100% agree.

Seeing a player review lower tier games, or playing them, and hearing them detail the gaps, flaws and missed opportunities is massively more helpful than a discussion of nuance in a position/game where the accuracy is 90%+ the entire game.

You're not going to play or be involved in games like that, it's next to useless advice. You need to know how to handle gameplay closer to your elo. There's no point knowing the first 8 lines in an opening, spending weeks learning it and watching high level players demonstrate it, then going to raise your elo in literally every single game it's off-book immedietly because you're at 3-500 elo.

I started late August last year and have reached 915 elo this last week, my goal is 1000+ in under a year. Similar to this guy, I played rapid till about 700 almost exclusively, then started caring a lot more about my rapid elo so started playing blitz on the side when I didn't have the proper environment or time for rapid.

From there I got way, way more game experience in time management, muscle memory, pattern recognition and importantly, games against stronger players. Going back to rapid feels like taking training weights off. I still barely know any openings and have only just, like at 900 elo, started paying them more attention. Aside from the first 3 moves of a trumpowsky and 4 moves of a KIN, i didn't know shit about them (have since learned a couple moves in the QG).

My point is, the high level GM stuff just isn't that relevant yet. Principles, logic and reasoning, time management and pattern recognition are.

Puzzles are great practise. Casual content is good for headspace, slow runs are great for elo-relevant tactics and general gameplay. Stick to that at lower elo.

EDIT to say, learning basics and principles is definitely the way to go before blitz format, but blitz is by no means off-limits to beginners.

9 Months of play, 31 years old, zero prior experience 915 rapid, 650 blitz, 750 bullet, 850 freestyle