#23: What I Talk About When I Talk About Bullet
What I've learnt after 15,000 games of 1-minute chess
Is playing 1-minute games good for your chess?
Not really.
It’s good for enjoyment—but don’t count it as ‘training’.
Here are three reasons why playing bullet doesn’t help your chess in the long run.
1. There’s no ‘deep’ learning
The longer the time control, the better chess you can play. The best way to get better at OTB (over-the-board) classical chess is, of course, playing OTB classical chess, because you can immerse yourself in the 64 squares, pushing yourself to grow.
The lack of deep learning from, or the low quality, of bullet games was highlighted for me when I was looking over the games I’d saved from my days on ICC (the Internet Chess Club), a popular venue in the 2000s before Chess.com and Lichess emerged.
I played >14,000 bullet games and nearly 2,000 bullet tournaments on ICC, mostly between the ages of 12 and 18—and only deemed 12 of those games worthy of saving. Many of these 12 games were all-out attacks that just happened to work, with opponents missing, at times, easy one-move defences.
In comparison, the rate at which I saved blitz and rapid games was higher—with higher quality games, there are more instructive moments and takeaways.
While getting better at chess, or for OTB players, classical chess, can also show in your shorter time control play—it doesn’t quite work the same the other way. Even if you get better at bullet, it doesn’t necessarily translate to your chess improving.
2. It’s a bad influence on your longer-time play
Playing too much bullet can make you pick up bad habits and in fact, cause your play to suffer when you’re back to classical chess or even playing rapid/blitz.
because the time factor is so important, flagging becomes the norm and you get fixated on improving your mouse skills and winning on time. Once your brain gets used to this, it’ll be craving the rush of doing the same even when playing slower games, and you can imagine how this can affect your decisions
the less time you and your opponent have, the more important the element of having the initiative. It’s easier to attack than defend in chess, and in bullet, this becomes pronounced as dodgy/dubious attacks and moves often succeed. When the importance of the initiative is magnified in your mind, this can lead you down a dangerous path—you might play too riskily, and even if a swashbuckling style might do well in bullet, in a slower game, it’s more likely to be punished
you’ve probably experienced this before: after a session of bullet, you play rapid or classical, and you struggle to adjust because your brain is in ‘bullet mode’. You might play too fast by inertia and have to consciously slow down your thinking.
3. You’re spending time on something that’s not a priority
Because online chess is so popular now, and a part of pretty much everyone’s chess routine these days, many people never question whether the way they play online is actually helping their chess, or whether playing online should even be prioritised:
you spend a lot of your time on chess playing online without considering if spending more of your time on other options would be better for your chess
because you’re playing other opponents online, you assume it counts as good practice and time spent on chess when it isn’t so simple
you play a lot online (output) but don’t bother to learn from the games (feedback).
I think rapid and blitz are great ways to train between tournaments, if done well. Bullet, though, is so far removed from classical that you shouldn’t consider it to be a good investment of your time if you’re serious about improving your play. Keep in mind that when you’re playing bullet all the time with the idea of improving your chess, you’re making a conscious decision that bullet is the best way to do this.
Doesn’t bullet improve some skills?
Yes, playing a lot of bullet forces you to improve your speed of thought, ability to calculate quickly and it can help with nurturing and testing your intuition.
But you can do the same in blitz while playing higher quality games and avoiding cultivating bad habits to the extent of bullet.
In conclusion
Personally, I loved playing bullet with friends on ICC in my teens. Playing rivals and strong opponents in tournaments pretty much every night for years was a good training ground for some skills, but I’m sure that playing way more bullet than blitz and rapid in online chess also sowed some bad, crippling seeds for my chess.
When I look back on those years, when my chess development was at its sharpest, I wish I’d spent more time on other areas—playing more blitz and rapid games if online, analysing my games, trying different openings—cutting down on bullet.
Playing bullet is fun, and you should have fun sometimes—but be mindful of the risks.
I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.
—Albert Camus, The Stranger
For further reading on bullet chess, this one’s a great post:
Does bullet chess make you better or worse? (GM Avetik Grigoryan on ChessMood)