I am terrible in Bullet. A disaster

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Avatar of ElidianaISL

I have a huge issue with my bullet and blitz skills. While I am a 1100 elo in rapid games, I am a 600elo in bullet which just sounds so ridiculous. I have checked other accounts that have the same rapid elo as me and their bullet and blitz is not that low. Does anyone have any advise? I seriously dont know what i am doing so wrong. I do have an issue with my wifi and sometimes i lose games because of that, but that is not always the case. 
Please share your advise. 
Thank you
(I just tried to play bullet and lost like 5 games in a row and now my rating is 500)

Avatar of vd2010g

Maybe bullet/blitz is simply not for you โ€“ for now. Brain needs time to think but can make decisions faster if you're experienced; likely you'll be better at blitz as you keep practicing rapid and sheer chess decision making experience is ingrained into your brain. (I never played blitz but that's simply how brain works in various games, what was taking minutes at the beginning becomes almost reflexive much later.)

Avatar of Hoffmann713
ElidianaISL ha scritto:

I have a huge issue with my bullet and blitz skills. While I am a 1100 elo in rapid games, I am a 600elo in bullet which just sounds so ridiculous.

What's the problem ?

I'm also terrible at blitz compared to rapid ( this is also poor, but not as bad as blitz). Knowing this, I play blitz just to experiment, and fix patterns and lines of play in my mind.

If you play better rapid, priorize that.

Avatar of GooseChess

In bullet, knowing opening lines and ideas is really important as it can often make as many as 10-15 of your first moves almost instant, while also putting you in a strong and familiar middle game.

Also important is endings. Not so much knowing a lot of endings, but knowing the basic ones so well you can pre move or nearly pre move the entire sequence.

Extremely important is being able to check the clock during the game. It might seem like there's no time, but spending half a second ever 10-20 seconds is extremely worth it. This isn't easy to learn but unlocks a whole new gear.

And finally, quick blunder checking is easily the most important skill of all. Both checking your own king and queen safety, but also checking for hanging pieces from your opponent. I wouldn't even worry about tactics yet, just play solid and check for outright hanging pieces for both sides and you'll be well over 1000 bullet in no time.

Avatar of whiteknight1968

Try chess. Bullet is a pointless activity.

Avatar of DreamscapeHorizons

I'm terrible at it too. All speed chess in general so I avoid it. I guess I'm a slow thinker.

Avatar of MaetsNori

I agree with those who've said that it helps to know your openings and middlegames somewhat well, so that you don't need to ponder these things too deeply in a bullet timer.

Tactics are also a big part of it - being able to quickly spot threats and opportunities, and being equally able to jump on these without much thought.

But in general, it took me about 10,000 games of bullet before I started to get a decent handle on it. So the learning curve can take a while ...

Avatar of mikewier

You will a better bullet chess player when you are a better chess player.

If you want to become a better chess player, DO NOT PLAY BULLET. Spend your time learning basic chess principles, endgame principles, middlegame planning. Two or three hours of effective studying chess basics will teach you more than 30 hours of bullet.ย 

Avatar of Fire
ElidianaISL wrote:

I have a huge issue with my bullet and blitz skills. While I am a 1100 elo in rapid games, I am a 600elo in bullet which just sounds so ridiculous. I have checked other accounts that have the same rapid elo as me and their bullet and blitz is not that low. Does anyone have any advise? I seriously dont know what i am doing so wrong. I do have an issue with my wifi and sometimes i lose games because of that, but that is not always the case.ย 
Please share your advise.ย 
Thank you
(I just tried to play bullet and lost like 5 games in a row and now my rating is 500)

the best way to get better at bullet in my experience is to play lots of puzzle battle. You get the competitive feeling, and being able to solve a puzzle just like that comes in real handy in actual games.

Avatar of ChessMasteryOfficial

In bullet, there is very little time for deep calculation. You need to rely more on intuition and pattern recognition. The more you play, the more patterns youโ€™ll recognize instantly, allowing you to make faster decisions.

Avatar of tonymura

From the point of view of people that aim to improve at rapid and/or classical, testing oneself at bullet is i.m.o. only good to prepare for the possibility of time scrambles.

I'm not saying playing bullet is in itself stupid, especially if one finds if fun from time to time, just that one can also use longer time controls as a test of how efficiently you observe static elements in positions, find candidate moves and think in general.

It's worth noting that simply playing any time format will do little to help one improve, if this isn't accompanied by study.

Avatar of randomchessguy555

Bullet isn't a true test of chess skill. Whoever clicks faster wins, don't worry about it

Avatar of magipi
randomchessguy555 wrote:

Bullet isn't a true test of chess skill. Whoever clicks faster wins, don't worry about it

You have probably never seen good players play bullet.

Avatar of Ironguard5s
magipi wrote:
randomchessguy555 wrote:

Bullet isn't a true test of chess skill. Whoever clicks faster wins, don't worry about it

You have probably never seen good players play bullet.

Yeah, it actually takes skill when you start to get to 2200+

Avatar of CockroachGirly
Ironguard5s wrote:
magipi wrote:
randomchessguy555 wrote:

Bullet isn't a true test of chess skill. Whoever clicks faster wins, don't worry about it

You have probably never seen good players play bullet.

Yeah, it actually takes skill when you start to get to 2200+

Skill, and a better internet connection. It's impossible for me to ever reach 3000 because of my indian internet that costs me more than 0.1 seconds on a premove