All The Information: Chess.com Bullet Open Championship
Chess.com is hosting the Bullet Open Championship, a two-day tournament on December 19-20 with the winner clinching a spot in next year's Bullet Chess Championship. With a $10,000 prize fund on the line, this event will feature a 1|0 time control, open to all titled players on Chess.com.
How to watch?
Tune in at Chess.com/tv on Saturday, December 19 and Sunday, December 20 at 10 a.m. Pacific time/19:00 Central European time for expert commentary.
The Bullet Open Championship is a tournament for bullet lovers. Over two days, the quickest players on our site will determine who is the best in this super-fast format. All games are played at a 1|0 time control.
Dec. 19: Swiss qualifiers
The action starts on Saturday, December 19, when players will have two chances to qualify for the championship rounds, through either of the two 21-round Swiss qualification events. The first is starting at 10 a.m. Pacific time/19:00 Central European time and the other begins at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time/20:30 Central European time.
The top six players in each event will advance to the knockout phase, seeded 1-6 by their place in their respective qualifier. All participants can play in both qualifiers, and should a player finish in the top six in both events, the player will secure the higher of the two seeds.
Dec. 20: Knockout
The knockout starts on December 20 with a 12-player bracket, where the top two seeds from each Swiss receive a bye in the wild card round and advance directly to the quarterfinals. Players will face opponents from their Swiss qualification event from the day prior up until the championship round.
The matches will consist of a 15-minute Speed Chess Championship style match, where players will alternate colors with each game until time expires. The player with the most points will advance to the next round.
What's at stake?
The total prize fund is $10,000 with $5,000 going to the winner, as well as qualification for the 2021 Bullet Chess Championship. The first edition, in April 2019, was won by GM Hikaru Nakamura who defeated GM Oleksandr Bortnyk in the final.
Top bullet players
We expect most of the bullet experts on our site to participate. Currently, the top bullet players are, in order of their current rankings, GMs Andrew Tang (@penguingm1), Alireza Firouzja (@Firouzja2003), Hikaru Nakamura (@Hikaru), and GM Daniel Naroditsky (@DanielNaroditsky). And who knows if a certain Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) might show up?
More information, including Fair Play regulations, can be found here.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms.
Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools.
Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013.
As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!
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