‘Lightning blitz’ chess can be damaging to novices

As the world becomes more fast- paced and modernised, society has been forced to gradually witness the death of classical chess and must now embrace the reality that the faster format of chess (Bullet) will now cement its name in the history books.
Known as “lightning blitz” chess, bullet chess games are less than three minutes per player, based on a 40-move game, and this extends down to one-minute-per-player games; lower time controls – 30-second-per-player and 15-second-per-player games are called “hyper bullet” and “ultra bullet”, respectively. Other time-control options for bullet games include two minutes with one-second increment or one minute with a two-second increment.
Bullet chess as agreed by many has been proved to damage your natural chess game as playing lots of this format will not improve your game; yes, your intuition will be trained as you play dozens of opponents, but your calculation technique, strategy and endgame will not improve at all. This format feature the tactics that coaches would like to keep away from their novice students as compared to a strong player who would use this format to test their opening ideas.
It has been scientifically proved that repetition is one of the mind’s most powerful learning methods; with that being said, when you play chess with bullet time controls, you are rapidly repeating a very shallow thinking process, which means you are teaching your brain to develop a bad habit, thus making it difficult to switch between fast thinking versus deep thinking.
According to national chess player and University of Guyana Chess Coach Ronuel Greenidge, based on his experience, he would not recommend novice players be introduced to bullet chess as their first learning experience, but would prefer them to start off with blitz matches that span five or ten minutes.
It will train their minds and as they continue to get more involved, they will pick up better strategies. He further stated, speaking from his own experience, that in a generation of young people, players would prefer the ten to five minutes format as compared to the classical format, which could take as much as two weeks to complete and it would leave the individual feeling drained as. (Timothy Jaikarran)