Sunday Blitz & Bullet

There are many different options when playing chess.  In some events I have seen players have as much as 1hr 40mins per player, + 30 seconds a move - and then they get 30 minutes additional time after 40 moves.  Games can take many hours and tournaments run over several days with one game per day.  And the fastest forms of the game? - Blitz and Bullet.

The longer forms of the game are played out with players putting huge amounts of thought and concentration into each and every move, with many options - called 'candidate moves' - considered, and is where chess is played at the highest level.

Blitz and Bullet are much more about instinct - what looks best.  It is a different challenge - and a real test.  In thinking about what to write, I wondered who is the best player in the world at Bullet Chess.  In 2019, Chess.com held a Bullet Chess world championship between some of the best players in the world.  It was won by a United States player called Hikaru Nakamura.  Nakamura is one of the top Grandmasters, earning this title at the age of 15 - not bad.  And, while we have been playing the bullet chess at a leisurely 3 minutes + 3 seconds, in the Chess.com event, the time available was 1 minutes each with no additional time per move.

So, what makes him so good at Bullet, and how does he play so fast?  I read an article about the event on the Chess.com website, at the link below, and it was interesting to see that he was able to play some of his moves without any thinking time - he just saw the moves and it turned out that they were the best moves.  He also "sees tactics at lightning speed".  His opponent in the final commented that Nakamura is "just too fast".

Link to article - https://www.chess.com/news/view/nakamura-wins-chess-com-bullet-championship#f2

So, my suggestion for success at Blitz and Bullet chess? - play lots of tactics (these are chess puzzles).  You can play these for free on many websites.  You can play these on ChessKid, although you do have to pay a subscription to do lots of them.  Here are some places you can find tactics / puzzles:

• https://www.chesskid.com/puzzles
• https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/
• https://lichess.org/training/

I have had a look at these sites, and they look OK to me, but I would suggest an adult checks them before a junior tries them out.  The ChessKid website is certainly very good.  Players get a rating for their tactics, and as they solve puzzles, their rating increases and they are challenged with harder puzzles - it is excellent.  The others are probably very good as well, but I have less knowledge of them.

You may be interested to see one of the games played between Grandmaster Oleksandr Bortnyk and Nakamura is shown below.  See if you can see why Bortnyk resigned.

Today we held two chess events; we started with a 5 minute blitz event and finished with a 3 minute + 3 seconds Bullet event.

Blitz - 5 minutes
The Blitz saw a joint first place between four players all scoring 2 points from 3 games with AbleLopsidedGiraffe and theworldoflegend taking joint first place on tiebreak score, and WiseCrabbyCoconut and sana333 taking joint third place.  Well played to all.  It is also great to welcome a new member to the online club - sana333 - and see her winning games - very well played.

Joint 1st: theworldoflegend  & AbleLopsidedGiraffe 
Joint 3rd: sana333 & WiseCrabbyCoconut 

If you have a ChessKid login, you can see the full results and all the games here: https://www.chesskid.com/tournament/sunday-blitz-5-106775/results

Bullet -3 minutes + 3 seconds
In the Bullet event, WiseCrabbyCoconut took the spoils with 2 wins and a draw from 3 games - very well played.  theworldoflegend and AbleLopsidedGiraffe both finished on 2/3, with theworldoflegend taking 2nd place on tiebreak score and AbleLopsidedGiraffe finishing in 3rd place.

1st: WiseCrabbyCoconut
2nd: theworldoflegend 
3rd: AbleLopsidedGiraffe 

If you have a ChessKid login, you can see the full results and all the games here: https://www.chesskid.com/tournament/sunday-bullet-5-106777/results