Playing one minute online: debunking the premove

NM whogeeyao

Updated: Mar 10, 2013, 11:57 AM | 4

I was playing a 1800 in bullet the chess the other day, and I must say, he played really well. He kept in line with me for most of the games, even stealing a victory from me. What I remarked that was significantly weaker though was his speed. Yes, he often flagged in winning positions.

This brings up the premove. I absolutely adore it. I also like chess.com's ability to premove up to 8 moves!!! That means that it'll only take 0.8s for those moves in a lagfree situation.

It may not sound like much, but if you accumulate this throughout a whole game, you will find yourself with extra time to think, and more time on your clock to win the tight ones.

Gamewise, that was an epic failure for me, falling into a simple discovered attack. However, my premoves served me well and I got the win I should have had.

But all of this is beside the point. My purpose here today is to refute the premove in the opening stage. The classical strategy is to engage in a lot of captures, because generally people don't premove that. What they do premove is moving another piece, and now you have a free piece!

I have faced this position many times before, and have succeeded in overcoming this disadvantage once or twice.

Here's a trick with e4:

Lightning does strike twice guys! Note that the setup obviously hardly works against d5, c6, or e6, (the latter especially) because the diagonal will surly be blocked. Nc6 can also refute it with a nifty fork on e5.

So if you are keen on some free points, and know your opponent well, you can try this method! Interestingly, this only works with higher level players as they tend to need the extra 0.5 seconds.

I hope you take something away from this and win some games!

Playing one minute online: debunking the premove

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