How To Bullet
Wassup!! How are you doing, I hope you are having an amazing day. Today I am going to tell you how to play bullet chess as well as give you some tips to win really fast in bullet.
Enjoy
Note: Whoever said that Covid-19 is just a little worse than a common cold can burn in hell, it feels like you have lung cancer, tonsillitis and a high pressure mucus launcher inside your face at the same time. Wear a mask, wash your hands and minimize your contact with the outside world as much as you can. Stay home, stay safe and follow me on chess.com. 
What is bullet chess?
If you have been living under a rock, bullet chess is one of if not the most popular time controls in the world of chess. It ranges from 2|1 all the way down to 15 seconds!! It gets really fast and really difficult to think about what you should do or what your opponent will do. What I show you today will mostly revolve around the 1|0 time mark. So let's goooo!!!!!
Some essentials settings
When you are playing bullet there are some settings that you have to have. Let's go through each of the settings one by one. You can access the settings on chess.com by going to the "Play" option and if you look on the top right corner you will see a settings icon, click on it and we can begin.
Board and pieces:
This one you can choose what fits you best, I personally use "neo" for the pieces and "Walnut" for the board, but you can choose what you like best.
Sound theme:
This one I feel is such an underrated advantage, it is so good to know how to use. I set it to default but really it does not matter which one you set it to, just remember the specific sounds that it makes for each type of move that you or your opponent plays. For example if you are in check it will give a very specific sound that you can then translate to tell you what type of move is played, this is helpful because you don't have to spend that extra second wondering why you can't move any other piece when you can instead listen for the sound that it makes.
Coordinates and piece notation:
These are also all up to you. Just play around with it and see what fits you best.
Animation type:
This one is also really really important, you have to set the animation type to "none" so that you don't have to wait that split second just to see what your opponent played. It might not look that important but when it gets to under 5 seconds it'll help you a big big amount.
Move method:
For this one I like drag pieces, but if you want to click squares, go for it, there's nothing wrong with that.
The rest of the settings is all up to you.
Managing time
Time management is one of the most important things in bullet. To manage your time there is a couple things you can do.
Looking at the clock:
One of the things that you can do to help you manage time is after every move, look at the clock. You should make it a habit, every time you make a move, look at the clock. The only time you should not look at the clock is when you are below 10 seconds.
Time budget:
Making a time budget is really helpful in time management because it helps you to think fast, and even if you don't think fast just play a move that you think is not bad, even if it is not the best move. I usually think in a bullet game for under 3 seconds and if I think more than that I will shift my budget mid-game to 2 seconds or even 1 second.
Maximum time difference:
Time difference between you and your opponent must be under 5 seconds, if it is more than that you have to speed up and keep your time as high as you can, but don't go too fast because that leads to more speed and less good chess, and if that happens, it shouldn't.
When to pre-move
Pre-moving is one of your biggest weapons in a game of bullet chess if you know how to use them. Here are some tips and tricks as to how to pre-move.
Trades:
Pre-moving trades is a very safe thing to do because if your opponent does not take, the pre-move will not happen because it is illegal to capture one of your own pieces (duh). So if you offer a trade of queens for example you can pre-move the capture of your own queen, like this:
Say in this position you just played Qb3, you can now pre-move axb3 because if he takes then you have taken back and if he does not take you have time to move your mouse to play another move.
End-game checkmates:
These are really good to know how to pre-move, I have put some links here if you want to practice them.
Some funny tricks
In bullet there are always things that you can do that are not possible in a longer time control. Here are a few:
Now you might be asking, WHAT?!?!? What is wrong with you Craig, who is going to fall for that??? Well the people who play 1.g3 in bullet usually want to pre-move the whole opening to save time, and we take advantage of that by putting our bishop on h3 to take his bishop on g2 and trap his rook, they obviously won't expect this move but it works over 80% of the time and even if it doesn't, it's bullet so you still have a good chance. And not to brag, but I beat a Fide Master (FM) with this trick, unfortunately I can't find the game so you'll just have to believe me.
This one is one that I call the timeout everything sacrifice or "TES"
This is one you can only do if your opponent is really low on time, you basically sacrifice all of your pieces to throw him off and make him move his mouse a lot, and if he moves his mouse a lot he plays slow and in turn loses on time. One noob mistake that most people make is they sacrifice ALL of their pieces, make sure you leave at least one pawn alive because if you don't, it will be a draw. And again, not to brag but I beat IM Alexandru-Bogdan Banzea with this trick and this time I can prove it. This game was a blitz game but it is still the same concept.
Some of you might have seen the game, it was caught on his live stream.
https://www.twitch.tv/chesstubetv
Tell me if I missed out on anything. If you want to see more by me you can click here:
That's it for this blog and I'll see you around.
BYEEEEE!!!!!
