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Losing Consciousness

I am an adult learner (started chess in November 2021) and I have a large rating and rating percentile disparity across the different time controls.

Ultrabullet 974 13.6%
Bullet 1121 19.7%
Blitz 1323 35.9%
Rapid 1496 54.7%
Classical 1538 49.7%
Correspondence 2133 (no percentile because correspondence)
Crazyhouse 1694 68.8% - however almost all of these games are blitz or bullet time control (usually 3+2)
Mikhail Tal has left us much. The most important thing he left as is an advice - he said that this the most important thing in chess. "Don't fear defeat".

Become a raptor when it is time to win, but don't think ever what will happen when you fail in this - without human emotions - easy task. You can't alwasy stop your emotions from disturbing you, in fact often enough there are useful to win the fight. It is not easy to tell useful or not useful emotions from another during a battle. Experience will help you to do this. But never fear to loose. Really never. The old master told us and i know by heart he is right.
in process of reading. What it means: maybe something is wrong with using any time control at all....
I learned the game when I was a child , over the board, but quit when my rating was still on the way up. Then 20 years later I decided to restart playing. (end of 2021). My ratings are close to each other.

When I play games and I'm short on time, I get overloaded with stress and I panic aswell. Possibly more than the average person because of my personality traits. When I have to rely on intuition in time scramble, my board overview is completely gone and I lose all common sense. Even though I did learn the game as a child, I don't have the intuition like the opponent you describe in your blog.

I think the way you deal with low time controls, might have to do with a lack of experience and pattern recognition, but the way how your body reacts to stress also plays a huge role in this and this is different for everyone.

I've been told the reason is that when you panic, the blood in your body moves from your brain to your limbs, because your body prepares for a fight or flight situation. Therefore your brain doesn't function the way it does normally.
I'm not even sure if this is something you can train. It might be part of the DNA.
@Geelse_zot said in #6:
> I learned the game when I was a child , over the board, but quit when my rating was still on the way up. Then 20 years later I decided to restart playing. (end of 2021). My ratings are close to each other.
>
> When I play games and I'm short on time, I get overloaded with stress and I panic aswell. Possibly more than the average person because of my personality traits. When I have to rely on intuition in time scramble, my board overview is completely gone and I lose all common sense. Even though I did learn the game as a child, I don't have the intuition like the opponent you describe in your blog.
>
> I think the way you deal with low time controls, might have to do with a lack of experience and pattern recognition, but the way how your body reacts to stress also plays a huge role in this and this is different for everyone.
>
> I've been told the reason is that when you panic, the blood in your body moves from your brain to your limbs, because your body prepares for a fight or flight situation. Therefore your brain doesn't function the way it does normally.
> I'm not even sure if this is something you can train. It might be part of the DNA.

Hey thanks for your input. It's nice to have another data point that fits the trend. You make a great point about how to deal with pressure. That has to factor in as well - I do think the solution might be more experience there too - exposure therapy, if you like.
You raise many interesting points & congrats on your stellar progress!
Adult learners, and even adult elite players have a disadvantage in that the brain plays tricks on us. Adults will remember positions from classical games no probs, but can have trouble replacing the memory of a bad move or position after analysis.

I started playing around 2021 at age 41, with the proviso of quantity over quality (I heard Hikaru has played 300k games so I figured I'd be less crap after 10k games) & spent zero time on study, puzzles or analysis, but I do enjoy watching games & chess content. I prefer the romantic notion of exploring this beautiful game through a process of brutal trial & error!

*I also played my first ever 100 games of chess against the maximum engine/Danya bot, so I had early exposure to the levels in chess & feel zero fear against any human player, so maybe it's a good idea to play the engine if they're worried about their next opponent?
@QueenRosieMary I'd say your ratings are very good overall & have less disparity than you think. Each of those time controls takes a different style of play, so you're kinda learning 6 different types of chess!
Well done with your improvement so far
This post looks like it's about me. I started at age 25 and, at our level, it seems like there are 2 kinds of players: intelligent ones and experienced ones. In rapid time controls, I can see brilliant combinations, shut down opponents' ideas, see why a move works or doesn't...when I have time to think. The faster time controls kind of neutralize that advantage and I get crushed by someone who just knows the Giuoco Piano and can blast out the first 15 moves in 10 seconds. It really seems like rapid and classical are contests of who is better at calculating, while blitz is a contest of how much you already know.

Of course, the hardest time control to play as an adult is Classical because who tf has an hour or more, with no interruptions, to spend on one chess game?