The Best of the Best: Bullet, Blitz, Rapid
Blitz, bullet and rapid all have different requirements to be skilled at. In bullet, you need quick reaction time and good hand/mouse speed, but for a longer time-control like rapid, thinking is a bigger necessity, as you won't be able to simply make random moves without consequences. Because of these differences, each time control has unique players who excel at it. Somebody might be a really good thinker and evaluator but have trouble moving quickly, while someone else may be the exact opposite. Today I'll talk about who I think the 2 best players from each category are. From the uncountable amount of active chess players, who really is the best of the best at these time variants?
Bullet
The shortest, and perhaps the least important time-control, bullet. Players mostly rely on quick thinking, dirty tricks, and time trouble. Bullet is often played for fun, as it does not require much thought, and can get very entertaining. There are many skilled bullet players out there, as it is doubtlessly the easiest time control to master, but who are its best players?
If you ask anyone who they think the best bullet player is, 90% of people will say Hikaru Nakamura. His skill, technique, and quick movement is all shown in his games. With a top rating of 3570, Hikaru currently holds the record for the highest bullet-rating ever obtained without any sort of cheating. Although he was recently surpassed on the leaderboard by Daniel Naroditsky, he held his ground for over a year, and will likely return to his throne very soon.
Although the stats go in Hikaru's favor, let's take a look at how he uses tactical vision and strategy to win one of his games.
An intense game had been going on up to this point. If black hadn't messed up at the very end, it likely would've been a draw. Can you find Hikaru's finishing blow that caused his opponent the game?
I'm sure that a lot of you have seen those ridiculous videos of Andrew Tang making 1 million pre-moves in a hyper-bullet game, and pretty much defeating any opponent that he played. Andrew is arguably considered the toughest opposition for ultra-bullet chess (30 seconds or less). When he unleashes 20 moves per second, it is close to impossible to beat him.
Now, you might think that someone like Daniel Naroditsky or Anish Giri are more skilled at bullet than Andrew, and although they may have a higher rating at times, whenever you watch both of them play Tang, most of the time he ends up coming on top in one way or another. Personally, I don't think that there's anybody like him, and with the speed of his mouse to the quickness of his thinking, there probably won't be anytime soon.
Blitz
Blitz - the most popular time-control, under FIDE rules, running from 3 minutes all the way up to 10 minutes. Blitz is a combination of both speed, tactical vision, and patience. Unlike bullet, getting away with a simple blunder in blitz is much harder, as the opponent has more time to spot it, this is why most top-level blitz players are grandmasters.
The current world blitz champion, MVL, won the title over 178 players, including Magnus Carlsen, Alireza Firouzja, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The French grandmaster earned a score of 15/21, just barely winning the tournament.
What's even more crazy, is that Magnus placed 12th in the tournament overall, even though he won the previous 3 blitz championships! Do you think that Magnus lost his previous skill, or will he pounce back in the next blitz tournament? Let me know in the comments. Now, shall we look at one of Maxime's recent games?
It's definitely going to be interesting seeing what he can accomplish in the future, after all, this is only the first blitz championship that he won, and there'll be many other chances to repeat a victory.
Current world champion, and 4-time blitz champion Magnus Carlsen has an obvious placement on this list. Magnus won his first championship back in 2014, where he won in both the rapid and the blitz format. After getting one win under his belt, he got 3 more from 2017-2019, and lost his streak in 2021 to MVL (talked about in the previous section). We're going to have to watch out for Magnus, as he'll probably fight back for his title in the upcoming Blitz & Rapid Championships, so you can definitely expect some entertaining games.
However, if Magnus stops playing as often, I feel like surpassing him in both rating and skill won't be too hard for grandmasters, especially since he's already performed terribly in his most recent blitz tournament. We might be seeing more names like Alireza Firouzja and Daniel Dubov on the leaderboards.
Rapid
Whether you like it or not, rapid is super important. It can help with both longer aspects of the game such as classical and shorter, such as blitz. When you play rapid, even though you have more time to think, you still have to be weary of your time, not so much like in classical.
I was really debating whether to put Magnus Carlsen on this list, since he already appeared earlier, but him being the 3-time rapid world champion, I just couldn't. It seems that Magnus can do everything. Win the world championship in classical, rapid, and even blitz! It's insane to me how someone can transition from 30 minutes of thinking in classical, to just seconds in blitz. Let's analyze one of his games and see what the chess genius does to earn a win.
16...Bd8?? was black's first major mistake, which was likely what cost them the game, but most of the game Carlsen kept capitalizing on his opponent's inaccuracies (such as 15...Qc7) and eventually, his opponent couldn't hold up anymore. Magnus's playing style is very unique, as he won't make any sudden movements for most of the game, and then find a perfect time to strike when his opponent is the least prepared. That is why he is so tough to play against, you don't expect his attacks.
During his victory in the most recent rapid championship, this 18-year-old definitely showed some potential. Fairly recently, Nodirbek beat the world champion, and also participated in the Speed Chess Championship. Do you think that he can eventually become a super-GM, or maybe even the world's best player? Time will tell. This game does a good job representing Nodirbek's solid and patient style of play.
If he keeps this up, Nodirbek may be a very important chess player, and perhaps even the world champion. After all, he's still only 18, and has many achievements yet to come. He's been on a steady rating growth ever since 2015 and could likely surpass 2800 FIDE in the upcoming years.
These were, what I thought, the best players were for each time-variant. If you disagree with any of the decisions that I made, please let me know in the comments. Thank you so much for reading all the way through, I really appreciate it. I'm really trying to become a Top Blogger right now, so any support and feedback would be appreciated. Also, if you want me to blog about something, feel free to let me know! Any ideas will be considered, and who knows, maybe one of YOUR ideas will make it into a blog. Anyways, that's it for now, hopefully you learned something new today, goodbye.