operations...
2- how to control the impulse to move immediately without first applying some sort of pre-move checklist to help you avoid making blunders and egregious mistakes and spot when others do.
3- how to play safe, solid positional chess and capitalize on your opponents' blunders as they are ubiquitous at your level.
4- basic tactics, probably beginning with checkmating patterns.

You are much better off playing 15 correspondence games simultaneously with very long time limits than playing bullet, blitz or any other shorter time control. You want to take the clock out of the equation at your level as it introduces unproductive pressure on you to move when what you should really concern yourself with is understanding basic things such as the importance of quickly and harmoniously developing your pieces in the opening, creating weaknesses in your opponents pawn structure, the use of outposts in conducting an efficient attack, the dangers of launching a premature attack, etc.

Only when you are capable of playing solid, blunder-free chess should time-management begin to be a concern of yours.

If you want to learn play long games.
If you are like me and you want to dig your own grave of speed chess addiction instead of focusing on improving, sure play all the bullet you like.

Just kidding, even good players play bullet from time to time for fun. But if you play on the internet to get actually better at playing chess then long games is the way to go!

En este video se explican algunos consejos efectivos para cuándo estás iniciándote en el ajedrez: y una traducción que redacté del video citado antes si te ayuda en algo pero básicamente lo que te ha comentado PixelatedParcel es el consejo más preciso para un jugador principiante, no lo podría haber dicho mejor. Saludos.

You can't post in the forums yet. Play some games!