In all honesty, how can people in Bullet play so extremely fast?

Hi the title says it all. I am not looking for generic answers that don't add any value. I want to know the truth and if there are some hints and tricks I am open to learning about those too. Thanks a lot. Just for context, I started playing on my mobile phone and have realised it's much faster to play on these time limits. What is surprising me a lot is the accuracy some people also play with.... it's confusing. I am in Rapid part of the 89% Percintile but on Bullet less than 30% ?? Alright. It's what it is and I guess but strangely enough only recently I pushed myself over the 500 chess.com rating point range by playing with my mobile phone. Now I am soon below 300 again. So what are some tricks? Also some specific opening ideas that you think are better suited than others playing Bullet. Thanks a lot.

I play a lot of Bullet, largely for giggles as "skittles" games so my rating for Bullet is lower than for other formats and varies a lot.

But I'd say:

1) Bullet you make the move that "looks strategically right by instinct" most of the time.

2) With a brief high-speed glance around for tactics. Such as "that hangs a piece".

3) One "long think" of 15 seconds is an indulgence. Anything longer, you're in the sort of time trouble the late great Viktor Korchnoi spent a lot of his games labouring under.

4) There's no specific "best Bullet opening" just pick something in which you know where the pieces usually live by instinct and avoid things where you have the hard, nuanced moves to find or spend a long time on the defensive.

Others might have different and/or better thoughts. I'm just one player and we're all different.

The truth is that speed chess (blitz too, but especially bullet) is largely about instincts, flowstate, and time manegement ability; when you have much less time to begin with, then managing the clock you do have becomes an important skill in itself (as is the art of premoving efficiently when needed).

Rapid will generally be better for long-term chess improvement, but once you do have a high enough level of chess understanding, then speed chess will be largely the result of pattern recognition you've already learned. I mostly play 10 minute chess on chess.com (most popular time control on this site), but I'll occasionally play blitz; I hardly ever play bullet, but part of that is personal preference as I find blitz plenty fast for me

The biggest danger of playing speed chess is conditioning yourself into moving quickly at the cost of playing less quality moves and this is especially destructive when this means you feel rushed all the time, or give yourself an excuse to avoid calculating deeper variations in the game. If you don't calculate as much (mainly because you don't have the time to), then you'll never practice this skill and if you don't get enough practice at the skill of calculating, then you'll never improve this area of chess. It's highly debated at what rating level one should be before playing speed chess, but loosely speaking, I'd estimate that anyone rated below 1500 (and maybe even higher ratings than that), it probably does more harm than good. That being said, I actually don't mind players trying speed chess on occasion; just use it to occasionally mix up time controls and don't focus on this as your "main" time control.

As for openings better for bullet, you'll be better with system openings where you can quickly play the same types of moves quickly, or you'll be better with any mainline opening where you know really well because opening theory is also quick to play quickly. It's also really beneficial to be really good with the endgame in bullet. Ironic because most people assume the game won't have enough time to reach an endgame, but their assumption is incorrect. Having good endgame technique means you can convert common theoretical endgames quickly and with less thinking required mid-game; this means being able to finish off games with less time required and anything that gains time in speed chess is helpful (especially bullet).

Lot of system openings like the hippo work well in bullet. The art of pre moving at the right times and endgame speed is also well needed and desperado tricks are needed. Also, bluff is a good trait to have , for example going on an all out attack forcing ur opponent to waste time and many times what will happen is, attack will succeed, or attack won't succeed but your opponent sacrificed a lot of time. Etc. Don't think at all thru the opening

as somebody who got to 2500 bullet, it's all about who can chomp on hanging pieces faster.

cocaine

You'll want to know your openings to the point where you can whip out the first 10 to 15 moves or so without needing to think much at all. (And that doesn't mean just premoving without thinking - it means knowing your repertoire well enough that you can respond quickly and reasonably to whatever moves your opponent plays - from experience.)

If this sounds like a big ask, then it means you probably aren't ready for bullet yet.

You shouldn't be trying to figure out moves or ideas in bullet - you're just playing with the knowledge and the tactical ability that you already have. This means you build your bullet skills in slower timers, and bullet is just a faster way to test what you already know ...

@MaetsNori at #9 says, to my mind, something very important indeed, and better than I said it at #2. The best Bullet player amongst my friends is way better than me (he's c2600) and can flash out fifteen or so opening moves on autopilot before the brain needs to kick in.

For us lesser mortals, it's about knowing the patterns in our own repertoire.

We played "speed chess" when I was a kid, just didn't take it seriously. It's more exciting, right... or, in my case "panic-inducing".

hello

Hi, i think you need to know a lot of theory in openings and basic tactics, feel your computer mouse, then train/play bullet

They think fast.

Play without increment and premove everything. You can only not premove, if either side is about to checkmate. Material plays 0 role, it's only about the clock. I know this isn't the best advice, but this is how I got to 1000.

Hi KeSetoKaiba,

First of all, many thanks for your reply. I really appreciate it!

We both know that I’m likely a far less experienced chess player than you are, but I do share your beliefs nonetheless. That said, here’s where I struggle to fully understand things…

In Bullet, a player must move very quickly and have a solid grasp of certain moves, as there’s simply no time to properly think through multiple variations. This means the player must be quite good at calculating moves, not just quickly, but accurately as well. They also need to have a good understanding of Opening Theory (not necessarily perfect at my level, but certainly solid enough to handle even some more exotic lines), along with a decent grasp of chess strategy overall.

Like you, I also believe that the most commonly played format on chess.com is Rapid, probably the 10-minute time control. I personally play that the most as well.

This brings me to my main question…

How on earth is it possible that many of the players who beat me (some of them quite easily) are rated only around 700–900 in Rapid? How can someone at that level know all the things you described well enough to consistently beat someone rated 300–400 points higher?

It just doesn’t make much sense.

I do understand that my percentile in Bullet would naturally be lower than in Rapid, since it’s a different skill set. But considering that most players on the site are Rapid players, shouldn’t my percentile be relatively higher there than it currently is as well? I would certainly believe so. I mean I am currently not even hitting the median or anything close to it If I where constantly beaten by players that are (let's say 1200 rated in Rapid) or even higher I could probably understand it all and it would make sense to me but like this I believe there must be some additional tricks you can use to enhance your speed etc.

Thanks a lot for your reply! I will have a look at those.

Hi MaetsNori, I would normally agree with you but if all of this is true then can you please explain to me what I have also already written in #18 as a reply to KeSetoKaiba? He wrote a much longer text initially but is basically describing the same as you.

What's your best guess?

Its just weaponised ADHD