Pre-moving is perhaps the most important technical feature of online bullet chess and arguably only pre-moving makes it possible to play a decent (we use the term advisably) game of chess in one minute. It is certainly possible to play bullet without pre-moving, but anyone who does so is giving his or her opponent a big advantage in time every game. Pre-moving is worth several hundred rating points, provided it is done properly.
How to pre-move
In the Blitzin program commonly used on the Internet Chess Club, the pre-moving feature is activated as follows:
* right click on “Options” to activate the drop-down menu;
* right click on “Move Input”, to activate another drop-down menu; and
* right click on “Premove.”
Other programs have similar features. Once you have taken these steps, you can unleash the power of pre-moving.
Pre-moving itself is very simple and intuitive. All you do is input your move when it is your opponent’s turn to move. If the move is legal once your opponent has moved, it will be made almost instantly (commonly in a tenth of a second). If it is not legal, the pre-move is cancelled and nothing will happen. Then you have to regroup and move normally.
Let’s consider the following position, which arises quite often:
When the game starts, White’s time begins to run. White can play whatever he likes, but he can’t pre-move, because Black’s time isn’t yet running. But Black can. If Black plays the Alekhine Defense against 1.e4 (1...Nf6) and is comfortable playing 1...Nf6 against 1.d4, he can and should pre-move 1...Nf6. 1...Nf6 is a relatively “safe” pre-move, because 1...Nf6 is a reasonable reply to any first move by White. There is nothing White can play on his first move which leaves Black with a serious disadvantage were he to answer with 1...Nf6.
Still, Black has to balance the time saved by pre-moving 1...Nf6 against losing the option to answer 1.c4 with 1...e5 (if that’s what he would normally play in a slower game). Black also has to be prepared to play a few positions that not only might be outside his normal opening repertoire, but really shouldn’t arise at all, such as the strange 1.g4 Nf6 (pre-moved) 2.g5:
Where does Black’s knight go now? We don’t know and we don’t really care, but you can be sure that there won’t be any opening theory on this position! That, of course, is part of the beauty of bullet chess. Positions often arise in the super-heated bullet universe that can’t exist in the cooler universe of normal chess (no chess book would be complete without a cosmological analogy).
What you see
When a pre-move is made, an arrow appears on the board to indicate the move. The arrow begins in the square containing the piece being pre-moved and ends in the destination square, reflecting the mouse drag which inputted the move. Pre-moves, like any other moves, may also be inputted by typing in the move using the keyboard, but few players play this way if they have a choice.
Your opponent does not see the arrow, so only the player who is pre-moving knows that a pre-move has been made and what it is. The reason for this is fairly obvious. If you knew your opponent’s pre-moves, you could win easily by exploiting them.
Canceling a pre-move
By definition, pre-moves are made quickly, even in bullet terms. You must pre-move on your opponent’s time, so pre-moves are often made almost as part of your actual move. It may be, though, that after literally a moment’s reflection you decide that the pre-move you have selected is unwise. If your opponent moves before you can do anything, your fears may well turn out to be justified. But if you are fast enough, you can cancel the pre-move.
This can be done in two ways. If you right click on the piece being pre-moved, the pre-move simply disappears and you are in exactly the same situation as if you had never made it in the first place. You can then make a different pre-move, or even reinstate your original pre-move.
Alternatively, if you want to make a different pre-move, you can bypass the cancellation described above and input a new pre-move. The new pre-move will then override the previous one.
When to pre-move
Inexperienced bullet players may not even be aware of the pre-move feature, and rarely use it even if they are. It takes some getting used to, but the importance of pre-moving can’t be over-emphasized.
The basic principle is very simple – you should pre-move as often as possible! The time saved is often critical, and a player who is pre-moving will quickly gain a time advantage of five, ten or more seconds. In many bullet games, such an advantage will be decisive, and is definitely the equivalent of a significant material advantage, such as an extra piece or more.
For the player who is getting used to pre-moving, it is not a bad idea to start slowly, although we hope that won’t be taken literally! If you pre-move only a few times a game that’s much better than not at all. Once you get the hang of it you will find that you pre-move more and more often, frequently by instinct without even realizing it.
The best way to start is to pre-move when there is no risk, then work your way up to more dangerous pre-moves.
Safe pre-moves
The safest pre-moves of all are “only” moves, where no legal alternatives exist. There is no need to give an example of such a pre-move, but it is worth stressing that there is no reason at all not to pre-move in such a position. After all, if you have no choice as to your move, why take more than a tenth of a second to make it?
A less trivial example involves recaptures. The position at the top of the next column has arisen in millions of games.
While different move orders can lead to this position, normally it arises in the Open Sicilian after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4.
