The idea of a book about one-minute (“bullet”) chess was first conceived in the spring of 2008, when American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura visited Vancouver, British Columbia.
At the time, few members of the Internet Chess Club were unaware of the exploits of “Smallville,” the principal handle used by grandmaster Nakamura. His domination of the other ICC bullet players was astounding – several hundred rating points separated him from his “rivals.” if such a term can be used in this context. As all chess players know, someone always has to win in the end, but the Smallville phenomenon defied common sense.
In contrast, the other author of this book, FM Bruce Harper, was a late-comer to bullet chess. An entire game of chess in two minutes or less? What’s that all about? How could it even be possible?
This book is the result of the fortuitous meeting of a formidable grandmaster who is arguably the strongest bullet player in the world and a novice bullet player who just happened to be idle after completing his first chess book (Chess on the Edge, the three-volume chess biography of Canadian grandmaster Duncan Suttles). Hopefully it makes sense of a form of chess that, at first blush, seems impossibly nonsensical.
While all the mistakes in this book are those of the authors, it goes without saying that this book could not have been written without help and encouragement from others. We thank ChessCafe’s Hanon Russell for his enthusiasm and support for a novel venture, while former Canadian Junior Champion Tyler Johnson contributed many of the games (both good and bad!) found in the following pages.
Finally, no book can fully realize its potential, whatever that might be, without a skilled and ruthless copy editor. We thank Robin Perelle for taking time from her professional editing duties to squeeze the errors, verbosity and superfluous commas out of this book – her mastery of language is exceeded only by her ignorance of chess. And we thank Robin Harper for providing that extra set of non-chess eyes which found the errors we had all missed.
And with that, we invite the reader to enter the exhilarating, irrational and thoroughly fun world of bullet chess.
Hikaru Nakamura
Bruce Harper
Vancouver, British Columbia
August 2009