How long did it take for you bullet players to be able to play at that pace ?

Letgoofmychessego

That’s silly, Botvinnik played blitz, and did so really well, take with a grain of salt these quotes, they are said by mortals. Look deeper before making a judgement.

The Magnus quote is pure crap, since modern blitz and even bullet tournaments offer big prize money, and Magnus signs up and is very determined to win, so no, it’s not just for fun.

Fischer quote is likewise silly. Fischer played many Blitz games, and tournaments, Nobody forced him to. He also used it to train his openings. This is where his famous St. George Attack quote comes from (sac, sac, mate), from playing blitz games for practice and testing.

Subomega

Strongest blitz and bullet players are same as slow chess, it’s all the same people. The biggest difference is Tang 2500 slow 3100 fast, but that’s still GM level in both.

Basically just because you don’t like fast chess doesn’t mean it’s not chess. All chess is limited by time, people lose on time and get into time trouble all the time in slow chess. IF there was more time to calculate people would use even more time than slow chess allows. Like correspondence chess! Maybe by your guys logic the only REAL chess is correspondence chess, 1 move every 2 weeks :)

Strong chess players are often good at Bullet, but Bullet players with a high rating are often merely fast.

Conclusion: good Bullet players can be good but without references they aren‘t probably. They are just „mouse-skilled“.

Blitz is something different, premoving and mouse-skills are not that dominant.

LOL Sargon 2|1 bullet is slower than 3 blitz, you surely see the logical fallacy of your silly war on bullet, you would have to define when “real” chess starts, and you can’t, because there is no such thing. It’s all real chess. ALL chess is bound by the clock which prevents the player from fully analyzing the position. Is 3 minute blitz “real” chess? How about 5 minute? Where do you draw this silly line you invented of “real” chess???

Top bullet players are good at chess, chess is not clicking random spots with the mouse, you have to click chess moves.

Even hyper bullet is not really mouse skill dominant, assuming you are not retarded mentally or physically and you have a decent connections to internet you WILL be able to move the mouse fast enough for hyper bullet, and MORE than fast enough, the problem is clicking CHESS moves that make sense, thus it’s about one’s ability to spot CHESS moves and ideas and sequences, not random mouse clicking.

@Kusokosla If you feel personally affected by objective observations I cannot help. You can split hairs as we say in German (=being a stickler) with your definitions of Bullet/Blitz but this mouse-raping business (ultra/Bullet) is not considered chess amongst the majority of chess players.

Your last paragraph is simply wrong.

@Kusokosla I saw a profile of a player who was ~2350 bullet and 1700 blitz, their bullet was exclusively 1/2min with no increment. Mouse skills or chess skills?

You suggest mouse skills aren't that important but from your posts you appear highly trained in classical music, which I bet helps with dextrous fingers, and perhaps makes you miss the fact some people are more clumsy with their fingers.

I consider myself average (neither good or bad) in this regard, but there are people much faster than me. If I lose a 1+0 bullet endgame which starts with equal time (say 15s) and is an easy win (e.g piece/rook up) in which all the moves are obvious, simply because the opponent moves twice as fast as me, should I regard this as their superior chess skills?

Even trivial wins like K+R vs K require quite a number of moves and can be hard to execute in 1+0 if it takes you 1 second for each move.

Original post;

So how long did it take for you bullet players to play at that pace ?

drifted rather off original topic , that's fine i'm not criticising the alternative debate.

#35

That’s true, I do concede that some people are just slower in general. This can be a health/age related, as an example, when I see Ginger GM or Ben Feingold or Yasser, or even Fabby! play bullet or blitz I can’t help but realize that many weaker players would beat them in a time scramble. They are so slow. But I feel as if that is not an indication that faster players have these “mouse skills” but rather that slow players have something wrong with them either health or age-wise. I don’t even own a mouse actually, so I just don’t buy the concept of “mouse skills”, since I don’t even have one LOL

According to the Lichess stats I am better than 2/3 of bullet players. Yet, I suck so badly at bullet chess that I think I shouldn't be playing bullet at all.

So... yeah. What does this tells you about those 2/3? In my view some 90% of bullet players actually cannot play at that pace and shouldn't be playing bullet at all. Regardless their efforts, their games are the chess equivalent of diarrhea.

I realize that many players have a weird mental addiction to it, but it's as painful to watch as a drug addict getting his fix.

@Mrchess78 Like you, I am a lower-rated player and perhaps will always be since I am 57, have been away from the game for a couple of decades and never studied it before a few months ago. I recently discovered bullet and found it both fun and addictive, though I must be in the bottom 95% of players or something and stopped playing after a couple of weeks because I felt it was not the most productive use of my limited chess-time.

Having said that, it is very easy to understand why it is so popular, amongst all ranks including titled players all the way up to super GM's. Does this mean that its fun and addictive nature, as well as the "technically egregious mistakes and blunders" that litter almost every game, make it unworthy of consideration as sport or as a variant of this noble and ancient game? I don't think so.

Clearly, like Blitz, speed is of the essence in this time-format. So, players having a vast store of useful patterns to draw from will be rewarded with a time advantage, since moves can be automatic and virtually instantaneous. I can easily see why a good knowledge of opening theory would serve all bullet players well, irrespective of level. Tactically strong players will also be rewarded against weaker ones because either the later will miss the tactic or spend precious time divining and refuting it. Bold players who care more about initiative than material also stand a good chance of flagging their opponent if they have secured their King early in the game can stand the heat long enough for their opponent's time to run out.

Obviously, players who have all those skills can only hone them by playing bullet and those that are working towards them can use the format to rack-up a tremendous amount of "game-experience" in a relatively short time period if they play with an eye towards "testing" openings, tactics, strategy, etc. It is, however, very easy to see how a player can develop very bad habits that will limit his or her understanding of the game if bullet is the sole format played. But the same can be said about people (like me) who only partake in correspondence games and never really develop their time-management skills which are integral to the game as it is played today.

Finally, superior hand-eye coordination will help any well-rounded chess player who picks up bullet rise to the top of the bullet-heap but I imagine the speed of this ascent will vary greatly according to opening knowledge, tactical ability, and capacity to keep the initiative and King secure from mating attacks.

@PixelatedParcel You have put into words a lot of my own thoughts on bullet , as i don't feel i'm ready to play this fast as i'm not particularly knowledgeable on tactics , openings or in fact everything in chess to be honest.
I'm rated at 1390 elo on Lichess and so of course realise there's plenty of room for improvement and development.

I started playing Chess from scratch one year or so ago at the age of 40, so i guess i have left it rather late in life for any realistic ambition to be great at the game, but i play my best and enjoy playing for the sake of it.