We are not concerned with the complexities of the Sicilian Defense, which have filled many longer – and we think less interesting – books than this one. We are more interested in what White has done while waiting for Black’s third move.
In the diagrammed position, White absolutely should pre-move 4.N×d4, provided of course that’s how he intends to reply to 3...c×d4 (4.Q×d4 is a viable option and 4.c3 is playable, especially in a bullet game). White should pre-move 4.N×d4 because there is no reason not to.
4.N×d4 is a pre-move with no risk. If Black plays something other than 3...c×d4, 4.N×d4 will be cancelled automatically as though it had never been attempted. A sophisticated White player will realize that 3...Nf6 is playable for Black, but White would be fooling only himself if he thought that he was being clever by not pre-moving a recapture on d4. The 4.N×d4 pre-move in no way precludes White from responding to 3...Nf6 in some other way – in fact it compels him to, because 4.N×d4 would be illegal after 3...Nf6 or any other move than 3...c×d4.
The astute reader will by now have realized that 4.Q×d4 is an equally safe pre-move, because it also would only be played after 3...c×d4. Simple recaptures are therefore almost always safe pre-moves which should be made as a matter of course – even when the opponent’s capture is unlikely.
It is easy to find other examples of safe pre-moves. If you can be sure what your opponent will play, as is often the case when you have just played a forcing move, you can pre-move with absolute confidence. The catch, though, is just how sure can you really be as to what your opponent will play, which brings us to the next category of pre-moves.
Semi-safe pre-moves
When we discuss forcing moves, it is important to distinguish between truly forcing moves, where there is only one legal reply, and apparently forcing moves, where there is only one rational reply. The difference is similar to that between absolute pins and relative pins.
An absolute pin arises when a piece is pinned to its king and can’t legally move. A relative pin is different. If the pinned piece moves a more valuable piece will be exposed to capture, but the move is still legal. In normal chess, many combinations involve seemingly impossible moves by pinned pieces, but the “impossibility” is purely a construct of the players’ minds. The description “relative” makes this clear. When a white bishop pins a black knight to Black’s queen, the immobility of Black’s knight stems from the relative values of White’s bishop and Black’s queen. If Black’s knight can start a decisive attack by moving out of the pin, everything changes.
In bullet, pre-moves are safe if the opponent’s move is truly forced, because you can be sure that the pre-move will go ahead as planned. However, once your opponent has options, pre-moves start involving an element of risk. As discussed earlier, if none of the opponent’s options are dangerous, then the pre-move is still safe. The possibility of even one dangerous move changes the equation and introduces an element of risk.
Consider the position after 1.e4 c6 2.d4 Qc7?!
2...Qc7?! is not a particularly good move and White obviously has no reason to be afraid of it. He can continue with 3.Nc3, 3.Nf3 or other moves, with a comfortable game. So what is Black up to?
Black’s hope is that White will start pre-moving and overlook the possibility that Black can play 3...Q×h2?! Of course this loses unless White has pre-moved, but it would be easy for White to think that Black has no threats at all so early in the game. After 3.Nc3 Q×h2?! 4.R×h2 White wins, but after 3.Nc3 Q×h2?! 4.Nf3? (pre-moved) 4...Q×h1, it’s quite a different story.
The best players play semi-safe pre-moves frequently. They play the odds. Often the odds are pretty good. When you capture an opposing piece, it’s likely your opponent will recapture it. It’s reasonably safe to pre-move in such circumstances, even though there’s a possibility that your opponent will cross you up by throwing in an “in-between” move rather than recapturing. In deciding whether to risk a semi-safe pre-move, the following factors should be considered:
As we have seen, when a truly forcing move has been made, there is no chance your opponent will make an unexpected move, so pre-moving is absolutely safe. But even if your opponent surprises you, that doesn’t mean he will make a move which exploits your pre-move. That will depend on the position and the move he makes. In the previous example, only 3...Q×h2?! exploited a pre-move by White on his fourth move. Against any other move, White would have a reasonable position. There was no chance of Black accidentally exploiting White’s pre-move – only the kamikaze attack by Black’s queen would do the job.
As for the third factor, in bullet it is possible to recover from almost any setback except for checkmate. If a pre-move costs a piece, the time gained may be worth it, especially if the setback occurs after five or six pre-moves, which presumably have given you a significant time advantage. When we say that a five-second time edge is worth a piece, that’s sometimes not just a figure of speech! If you are pre-moving consistently, it may sometimes cost you a piece or more to get that time advantage.
Risky pre-moves
It is easy to see that there is a spectrum of risk for pre-moves and that in some positions pre-moving can be reckless. Just as in normal chess a weakness that cannot be exploited is unimportant, in bullet pre-moves that go unpunished are fine, no matter how risky they might have been. In the next chapter we will discuss “pre-move blunders” in detail, but these “blunders” are brilliant when you get away with them!
