I look at it this way.
When you first learned to read. Did you learn to speed read, or start with the basics?
Did you learn to sprint, or learn how to walk?
I also think it depends on how serious you are about the game. If youre serious about improvement, then i would lay off/limit the bullet. If youre in the game just for fun, then bullet yourself silly!
Now if youre an elite player like Nakamura, then it really doesnt matter.
Ok my answer is a bit crudely worded but bear with me.
I was talking about bullet as a way to discover hidden resources within yourself. Like in normal chess or blitz chess, you have time to think. The bad thing is you learn to idle and think abstractly and not concretely. In bullet you are forced to think quickly and also evaluate quickly. This is why bullet is good. You also learn to calculate better.
And yes, Nakamura,Carlsen (even more so) can play bullet better than even a 2000 can play regular chess. Their instincts are highly developed.
Ok my answer is a bit crudely worded but bear with me.
I was talking about bullet as a way to discover hidden resources within yourself. Like in normal chess or blitz chess, you have time to think. The bad thing is you learn to idle and think abstractly and not concretely. In bullet you are forced to think quickly and also evaluate quickly. This is why bullet is good. You also learn to calculate better.
And yes, Nakamura,Carlsen (even more so) can play bullet better than even a 2000 can play regular chess. Their instincts are highly developed.
Good points, but if youre a class player, that plays a lot of bullet, then youre also instilling bad habits, in addition to trying to "think" quickly.
Bullet and blitz have always reinforced my own bad habits - namely moving too fast, taking the first good move I see rather than looking for the best one, and focusing too much on one area of the board rather than seeing the whole position.
Of course, these are bad habits that I as a player naturally gravitate towards, and constantly have to work to fight. If you are a disciplined player by nature, it might not hurt your game so much, if at all. I can say with confidence that bullet is not good for me as a player, but the answer might be different for someone else.
Pawns on there normal squares, and all the other pieces set up randonly.
Bullet can certainly help with your tactical vision and teach you to better use the initiative.
But it also can hurt your accuracy—as bullet chess is notorious for being shallow and imprecise (and it tends to get more imprecise the longer the game goes on). By the time you're in the endgame, the moves have reached the point of pure superficiality (or just plain blunders and pre-moves).
Most strong bullet players (2500+) have put in all the study and work in analysis and slow chess—and their bullet playing is a reflection of what they've already learned. (Which is to say, they're generally not using bullet to improve, but playing it as a way to challenge themselves with a quicker timer.)
Bullet can certainly help with your tactical vision and teach you to better use the initiative.
But it also can hurt your accuracy—as bullet chess is notorious for being shallow and imprecise (and it tends to get more imprecise the longer the game goes on). By the time you're in the endgame, the moves have reached the point of pure superficiality (or just plain blunders and pre-moves).
Most strong bullet players (2500+) have put in all the study and work in analysis and slow chess—and their bullet playing is a reflection of what they've already learned. (Which is to say, they're generally not using bullet to improve, but playing it as a way to challenge themselves with a quicker timer.)
Yes, think of the average Joe on this site as a college student and the 2500 a Professor with a PhD. It's not that they know different equations. The Professor just knows more deeply.
The main benefit of bullet is that it trains you to think faster and not feel the intense pressure of being low on time. If you play a lot of bullet, you will never feel like you're in time pressure in an OTB tournament game. I've seen OTB players start to sweat, shake, and make horrendous blunders when their clock goes down to 5 minutes because they haven't practiced any blitz or bullet. This is because they have never trained their mind to think and evaluate quickly. Suddenly their brain goes into panic mode, short circuits, and their game implodes. On the other hand, I feel cool as a cucumber even when I'm down to like 2 minutes in OTB. Usually by then, we are playing an endgame, so I just remind myself that I've played entire games in 1 minute before and suddenly I feel like I have all the time in the world!
The main benefit of bullet is that it trains you to think faster and not feel the intense pressure of being low on time. If you play a lot of bullet, you will never feel like you're in time pressure in an OTB tournament game. I've seen OTB players start to sweat, shake, and make horrendous blunders when their clock goes down to 5 minutes because they haven't practiced any blitz or bullet. This is because they have never trained their mind to think and evaluate quickly. Suddenly their brain goes into panic mode, short circuits, and their game implodes. On the other hand, I feel cool as a cucumber even when I'm down to like 2 minutes in OTB. Usually by then, we are playing an endgame, so I just remind myself that I've played entire games in 1 minute before and suddenly I feel like I have all the time in the world!
If youre thinking of all the bullet you have played to remain calm with 2 minutes on the clock? Then youre not concentrating on the game.
Blitz is not good and it is not bad. It is just a different game based on chess. Same way as sprint is it same as marathon. Nobody can convince me that sprint and marathon are almost same because in both cases the athlete runs. Different per definition - expectations must be different as well. They train a different set of muscles, some of which overlap but are affected in different ways.
I agree with FishEyedFools. Strong bullet players are strong because they are good in longer time controls.
A player who can't spot a smothered mate in standard time controls will probably not find it in bullet where he has less time.
bullet is like a drug. it's so addictive, winning a losing position on time because I've done a check with the queen and it takes them 3 seconds to realise they can take the queen with the king... or winning a checkmate with 1 second left...it's a massive adrenaline boost and even though everyone knows it isn't good chess, as in the amount of evaluation is minimal, it provides a much bigger high than daily chess does. so even though the standard of pure chess is less,the thrill is much more and for that reason it's the best game mode.
In a word, no.
The reason why bullet doesn't help in time scrambles is that they are two very different modes and unless you fully understand that they're different, you'll tend to play long-play too fast, without thinking correctly for a slow rate of play. In any case, when you are running short of time, I think there needs to be a succession of conscious decisions to speed up play. At least one decision is necessary to get out of the habit of thinking too long, and that in itself means you will start to look for different moves. Maybe obvious moves but maybe moves that really mix things up, if that's necessary. And when about three minutes or less are left and there are many moves to be played then we need to go into blitz mode and that is a conscious decision, that "from now on I'll play very fast".
It's possible to play a well thought out game in five minutes of thinking time if we're really on form, but it isn't possible to do it in one minute so bullet is useless as practice.
I think Bullet can be a good drill for pattern recognition, but little else.
Spot tactics quicker, learn to make rudimentary plans, see the board quickly, evaluate in a hurry. Spot weaknesses.
These are some of the things that can come from bullet but not from slow chess.
I wonder if this is just me or other players also feel that bullet makes them stronger
Spot tactics quicker, learn to make rudimentary plans, see the board quickly, evaluate in a hurry. Spot weaknesses.
These are some of the things that can come from bullet but not from slow chess.
I wonder if this is just me or other players also feel that bullet makes them stronger