Does bullet chess make you better or worse?

Does bullet makes you a better player? In my personal opinion it depends strongly on your playing strength.
If you are a amateur chess player (like me) but are a fast thinker (unlike me), then it would be a bad habbit to compensate one thing for another.

You would still outplay many opponents because you move and calculate faster by nature, but this makes you NOT a better(!) player.
You will still lose to opponents at your rating range at "slow" time controls, because there they have their needed time to think, which takes away your only advantage.

Try first to learn real chess and play slow (at least 10+0).
The speed will come automatically, since I improved a bit in blitz even I did not played it for weeks.
PS: I still make the mistake to start a classical game and then nevertheless move fast like blitz anyway. That is not effective!

I tried bullet (1+0) once and it was the worst experience with chess I ever had.
Not because at my rating level it was complete pointless and my opponents blunder everything and I blunder more than ever.
It's because you can clearly see the motivation and the spirit of some bullet players (not all of course!), if you play anonymous with a guest account.
They really get exited if you make a blunder and they are spamming the chat with crying smileys and thumbs down.
Simply unsportsmanlike trash talk with smileys :D
But that's not the point, because I have no problem with that, and you could simply turn the chat off.
The point is, it makes me really sad for the person behind that. I pity them very much!
In my opinion that must be a frustrated chess player with no effort and will to improve further through real learning.
So they have to beat up slower players in short time controls to push their ego and humiliate the "weak" oponent (which blunders only because of low time) to feel better.
This has nothing to do with chess, and nothing with good sportsmanship at all.
With an attitude like this, you will not only fail to improve in chess, you will also fail in life in the long run.

Instead try to feel the mental enjoyment in a long game. You can play a correspondence game (alongside your other games) for example, where you and your opponent fight equally and you don't have to watch constantly over the board (if waiting is really a "problem" for you, when you actually should do your calculations for the possible variations during that time). Especially in this long game, take your very time for every move, like you would do in a tactic puzzle.
Like this, you will improve the most.

Time does not make you better.

Blitz (3-8 minutes) is just a time control.

Anything we build in life is never going to be better built by not giving the time needed to build it.

Time does not teach to make you better.

I played blitz 2+1 some time ago, but now I really don't want to play it anymore. It's just to fast for me. I like playing 3+2, or even better, 5+3 when I have time.
For me bullet is just to fast.
Also, when I play fast on my musical instrument, I often remember an errror I make, and then it is really hard to convince yourself to play correctly.

@AnaT2010 said in #10:
> I'd say it makes you worse. When you play you pretty much scatter your figures around the board trying to win by time. In order to win the most thing you pay attention to is how much time you have and how much time your opponent has, and not the position on the board. The more you play it, the more you get used to make quick moves. And when you play a normal game, with time, you make lots of wrong moves as in the matter of you being used to your quick reflexes. This is just my opinion and please do not take this personally.

"The more you play it, the more you get used to making quick moves. And when you play a normal game, with time, you make lots of wrong moves as in the matter of you being used to your quick reflexes"

Yeah, I got used to playing fast even in time controls 10+5, but I still was playing my best because
I play bullet to calculate quickly (as well as to flag my opponent but that is when they are low on time so don't judge me).

I have been playing bullet chess for 2 years on board and off-board and have been one of the best in my chess school (well, I am the #2 best in my school).

So I believe that bullet chess (especially 1+0) can make you significantly better at the game, just don't get into the habit of playing fast on longer time controls (10+0 10+5 15+0, etc).

I sincerely appreciate your article. I've decided to stop playing bullet entirely. I think I can appreciate some of the arguments people are making in the comments, that they have improved even when playing bullet, contrary to the article.

But I think the point is, there is only so much you can improve under severe time constraints, and in most cases it doesn't make sense. Like yes, you can get better at thinking faster, in theory. But think about everything else - learning math, English, geography, chemistry, physics...imagine learning those in under five minutes, speed reading through textbooks and finishing homework questions with multiple blunders. That sounds like a horrible way of learning anything. And neither would you commit yourself to learning those subjects by speed reading the same chapters over and over again. Why not simply read each section at a slower pace, carefully understanding what you are reading, and the questions as well? Then after, you can participate in speed math challenges when you understand the fundamentals.

