Autopilot and the Giant in the Hills

In the last year, I've played 4 rapid games,

4 classical games, and 596 blitz games. Dun dun DUNNNN!

People talk about blitz games like they're a giant living in the hills, waiting for the fall of night to steal your berries when the villagers have gone to bed. I like blitz: it's a fun distraction. Keeps me a little tactically sharp, maybe it's not so great for my deeper chess thinking habits but hey - it's convenient. If I lose, no big deal, I'll just study some of my wins later and maybe glance at my losses if I'm feeling frisky.

Objective feedback feels pretty rare.

Chess is unique in the way that we can easily say who are the best players with Elo rating. Of course there are still 'Michael Jordan' debates, on whether a prime Fischer would beat a prime Karpov (My money bets on Karpov, my heart roots for Fischer), but compared to normal life chess skill is just about as objective as it gets.

I'd love the same objective measurement in other parts of my life. I'd happily wear a hat with a billboard displaying the number of eggs I've cooked or miles I've run. But 'real life' is mostly driven by intuitive decisions: pancakes or french toast? It's mostly about autopilot: eat, sleep, somehow rent gets paid, then as if by magic you're home at the end of the workday ready to re-deploy your human form. If your habits are healthy then you're healthy: routines matter.

But 8 games? That's not right. That's only 8 out of 604 total. If I didn't know the number I would have guessed I'm at 25% rapid.

But I'm not grabbing a pitchfork to join our hunt of the Berry Giants, or writing this to make yet another post about why blitz might be bad for your chess. Instead, I'd like to share a realization stemming from learning just how much blitz I've played.

My actions in the past year don't align with my values.

My chess actions this past year don't reflect my values

Blitz has a place and purpose, but too much of a good thing is a bad thing and at the moment my distribution of blitz to non-blitz is imbalanced.

There's a mad scientist part of me that wants to say: no more blitz, I'm straight edge from here on out. I'll wake with the dawn to lift weights, eat vegetables, and play chess. But this person doesn't exist and I know it's not realistic to expect that I'll never touch the time format again.

No, there's a time and place for blitz but I'd like to rebalance my actions to reflect my values. There's something that I'm missing by not playing rapid. While I want blitz chess to be in my life, I don't want it to dominate my chess playing such that I forego the fruits of rapid.

Sooo what do I do?

The world is old, I'm sure someone else has experienced my situation before and probably written about it in a book.

Maybe I should reevaluate my routine? Maybe I should try to re-enter The Cave and cut out blitz - this time for good? I don't know what I want to do. I do know I want to play more rapid than I do, and to solve this I'll need to rethink my schedule.

I'm curious if anyone else out there has experienced anything similar to this. If you'd like to see your blitz to non-blitz ratio, you can see this on Lichess by clicking your username > profile > chess insights, then play around with the filters for lots of neat graphy graphs.

Anyway, I hope this resonates with someone. Take care :)

P.S. I'm trying to improve at writing so please feel free to give me honest feedback! What do you dislike or like about my writing or formatting? I was being neurotic about whether my headings look weird, but I figured I'd rather post something weird than nothing.