Suppose somebody has two kgs accounts, one for fast games (e.g. 5 min + 10 seconds byoyomi) one for slow games (e.g. 30 minutes + 5x30 seconds byoyomi).

What does it mean if slow accounts rank is much higher (>3 stones) than the fast accounts rank?
What does it mean if fast accounts rank is much higher (>3 stones) than the slow accounts rank?
Assume the ranks are based on enough many games to be more or less accurate.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

The player probably make too many misreads under time pressure


The player doesn't make too much additional errors, his oppenents are. I don't think this reflects that he makes more mistakes on slow games, only that his play degrades less than other players.

But does it maybe show that the fast player relies more on intuition than reading, or vice versa?
Or does it show that either of the players relies more or knowledge/theory?

I mean can such a phenomenon be an indication of what or how to study?

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

I honestly don't know. I can only tell you that my blitz account is 2 stones weaker than my serious one, but I know the reasons :
* I play mostly blitz when I'm not in the mood to read, so there are much more mistakes
* I'm slow when reading.
* Being slightly underranked, I have a tendency to be overconfident and play silly things, even if I know they won't work (bad habit, I know).

I can't say for other players, of course, but I guess you'd know what to improve if you were in a similar situation (in my case: concentration).

I guess it also depends on your goals. I'd like to be a strong player one day, but I'll evaluate this with slow games, I don't care for being a strong blitzer, so I won't try to improve my blitz skills.

Thanks for the replies!

My blitz account is about 3-4 stones weaker than my normal account (weak 6 kyu to strong 3 kyu).

I also play blitz when I am not in the mood of reading but I suppose that's true for my opponents as well. Still they can beat me without serious reading.

If I play blitz, my opponent also plays blitz. So the difference between my accounts should not be so big. With the same guy, playing blitz he wins, playing slow I win. I find it somehow strange...

I don't know it may show some defects in our thinking processes and may be an indication of what keeps our strengths down (lack of intuition, slow reading because of re-reading sequences, lack of shape recognition, etc etc etc). Of course for those who are better at blitz, it should be opposite.

Well, or maybe it doesn't show anything, it just shows that I am a slow-thinker and/or a deep-concentrator

Just some thoughts...

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

The difference: slow games take a lot longer to lose.

More seriously, if you're weaker at blitz, that means others see what you have to read. Or you have a crappy internet connection.

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I played a lot of fast games recently (with overall good success) and turning back to slow games I found myself playing way too impatiently, rushing to immediate action, thus playing out immediately some sequences I should save for later use, usually with bad results = ten losses in a row. I am still embarassed.

This describes how I play most of the time, regardless of time settings.

It could also mean that you are extremely good at using your time. A lot of people play slow games at blitz speed, so you can improve significantly just by playing more slowly; however, there's less room for improvement from careful time management in a blitz game.

You should set up a poll.

Personally, my slow and fast accounts are pretty much the same, at most 1 stone difference. It wasn't always like that, I was very weak at blitz in the beginning, but after I got used to it, my rank improved to match my slow rank.

I'm fond of HKA's advice: most players in a blitz game play far too fast. I wonder if it's even worse of a problem than playing too fast in a slow game.

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Occupy Babel!

I've always been a rubbish blitzer at chess, and this tradition has carried well over to go. I'm just not that good when I don't have time to ponder my moves.

One little theory I have though, is that many players online do not have the patience to think as much as they should in longer games. So if these players do not play to their full potential under slow time controls, it follows that those who do will be stronger on slow time controls, but not on fast time controls (where the impatient ones always play to their full potential).

Occasionally I get the feeling that some of my opponents are significantly stronger than me, but gimping themselves by blitzing moves without need. In an actual blitz game, I would expect nothing less than to be crushed by those players.

I don't know if this is relevant at all, but curiously on the free chess server, where they record blitz and standard ratings separately, the average blitz rating is several hundred ELO points lower than the average standard rating.

I think it's unlikely that the problem is that much worse, materially speaking. If you look at a lot of the games people post on this forum, they were playing a move every two or three seconds in slow games. Presumably they play blitz at the same speed, and that hurts their game, but it can't hurt their blitz as much as it hurts their slow games.

Am I the only person who plays blitz and slower games on the same account? I have noticed in my 25:00 min automatch games my opponents often play faster than I do. My last two wins, I ran out of main time while my opponents had 10:00 and 15:00 left on the clock respectively.

But now it starts getting more confusing... How should one interpret this? People are losing more when they play blitz? But then who is winning ) How can the time setting affect the average rating?
Maybe it is because of the ratio of draws in chess ???

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

I've started playing both on the same account. I used to be very careful to separate the accounts (my slow play account was one or two ranks higher). I rarely play slow games anymore (mostly 1 + 5x10 and 10 + 5x20), but for awhile I was using both and it's my old "main" account.

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Occupy Babel!

I'm to lazy to create another account ... I pay all my games, on all time settings, from the same account.

No, I play them on the same account. I'm too lazy to switch.

I haven't tested this recently, but the last time I did, I was about 3 stones stronger on slow games on IGS. On KGS it was about the same either way. Go figure.

I think it's not just about you. It's about the population of opponents. Some people only play fast and some only slow. It could be that on some servers the stronger players play faster games whereas on others they play slower.

As I recall, what I concluded was that on IGS, my level of play deteriorated in faster games. More mistakes, more misreads, more time losses. But my opponents did not seem affected by this.

On KGS, in faster games, my play deteriorated in faster games. More mistakes, more misreads, more time losses. But I was still okay because the blitz players played such terrible openings that it was like I started with a handicap, so it evened out.

On Tygem and WBaduk, players just seem to play fast regardless of the limits, and I sometimes fall into the bad habit of getting caught up in their pace. But I haven't played there consistently enough to know what may stable rating would be (assuming it would even stabilize.)

For me, there's a threshold somewhere, and if I play faster than that, everything falls apart. It may have to do with whether I have time to estimate the score. Anyway, I'm very aware of when this is happening, so I don't feel the need to dwell on it.

Many high dans (Aguilar, Shikshin, etc.) have mentioned that they really need tournaments and IRL play to improve. It could that even if they can muster the discipline to take online games seriously, there is no way to get their opponents to do the same. There is something lost in not being able to get your opponent's best game, I guess. IRL games don't solve it completely (there are go clubs that meet in pubs, after all ), but maybe the problem is lessened.

- It means exactly what the question indicates. Even the underlying premise of asking the question implies that playing a slow game and playing a fast game are two discrete possibilities. What constitutes playing a good game on either fast or slow time setting cannot be applied to the other, hence the difference in rank.

En elephant is bigger than a mouse. What does it say about the elephant or the mouse? Nothing.