But if you are still below 2000 or maybe even 2500, it doesn't seem like those fundamentals are there yet. So forcing yourself to learn in this way is obviously counterproductive. It may be possible that eventually you can speed read a math book after re-reading chapters enough...but the obvious question is why would you do that? Why re-read chapters and make so many blunders when you can just learn it 10x more efficiently on the first try?

I admit 2:1 and other time formats are addictive. But the author is right, they are harmful. I'm going to give them up

@JAMES_SIRIUS said in #18:
> Wow.I really get bored on bullet. I can only play UltraBullet properly because my coach is too fast on bullet, blitz, rapid, and classical, so he coaches me on UltraBullet properly and that’s why I get too bored waiting for my opponent in other variants of standard. I can play all time controls for non-standard games
Sometimes, I would prefer ultrabullet over bullet, but I play on a touchpad. I find it is literally impossible to play ultrabullet if you are on a touchpad. A mouse it is possible, but a touchpad, not really. I physically cannot make moves fast enough to keep up with other players.

Excellent article! I just want to add another perspective to the discussion:

Playing bullet is only harmful for the 1% of players who want to become serious, full-time classical chess professionals. For the rest of us, it can be a rewarding competitive outlet.

Bullet chess is in many ways similar to a game like poker, where raw calculation takes a back seat to confidence, aggression, and keeping a level head. The lack of time to fully calculate sacrifices and pawn pushes gives the game a feeling of risk and reward absent from classical chess, and leads to exciting tactical scenarios.

This doesn't mean that all notions of correct play are thrown out the window. To play bullet at a high level, you must make difficult strategic and tactical decisions in seconds. This means you need to have keen game sense backed by calculation and positional feel.

All in all, bullet chess is an intense game which rewards guts and intuition. I now prefer it to long time controls, and am constantly playing and looking for ways to improve!

harmful? time not well spent if wanting chess improvement even only in same time control? but detrimental to existing any time control chess? spurious association tend to fade i would say.. There is a daily trimming process specifically on the "scientific" bit of the blog about synaptic strength. It appears as though dreaming is about dropping some connectivity from the past day...

Latest i read about that, at least. I mention that because i suspect the detrimental hypothesis might be about bad habits on chess board and not about time management behavior in slow time controls, where obviously not updating the fast system with the memo that the time control is not as fast, might fool it into keep same pace.

No, i think the harmful hypothesis, is about learning bad time independent chess patterns, because the games are on average more "creative" than slower games.. (i mean more short term blunders).. That such high level of tactical blundering (and of course less tactical), would act like an erase of any board information association between depth ranges to be spurious thing to learn as valid association for the tasks of any chess game, making decision with short or longer term consequences, would have little food in such noisy information relationships.

but fear not.. the fast system is not stupid.. it is also very good at trimming... is my point.... the only problem i think, might be about time control behavioral reflexes Outside The Board.

@ebk1976 said in #13:
> @Kingsley_Chesterton I mostly agree with you, but then why do you have 3200 bullet games?!

Because he played BEFORE this article???

@Avetik_ChessMood , the System 1/2 theory is correct, but the generalized conclusion is not. For some, in specific moments of their chess journey, bullet can be good. It depends on the individual and on their current level. Let me explain...

I see two types of chess players:

1) Most of the top players have their *peak* ratings in descending order:
bullet > blitz > rapid > classical
For those, they have a predominant system 1.

2) But most chess players in lower levels (like me) have their *peak* ratings in a ascending order:
bullet < blitz < rapid < classical
For those, they have a predominant system 2 while playing chess.

The type 2 player tends to be bad in time management. They don't easily create System 1 connections in chess. But faster chess will make them do it.

So my advice is: if you are type 1, try to focus on longer time controls. If you are type 2 then it's better to dedicate great amount of time in shorter time controls too. Not necessarily bullet, but the shortest format that you are able to checkmate. Do that until you improve your time management, then move to a shorter one, until you reach 1+0. Then spend time to reach the your real best 1+0 performance. Then go to 3+0, then 3+2, then 5+3, and etc, moving back to long time controls.

Well that's exactly what I have been doing and I'm pretty sure my new bullet peak has led me to a better blitz performance and new blitz peak, which will lead to a higher rapid peak, then classical. All because I am learning to use my thinking time more efficiently.