Avoiding Time Pressure In Bullet

One big Chess debate is over whether or not Bullet Chess is real Chess. While the rules are the same, there is a key difference between Bullet and Classical: The Timer. As I already discussed on my blog on Bullet Endgames, the low time you have when playing forces you to think fast, causing you to Blunder more often and miss tactics. This is especially the case in the Endgame, where the time is extremely low, and the time pressure is intense.

This blog is a set of guidelines to help you get a Time Advantage early in the game, so that your opponent will be under more time pressure than you in the Endgame, allowing you to get more wins. There are a couple of basic steps to secure your advantage early on:

1. Play An Unconventional Opening

Whenever you ask how to improve at Bullet, this step will come up a lot, and for good reason. When you play an unexpected opening move, your Opponent will not know the Theory, and so you can often gain an advantage by forcing them to think.

A popular choice for Bullet is the Reti Opening:

If your Opponent is a 1... e5 player, that will likely be a premove, hanging a Pawn (the Ross Gambit), and you can capture and give yourself an advantage, as long as you quickly get your Knight out of there:

While this does get you up a Pawn, the point is not a material advantage so much as it is a positional advantage, and as the Opponent does not know how to respond, they will lose time. So develop an unconventional opening style and use it.

To illustrate this point, I would like to discuss one of my favorite Openings: The Traxler Counterattack:

Here, White’s first thought is likely to carry out the infamous Fork on f7. In Bullet, many players play using basic intuition instead of calculating, as calculating takes time. Therefore, more people who play as White in this position are likely to play Nxf7 in Bullet instead of Bxf7+ or d4, which is seen as the better move for White.

However, you have to know Theory to know to play that, or you will be inclined to deliver the Fork, especially in Bullet. And if White delivers the Fork, Black can launch a Surprise Attack:

The Traxler is a good opening, but only if you know the theory. While Kf1 is the best move, players who do not know the Theory will be inclined to play Kxf2, and then take the Rook on h8 as soon as possible, despite Black’s new attacks:

It’s basic intuition, but it puts White at a disadvantage, and Black has a huge advantage. Black can now follow their intuition without consequence, while White has to waste time calculating.

The Traxler, however, is not the focus of the post. For more information, I refer you to this blog post by @ryanchen100.

2. Zwischenzug and Check

The Zwischenzug, or Intermizzo, is what’s called an In-Between Move. Instead of making the move that seems obvious, you create another threat that your opponent has to respond to, and then you make the obvious move.

Here is an example of a Zwischenzug (credit to chess.com):

As you can see, instead of trading Queens, the obvious move, White delivers a surprise Check and then takes the Queen. While finding an in-Between move takes a few seconds, the immediate threat takes even more time for your opponent to respond to. This is especially true if your opponent expects you to take the obvious move and then premoves their response. At best, the premove is made illegal due to a check. At worst, they premove into hanging a valuable piece.

As for checks, Perpetual Check is very common in Chess. In a losing position, a player might give Perpetual Check to force a Draw By Repetition, or to prevent their opponent from delivering Checkmate. However, a player in a winning position can also play Perpetual Check.

It is important to only give Check when you think there are no other options, as just giving Check all the time to avoid Stalemate throughout the game could lead to a Draw by the 50 Move Rule.

In a chess.com lesson by @KNVB, it is stated that instead of giving Check in the Endgame, you should anticipate your opponent’s King move, and then make that move illegal. Here is an example of such a tactic:

Here, instead of continuing the Perpetual Check with Rg8+, White anticipates that Black will move their King to the h-file in a premove, and plays Rh8, making that move illegal. Black therefore has to put a few seconds into realizing why the Premove was illegal, and then making another move. And in the Endgame, seconds are valuable. Any tactic to prevent your Opponent’s premoves works wonders, both in the Opening and in the Endgame.

3. Avoid Stalemate Early In The Game

You might ask “What do you mean by that?” Well, consider this position, with White To Move:

If you reach this position in your game, you have to spend time calculating the best move, so that the game does not become a stalemate. For this reason, you have to take steps early in the game, to ensure that a situation in which stalemate is likely does not happen.

There are some basic principles to do that:

A. Always leave a Column or File open

Many stalemates happen when the King is trapped on a Row or File that is on the edge of the board (Row 1 or 8, or the A-File or H-File), or in a corner. This is largely because being on the edge reduces the number of squares the King can move to, increasing the odds of a Stalemate.

For this reason, you should always make sure a square on the line next to the outer edge (Row 2 or 7, or the B-File or G-File), open, so that the Enemy King can make a legal move. An example of this is, before setting up a Ladder in the Queen and Rook Endgame, keeping both of them far from the enemy King, to avoid this infamous Stalemate:

This was only one example, but along with the Bishop and Knight Endgame, it is one of the more common, especially if it was a Promotion that immediately led to a Stalemate. This is why Underpromoting is important. But not only that, it can catch your opponent off guard, and that is very important in Bullet.

B. Advance your King as soon as the material is simplified and the Endgame has started.

In Classical Chess, advancing the King early (I am talking around Move 30 or so, not a Bongcloud) would be considered a Blunder. However, this is Bullet, not Classical. A common Classical Pawn Endgame Principle is to have your King in front of your Pawn, as doing so forces your Opponent’s King away from your Pawn’s file, allowing a Promotion, instead of this other infamous stalemate, with Black To Move:

If it was White To Move, it would have been easy to stop the Stalemate, but it was Black To Move, and Black had no legal moves.

But what about Endgames with multiple Pawns?

Well, there, the King Walk is just as important, as the King is used to get behind enemy lines and get rid of all the enemy Pawns, despite the Pawn structure. The flanking maneuver using a King or Bishop is very common in a situation in which multiple Pawns next to each other are all moving towards the end of the board.

Of course, you might be inclined to delay advancing the King until the position is Simplified into an Endgame. The less simple the position is, the greater the threat of Checkmate. I am not saying to get your King onto Row 3 on move 20. You should wait until the position is simplified. Wait until most of the pieces are off the board, but advance the King instead of trading what 2 Minor Pieces are left. At that stage, advancing the King there could surprise your Opponent, who will likely premove into continuing the Trade, giving you the advantage of an active King who can damage the enemy Pawn Structure before your Opponent can damage yours.

Those are my 3 main Bullet tips to shock your opponent, gain an advantage, and ultimately, avoid losing on time. If you follow those steps, you will have more time than your Opponent off the bat, and this will carry into the Endgame, where your time advantage might just be the difference between winning and losing the game.

I would like to take this moment to give a shoutout to @NotADailyIM for making this thumbnail. Also deserving a mention is @KnightlyKnight737, who also made a thumbnail. In the end, it was a tough choice. Both are very good graphic designers. I suggest you join @KnightlyKnight737's club, The Elite Champions Of 64, a new club that has a lot of potential to climb up the leaderboards.

What do I have planned next? @ryanchen100, who is a really good Blogger that you should check out, once handled a series called The Diplomatic Dispute Of The Medieval War, in which he provides updates on the Medieval War in the Club Wars League, and as I have taken that over, expect a TDOTMW blog in the next couple days. I also plan to make more blogs about Bullet, as it is my highest rating, allowing for better posts. In addition, Bullet is underrepresented among blogs and streams, and that is another reason to continue blogging about Bullet strategies. As I am expanding the scope of my blog, I have decided to change its name right before publishing this post from ChessPawnTricks to ChessPawn921's Analysis. Follow me for updates and more Bullet tips.

Hope you learned something

— ChessPawn921