Why do some players play risky pre-moves that only work if their opponents play just the right moves? It’s fun, for one thing, and can also be very effective because of the time advantage associated with pre-moving. Like all gamblers, pre-move addicts have trouble knowing when to stop, and it is a rare bullet player who can build up a big time advantage by pre-moving, then calmly win over the board. It’s human nature to go with what got you there – and in bullet those who live by the pre-move often die by the pre-move.
In a bad position where you are behind on time, risky pre-moves are often the only chance and really you’re risking very little by making them, since otherwise you are just going to lose. If you are overmatched, it might also be that your best chance against a stronger opponent is to throw caution to the wind and start pre-moving. One can therefore rationalize risky pre-moving, but it would be disingenuous to emphasize this. The most common explanation for risky pre-moving is that the players who do it are a bit crazy, and more power to them. Bullet lets people express their true nature...
Most players, though, make risky pre-moves without realizing it, either because they haven’t correctly assessed the position on the board or because they have misjudged the psychological factors involved.
Psychology
Someone with Atriedes-like prescience would be a formidable bullet player because if you always knew what your opponent would play you could pre-move all the time. Somehow the strongest bullet players appear to have this ability. Are they actually mutants or space aliens who can read their opponents’ minds, or is there a simpler explanation?
Opinions differ on this question, but an understanding of chess psychology is a critically important part of pre-moving. The more you can anticipate what your opponent is thinking and what he or she will do next, the better you will do. This applies both in normal chess and, to an even greater extent, in bullet.
One often reads how a losing player bemoans the fact that he was constantly surprised by his opponent’s moves and therefore couldn’t play well. This is not to say that all surprises in chess are unpleasant – a terrible move by an opponent may be surprising but not unwelcome – but it is disconcerting to find yourself confused and disoriented by your opponent’s play. Similarly, if your opponent’s moves are expected, it is much easier to counter them and set traps which take advantage of them. In bullet, the same considerations apply on the board, with the added benefit of pre-moving. If you can regularly foresee what your opponent is going to play, you can pre-move with a low degree of risk and either build up a time advantage or force your opponent to play above his or her speed limit, with the inevitable result.
The importance of psychology is one of the themes which runs though this book and it is explored in subsequent chapters. For now, it is enough to make the point that it is an understanding of psychology, not mind-reading, which gives the strongest bullet players their pre-moving powers.
Smart-moving
We would be remiss not to mention a lesser-known feature – smart-moving. Smart-moving is activated using the same menu as pre-moving, and is an even more volatile weapon than pre-moving.
Smart-moves are made by right clicking on a piece. If that piece can make only one legal move, it will make it. If the piece may make more than one move, nothing will happen.
As with pre-moves, smart-moves can be made with pawns as well as pieces.
Smart-moving is faster than dragging a piece, because no additional hand motion is required. This is particularly useful in endgames, when a pawn is rushing to the queening square. If the pawn can’t capture anything it can only go forward one square, and simply clicking on the pawn is the most efficient way to input the move.
Smart-moves can be used less frequently than pre-moves and can also rebound against the player trying to make them. If you click on a piece to smart-move it and your opponent plays an unanticipated move, the resulting move may be anything but smart. There is also a danger of accidentally making a smart-move once you activate the smart-move feature. Many players do not use smart-move.
Mouse slips
It is a mistake to think that every bullet move is intentional. This book contains many examples of “mouse slips,” where a piece is accidentally moved to the wrong square. Even in normal chess this can happen, although the motor skills required to move a piece on a chess board when the time control is 40 moves in 90 minutes are a bit less demanding than those required in bullet.
There is no magic solution for mouse slips. They usually are a result of fatigue, although some players seem more prone to them than others. Switching to another game wouldn’t help those players because if they weren’t dropping a rook they would be ramming their star cruiser into an asteroid, so just keep playing.
Speaking of mice...
It is possible to play chess online without using a mouse just by typing your moves on the keyboard. Move numbers and other finesses aren’t required – “Nf6” becomes 1...Nf6 on the board, and so on.
Needless to say, even for the most accomplished typist, this is a cumbersome way to play. It is remarkable how quickly some players can play using a keyboard, but they are even faster when they use a mouse.
In one rare situation, however, typing in your moves can be very useful. Most players play with the “Always Queen” feature activated, which causes all promoted pawns to automatically queen. From time to time, however, it may be necessary to promote to a rook (to avoid stalemate), to a knight (to fork) or, once in a chess lifetime, to a bishop. It’s theoretically possible to turn off the “Always Queen” feature, then promote the pawn, then select the desired piece, although by then you probably will have run out of time. It is much faster just to type in the under-promoting move. It can also be very annoying to forget to reset “Always Queen,” then lose the next game on time...