The blitz routine I used to gain 100 points in a week

As you know if you’ve been following this newsletter, I was recently diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called GPA. The first step of the treatment is a very high dose of steroids to reduce inflammation. The side effects include insomnia, euphoria, and playing massive amounts of speed chess.

Well, that last one is not in the official list, but for me it definitely was. Still, I didn’t want to wake up a week later hating myself, so I decided to at least pursue the blitz purposefully. I dusted off a lot of the tools I use for my students and applied them to my own game.

The result was I went from 2600 to over 2700 blitz in a week. The volume helped, certainly; I went from playing a few games a week to many games per day. Part of it was just knocking the rust off.

But the process helped, as well. I was playing with purpose and focus, not tilting, having fun and learning at the same time. It felt like my chess game was a statue and with every blitz game I was chipping off just a little excess material, making it a tiny bit better. I’m confident these improvements will pay off if/when I return to OTB chess as well.

In this post I’ll share with you the full process I used, including all the resources you’ll need: my focused play worksheet, game review templates, and Lichess study setup. When I follow this process for blitz, I learn more and have more fun. This is how you can transform speed chess into your most powerful improvement tool.