Unless you started at the last chapter of this book, you have by now learned a lot about bullet chess. The speed and depth of your bullet play should be impressing your friends and frightening your enemies. But is there more to bullet than just bullet? Are there lessons to be learned that apply to other time controls and activities?
Other time controls
One-minute chess is probably the fastest chess can be played and still be even semi-rational (braggarts will claim otherwise, and they sometimes might even be right). There is no point in discussing faster time controls, though, because one-minute games turn into 45-second games, then 30-second games, and so on. All the principles and insights we have shared in this book apply to time controls of less than a minute, should anyone be crazy enough to try to play at that speed.
We will therefore look only at slower time controls.
Increments
One popular form of blitz chess involves increments. In most versions, each player starts with some time (say a minute) and gets an additional amount of time (perhaps two seconds) each time a move is made. For convenience, we will refer to this time control as 1/2. 2/3 would mean that each player starts with two minutes and gets three seconds per move; 3/3 would mean each player starts with three minutes and gets three seconds per move, and so on.
The fastest incremental time control is probably 0/1, which translates to 10 seconds to start, plus one second per move. 0/1 is bullet on amphetamines, and the slightest hesitation can be fatal. We don’t recommend it.
1/1 is more common, and there are very significant differences between 1/1 and bullet. Clearly you have to play quickly at both time controls, but the one-second increment is critical in many situations.
If we assume the average game is 40 moves long, 1/1 translates to one minute and forty seconds for each player, which is close to the leisurely pace of two minutes each (more about that in a moment). With more time, many of the observations we have made about the relationship between time and the on-board position lose their force, at least in the early part of the game. More importantly, with even a one-second increment, a good player can rebuild his position on the clock by moving in less than a second.
This may sound a bit far-fetched, but keep in mind that a pre-move takes only one-tenth of a second, and therefore if one player achieves a winning position where the opponent has no counterplay, that player can just pre-move in order to gain enough time to win. Similarly, playing irrational, sacrificial moves in order to run your opponent out of time simply doesn’t work when playing with increments. It can be quite funny to watch someone used to playing one-minute games try this in a game with increments.
Two-minute chess
While two-minute games are still fast, they are noticeably slower than one-minute games. This means they are that much more likely to be decided on the board, rather than by time.
Perhaps the biggest difference between bullet and two-minute chess is that unsound tactical tricks are much more likely to fail in two-minute chess. The defender is more likely to have enough time to see through a trap, and will also have more time afterwards to exploit the resulting on-board advantage. The initiative is still important in two-minute games, but the slower time control brings with it an unfortunate need for sounder play.
Of course time is still important in two-minute chess because two minutes is not all that long! Having a time advantage is important, although if it comes at the expense of your position, this can be a bad deal in two-minute chess. That said, few two-minute games are decided before the players use up at least half of their allotted time, which means two-minute games tend to turn into bullet games at some point. Whether this happens after ten or 15 moves or later on depends, but in most games the players will end up playing bullet.
When this happens, all the lessons in this book come into play. The player who can go into “bullet mode” as time grows short will have a huge advantage, especially since many players who play two-minute chess tend to stay away from bullet.
Three-minute chess
Three minute chess is extremely popular and all but the most serious tournament players likely play at that time control from time to time. The comments made above in relation to two-minute chess all apply to three-minute chess as well. Because time is less of a factor, there is an increased premium on good play, although often the result is to cause the opponent to run short of time rather than to win outright on the board.
Three-minute chess is probably the fastest time control which provides a reasonable opportunity for players to practice “real openings.” It goes without saying that thinking too long in the opening can be costly in three-minute chess, but one or even two minutes spent on the opening can be a good investment if the result is a clearly winning position. After all, if you can play an entire game in a minute, finishing off your opponent should be no trouble! Three-minute chess gives the players time to remember theoretical variations and even try new moves.
Five-minute chess
This brings us to five-minute or “blitz” chess. This is the traditional time control for speed chess, and only recently has it been somewhat superseded by three-minute chess. For bullet players, five minutes seems like an eternity, and a significant adjustment is required to go from one rate of play to the other. No points are awarded for losing a blitz game in less than a minute!
Bullet players will rarely run short of time in blitz chess. Bullet chess is like training with a medicine ball or shooting a hockey puck full of lead. Whether a bullet player can slow down sufficiently to think enough to play blitz chess is another question. In fact, the real danger for bullet players is boredom. As their attention span becomes attuned to one-minute games, it may become difficult for some bullet players to maintain their concentration for as long as ten minutes.
Whether this is really a “problem” depends in part on whether the bullet players in question care whether their blitz chess suffers from their greater interest in bullet. Being aware of this potential danger and keeping an open mind as to the different attractions of blitz chess will allow most bullet players to play equally well at any time control. Versatility is always a good thing!
Tournament chess
The patriarch of Soviet Chess, Mikhail Botvinnik, forbade his pupils from playing five-minute chess. His view was that playing chess at that speed was not chess at all and that blitz was a vice which would lead to superficial play. Losing world championship matches to Tal and Petrosian, who were both outstanding blitz players, must have galled him. And let’s not even talk about Bobby Fischer, who often won blitz games using less than two minutes...
