is bullet chess "silly"

I don't know why people insist on comparing one time control with another, as if one is somehow superior.  Obviously the more time you have, the better moves you'll play - so what?  Does that mean 60/0 is silly because 120/0 will lead to better moves?  But 120/0 is pointless because 14 days a move is "real chess"?

Bullet isn't any more pointless than any other time control.  Maybe less "silly" since less time is wasted on it.  

So, your position is that chess is silly, therefore the less time you waste on it the better ? I see...

My argument is bullet is no sillier than any other time control.

Let's just say that when playing bullet my opponent never seems to be even trying to win on a normal way.

Your argument is the result of some extreme hyperbole.  Assuming, logically, a 45 move game, 1 0 bullet means spending 1.33 seconds per move. 

The human brain cannot think about and make a reasonable chess decision in that amount of time, or anything approaching the optimal play of that person.  60 0 is considered "quick chess" in tournaments, but nevertheless, at 1.33 minutes per move, a player can play a game representative of his actual strength. 

For instance, your bullet rating is about 250 points higher than mine, and considering I'm much weaker at 1 0 than 2 0, you would probably score 7-8 out of 10 against me. 

But even our live blitz (which is also drastically different than standard control chess) ratings are roughly the same.  So what does that tell you about bullet as it relates to a solid or objective indicator of play or strength? 

Wrong question

is it fun

You bet

my human brain can :p

also it's not 1.33/move because a) you premove a lot and b) you also have time to think during your opponents turn and lag

Really ? It depends on what you mean by thinking.

Of course someone playing 1/0 isn't going to make the best possible move they're capable of.  But I doubt most people can play their best moves in anything under a 5-6 hour session.  There's still a huge difference between that and 60/0 (or less), yet it's only bullet that attracts such hate. :)  

Bullet seems far closer to "real chess" than correspondence, there's no outside help.  Ratings don't tell the whole story - my bullet is higher, your correspondence is higher.  But my OTB is higher (just under 2200 perf for this year).  I just don't understand why these threads only get made about bullet, when blitz and correspondence are just as silly.

Actually I made a thread some time ago where I proposed that both bullet and correspondence should be considered as chess variants. (I only got a couple of responses.) However, while correspondence IMO is not real chess, it has a learning value for real chess. The same cannot be said about bullet, which is basically a videogame.

In bullet the goal shifts from checkmate to time.  Time control and clocks were introduced to eliminate players from unreasonably sitting on their hands and, in order to give time control bite, losing on time became a new twist in chess - but the purpose was never to make time itself the prime factor. Time trouble was the thing to avoid while trying to checkmate.   Bullet makes time the all important factor (for most of us) with checkmate as the thing to avoid while managing time.  So, in that sense, bullet is not only not chess, but a perversion of chess - therefore a variant. 

May I quote you?

Ive watched plenty of bullet games here, and so many are won on time with the winning player down massive amounts of material.  I dont see the thrill in being down material, aimlessly shuffling pieces, and winning by 1 second.

 If I said no would you listen?

Of course. Even batgirls have honor.

Well go ahead and quote me, as long as you do it with honor.

It's not just "look similar".

I can have a chess engine running while watching the 3 minute Blitz and 1 minute bullet games over at ICC. The pros can find the top 3 chess engine moves at that speed, and yes, as said before, most of it is by a combination of theory and pattern memory, much like a jazz musician who plays note perfect jazz patterns at a bebop tempo, which is really fast.

I'm watching two GM's play 3 minute chess right now over at ICC with the chess engine Crafty 20.14 running in a little box. These guys can find the moves!

The human brain can do amazing things.

If I played a slow game against an IM or GM, the clock would go something like this:

I'm White

2:00:00 1.d4

2:00:00 1...c5

1:50:00 2.d5

1:59:59 2...e5

1:35:00 3.e4

1:59:57 3...d6

So, I've burned up 25 minutes on the clock because of 1...c5. What the heck is that? My pro opponent has spent 3 seconds.

These guys have a million ways to take me out of book on move one, two or three.

Um I think what tonydal is implying is that 1.d4 c5 shouldn't really take you "out of the book".

when I first heard the term "book move," I didn't know there was actually a book (or hundreds of them)