Bullet Chess, one minute to mate
Chess in the Fast Lane!
Can anyone play a decent game of chess in one minute? Surprisingly, the answer is "Yes" as this unique book reveals. "Bullet" chess, where each player has one minute for the entire game, has attracted thousands of followers since it was popularized on the internet a decade ago.
In this book the authors discuss the relationship between the position on the board and time on the clock, the techniques and dangers of "pre-moving," bullet openings, the importance of the initiative and consistent strategy, and how endings are different in bullet chess.
The authors also explore the psychology of bullet chess and the most common causes of tactical oversights and blunders. The many examples illustrate the principles of bullet chess and how they may even apply to blitz chess and time scrambles in standard chess. Most of all, bullet chess is shown to be entertaining and addictive, and not at all as random as it first appears.
Introduction
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
Content:
004 Foreword
007 Introduction
008 Chapter 1: What is Bullet Chess?
010 Chapter 2: Why Bullet Is Fun
033 Chapter 3: Time
049 Chapter 4: Pre-moving and Other Creatures
056 Chapter 5: Pre-moving Blunders
069 Chapter 6: Choosing Your Openings
073 Chapter 7: Winning in the Opening
081 Chapter 8: Bullet Openings
122 Chapter 9: The Initiative
137 Chapter 10: Strategic Focus
150 Chapter 11: Tactics
160 Chapter 12: Simplification
164 Chapter 13: Bullet Endings
180 Chapter 14: Common Mistakes
197 Chapter 15: Mental Errors
215 Chapter 16: Psych Outs
230 Chapter 17: Falling Apart
236 Chapter 18: Knowing When to Stop
239 Chapter 19: Lessons from Bullet
245 Chapter 20: Bullet Principles
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