Botvinnik’s views on bullet chess can only be imagined, as one-minute chess really only came of age in the internet era. Prejudices aside, though, it’s fair to ask whether bullet helps or hurts one’s “real” chess. This question won’t arise for many bullet players, who have no interest in spending a weekend or longer playing in a chess tournament, and who can’t even imagine spending four or five hours on a single game. But there are also players who play bullet for fun and relaxation, and play tournament chess for the challenge, the social aspects, to get out of the house, to boost their ego or even because they just love the game. Will bullet ruin their chess?
The main concern is that bullet play leads to superficiality and an irresistible temptation to play for tricks. There is something to this, although our view is that this anxiety is unjustified if bullet players simply realize that bullet chess and normal, tournament chess are quite different animals. Tactics and strategies that work in bullet chess will often fail in normal chess, and vice versa.
It might not be wise to play several hours of bullet in between rounds of a tournament (although some people do), but this may be more because of fatigue than because bullet is inherently bad for your chess. For most players, it is enough to allow for a period of adjustment before a serious tournament – take a little time off from bullet and let your brain slow down a bit.
Some players find it relaxing to play blitz or even bullet before and during more serious events. Fast play also helps some players warm up for their slower tournament games. If you find that some bullet gets you in the right frame of mind to grind out your opponent in a double-rook ending at a club match or in a weekend tournament, go for it.
So much for the possible negative effects of bullet – what about the benefits? To put this question in perspective, we first will take a brief look at the state of competitive chess, and the increasing importance of rapid play in the modern chess world.
Mistakes
It has often been said that “chess is a game of mistakes.” Without mistakes, chess is a draw, and usually a boring draw at that. In days of old, when there was much to discover about chess, the mistakes came of their own accord, but as the “science” of chess has developed, mistakes have become less common. Some argue that this means the level of play has improved, while others feel that from the competitive standpoint the best days of chess are behind us, even to the extent that serious changes to chess (such as the addition of new pieces) are necessary to save the game.
Regardless of where you stand on these issues, the fact remains that mistakes are necessary for chess to work, and people have given a lot of thought as to how to induce these mistakes.
One is to reward risk taking, so that the payoff for taking chances and playing to win makes the occasional loss acceptable. This has led to some organizers awarding one point to each player for a draw, but three points for a win. Whether this will catch on is hard to say. This type of scoring system is used in football (soccer in North America), giving wins a greater importance than ties.
Another approach is to consider a draw only a starting point, with the players contesting the full point in a playoff or overtime game. One interesting idea is to have a draw worth only one-third of a point to each player, with the remaining one-third of a point being decided by a rematch, with colors reversed, using whatever time remains on the clocks. If the first overtime game is drawn, the players switch colors again and keep playing until finally one player wins. The player who had more time left when the initial game was drawn would have an advantage in overtime. If increments are used, the players would always have some time for the overtime game(s), but a superiority in fast play would clearly be an advantage (especially if the increments were reduced or eliminated at some point).
In many elimination tournaments, the same type of system is used. The players contest two or more normal games, with a slow time control. If the players are tied, two rapid games (usually 20 minutes with increments) are played. If that doesn’t do it, blitz games are played. Ultimately an “Armageddon” game may be played, where White has more time but Black must win.
Many sports use overtime to decide the outcome of close matches. Tennis has tie breaks, baseball has extra innings, and hockey has a five-minute overtime period (with only four skaters for each team), followed by a shootout (soccer also uses this approach).
In these systems, and many others, competitive results will often depend on the abilities of the players to play some form of speed chess. The psychological benefits of bullet expertise should not be underestimated. If you are comfortable in your blitz and bullet play, you need not fear playoff or overtime games, and may even welcome them. Conversely, an opponent who knows you are a blitz or bullet specialist may try too hard to win in “regulation time” and no fast games may be needed. In chess, the threat is often more important than the execution!
But there’s more...
Time trouble
One current trend in chess, besides the use of different forms of playoff or overtime games with increasingly fast time controls, is to also speed up the rate of play in the tournament games themselves.
Many top players have rebelled against this approach, criticizing it as a mere convenience for organizers which reduces the quality of play, especially in endings, where players are forced to try to solve difficult problems with only 30 seconds per move. These criticisms are not unreasonable – it’s fair to ask whether extended playing sessions with faster time controls is really chess. But it’s also fair to ask whether extensive memorization of computer-checked openings and middle game positions is really chess. Faster time controls may make it easier for organizers, but to criticize them because they cause players to make mistakes misses the point – that’s one of the main ideas!
Historically tournament games were replete with opening preparation, deep thought, subtle plans and complicated tactics. They were also often decided in time scrambles, where one or both players had used almost all their allotted time and were forced to move quickly. Blunders followed, and the outcome of the game was determined in two or three minutes.
The trend to faster time controls makes time scrambles even more common, and it is here that bullet can give players a real edge. In games without increments, even a sedate tournament game may end up as a bullet game, and then the principles we’ve discussed in the preceding chapters may apply. Bullet players’ nerves will hold up well once the players have less than a minute left, as they will be in familiar territory. In contrast, serious tournament players are more likely to get rattled in time trouble, thinking that two or three minutes can’t possibly be enough time to play chess. We know better!
Conclusion
Bullet chess stands on its own as a perfectly valid, fun form of chess. It can hone your tactical skills, improve your strategic judgment, take your mind off a long day at work and give you a headache. Most of all, it’s fun.
The criticism that “bullet wrecks your chess” comes mainly from people who don’t (and often can’t) play it. In reality bullet can improve your results in competitive tournaments, both in time scrambles (including by avoiding them!) and in playoff games.
Now go play some bullet!