Sweating Bullets

A couple of weeks ago I joined my first club, Apes United, which is a great group of players with exactly the right attitude about online chess. I've been introduced to vote chess, which is about as stress-free as chess gets.

The group's creator, PoggingPoggers, messaged me that he was looking to get back to playing bullet chess and did I want a game. I told him I had never played bullet (or blitz) and that I was sure I would be terrible. But he was so accommodating, making it unrated and including 1 second increments. So I agreed.

And it went exactly as I thought it would.

I had three handicaps: 1) He's really good, rated in the high 1500s at bullet; 2) I was playing on my chromebook, which meant using the touchpad; and 3) my old man's brain doesn't work that fast.

So, off we went. As white, I made my first 9 moves in 15 seconds. They were all developing moves, and I paid almost no attention to what he was doing. Once those were done, I figured the only way to move with speed and not much thought was to start trading pieces.

By move 17, I was in this position:

but down to 23 seconds, while he was sitting pretty with 49 seconds.

I started moving faster, and my time improved, but my chess didn't.  After move 25, I was in this position, down two pawns, which the engine later analyzed as -7.74.

Feeling sorry for me, Poggers played b5, hanging his bishop. Then he got generous and played Ra3, hanging his pawn. Then to be absolutely sure even I couldn't mess it up, he hung his rook a couple of moves later, then resigned.

Yes, I was a bullet winner, but not really. The second game was pathetic. I was already in time trouble by move 14, when his knight attacked my queen. I then took a full seven seconds before I moved my queen to a different square... where his knight could still take it. I resigned.

The rubber match was a tease. I was slightly ahead and about even on time after 11 moves. By move 22, I had lost my queen for a rook, then blundered a rook with less than 9 seconds left. I resigned.

I don't regret playing. It was a new experience, but the real benefit was validation. With a lot of practice, I could probably get better at bullet, but I'll never be good. I'll stick to slow chess, where I can ruminate for many minutes, hours or days  before I blunder, instead of doing it instantly.