Which is of course a different question to “What should I do to get good at Chess?” which is all about deliberate practice with a small proportion of time devoted to playing actual games.
Right, I often play blitz games for an hour a day weeks on end and don’t improve at all. Interestingly, looking at professional games, even if I don’t bother to calculate many lines, seems to make me slightly better; so there are ways to improve without deliberate practice, but playing blitz doesn’t happen to be one of them. Playing standard time controls does work decently well though, at least once you can recognize all the dozen or so main tactics.
Which is of course a different question to “What should I do to get good at Chess?” which is all about deliberate practice with a small proportion of time devoted to playing actual games.
Right, I often play blitz games for an hour a day weeks on end and don’t improve at all. Interestingly, looking at professional games, even if I don’t bother to calculate many lines, seems to make me slightly better; so there are ways to improve without deliberate practice, but playing blitz doesn’t happen to be one of them. Playing standard time controls does work decently well though, at least once you can recognize all the dozen or so main tactics.
Playing a lot isn’t as good as deliberate practice, but it’s better than having done neither.
This seems incontrovertible.