On the other hand, I’ve heard the opposite advice for novice chess players (basically playing blitz without a good foundation destroys your ability to improve).
I interpreted the saying as “play a lot of games without overthinking”, not “play blitz”.
I’ve taught a few people how to play Go, and for the first 20–50 games, players are basically clueless about what they’re even supposed to be doing—they can place stones anywhere, and they have no notion of why they should place a stone in any particular place.* I think it’s better to develop basic intuition by playing rather than by studying what you’re supposed to do.
*I think chess and Go are different in that respect. In chess, it quickly becomes obvious that the correct thing to do is to develop your pieces.
I think in Go playing many quick games is generally better for novices than playing slow games for “initializing your neural network” so to speak. Among others, developing an intuitve and holistic sense for which shapes lead to victory (sometimes it’s referred to as “beautiful” or “elegant”) matters a lot, even at low levels.
Whereas in chess novice play is almost entirely dominated by tactics, which means playing lots of quick games often teaches you bad patterns and shortcuts.
A piece of standard advice for new Go players is to lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible rather than attempting to study theory before you’ve actually played a bunch.
On the other hand, I’ve heard the opposite advice for novice chess players (basically playing blitz without a good foundation destroys your ability to improve).
Arjun Panickserry reviews a book that’s vaguely “quantity over quality” for chess
I interpreted the saying as “play a lot of games without overthinking”, not “play blitz”.
I’ve taught a few people how to play Go, and for the first 20–50 games, players are basically clueless about what they’re even supposed to be doing—they can place stones anywhere, and they have no notion of why they should place a stone in any particular place.* I think it’s better to develop basic intuition by playing rather than by studying what you’re supposed to do.
*I think chess and Go are different in that respect. In chess, it quickly becomes obvious that the correct thing to do is to develop your pieces.
I think in Go playing many quick games is generally better for novices than playing slow games for “initializing your neural network” so to speak. Among others, developing an intuitve and holistic sense for which shapes lead to victory (sometimes it’s referred to as “beautiful” or “elegant”) matters a lot, even at low levels.
Whereas in chess novice play is almost entirely dominated by tactics, which means playing lots of quick games often teaches you bad patterns and shortcuts.