Bullet Chess: One Minute to Mate

Bullet Chess

One Minute to Mate

by

Hikaru Nakamura

&

Bruce Harper

Foreword by Yasser Seirawan

2009

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

Milford, CT USA

Bullet Chess: One Minute to Mate

by

Hikaru Nakamura & Bruce Harper

ISBN: 978-1-888690-67-5

© Copyright 2009

Hikaru Nakamura and Bruce Harper

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any manner or form whatsoever or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Published by:

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

P.O. Box 3131

Milford, CT 06460 USA

http://www.russell-enterprises.com

[email protected]

Cover design by Janel Lowrance

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: What is Bullet Chess?

Chapter 2: Why Bullet Is Fun

Chapter 3: Time

Chapter 4: Pre-moving and Other Creatures

Chapter 5: Pre-moving Blunders

Chapter 6: Choosing Your Openings

Chapter 7: Winning in the Opening

Chapter 8: Bullet Openings

Chapter 9: The Initiative

Chapter 10: Strategic Focus

Chapter 11: Tactics

Chapter 12: Simplification

Chapter 13: Bullet Endings

Chapter 14: Common Mistakes

Chapter 15: Mental Errors

Chapter 16: Psych Outs

Chapter 17: Falling Apart

Chapter 18: Knowing When to Stop

Chapter 19: Lessons from Bullet

Chapter 20: Bullet Principles

Foreword

My introduction to chess likely mirrored that of most American chess players: after learning the movements of the pieces and basic rules of the game I wanted to play as soon and as quickly as possible. No learning how to mate with the two bishops versus lone king, king triangulations or back-rank mates for me. No sir, I wanted to play! After being routinely clobbered by my chess teacher I soon graduated to club play or, in my case, to coffee-house chess. After all, my club was indeed a coffee-shop in the university district of Seattle Washington called The Last Exit. The Exit was a magnet for Seattle’s best players and it was there that I developed a close circle of friends. We would play five-minute or blitz chess and wile away the afternoon and evening hours. Some in my circle were more adventurous and we would accelerate our tempo of play to three-minute chess and even one-minute or bullet games.

Bullet was a great deal of fun, and as I was fast but not good, it was an attractive way to spend the day. I fancied myself at such speeds, as I had excellent hand and eye coordination and could get fifty and even sixty moves in before the flag on my clock would fall. There were several obvious drawbacks to physical bullet games: even among the very best players, time scrambles at the very end of the games would inevitably lead to pieces being literally dropped onto wrong squares, pieces sliding beyond the intended square, hands colliding in mid-air leading to even more dropped pieces, pieces either falling – or flying – off the table, and scrambles to recover or replace the missing-in-battle would be interchanged with the inevitable illegal move...

Because our bullet games were played with a friendly banter, such issues didn’t really bother us and we simply continued, even if we felt cheated with an undeserved loss or two.

Because bullet games were so difficult to control physically, before too long we reverted back to regular speeds of three- and five-minute games. Still, the lure of bullet remained great because these games were so much fun and I often played to exhaustion!

While many lengthy musings were given to the idea of being able to control bullet games, such as not allowing the clock to be pressed until the piece was righted on a square; or requiring that illegal moves be pointed out immediately or else were allowed to stand, no one ever really came up with a completely satisfactory solution for controlling piece and hand movements. Nonetheless, for my whole chess career, I’ve enjoyed bullet games.

Then along came the internet and chess servers and bullet chess was changed forever. At last, a way of controlling the input of moves had been devised. No more pieces landing on the wrong square, hand collisions or illegal moves. Now it was about good play and of course mouse-inputting speeds! The fun of bullet chess could be enjoyed around the world at any time of the day.

Bullet chess has mostly lurked on the periphery of mainstream tournament play. While attending major open events, it is common to see players blitzing and playing bullet in the hallways and corridors waiting for the rounds to start. For the quick of eye and hand, as well as the tactically gifted, bullet is an endless source of fun.

To my knowledge there has never been a book devoted to serious bullet play (if I may use an oxymoron), which is why I eagerly undertook the assignment to write this foreword to this work by FIDE Master Bruce Harper and grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Hikaru (or H-Bomb as he is known) is a bullet legend on internet chess servers around the world. His bullet skills are simply extraordinary, and watching him play is a marvelous, and at times jaw-dropping, experience. He is that good.

Drawing from his games and the games of others, his experiences and how he thinks about bullet, the reader is welcomed into a fascinating parallel universe of the chess world. It is not to everyone’s liking, and indeed former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik would turn over in his grave to see such a young talent as Hikaru championing bullet. But it doesn’t seem to have hurt Hikaru’s real chess results, to put it mildly, and bullet is fun and addictive. And yes, bullet can help you in your tournament games, as ideas are reinforced, helping with your calculation during tournament play.

A few summers ago, when American grandmaster Larry Christiansen and his wife Natasha came to spend a couple weeks at our home in Amsterdam, one of the first stories Larry told me by way of our catching up was with what happened to his laptop. To paraphrase, I was playing bullet and played a really sweet game building up a nice mating attack, suddenly I had to rush my move and ^*x%#@ed it up and lost on time before I could mate. I was so mad! I meant to smash my fist onto the table in disgust but somehow caught the top end of my laptop and smashed it down. The top met bottom with a crash. Uh-oh... I broke my screen, wrecking my $2,000 state of the art little friend... We both fell into a good laugh. Every bullet player knows the story only too well. (Hopefully not all of us have destroyed our computers. I’ve managed to avoid that trap. So far.) Enjoying Larry’s works such as Storming the Ramparts, Larry cites a number of his bullet games, explaining how a typical bullet mating pattern helped him pull off a coup.

Bullet players should really understand this above all else: play bullet for fun! It behooves us if we are serious about our bullet skills to give a bit more thought to bullet and how to improve our play. Time management is crucial: in bullet a bad move is indeed better then no move at all! The initiative is far more important than material. King safety is of paramount importance as it allows you to play quickly, free of concerns about mating attacks.

What bullet really teaches us is pattern recognition. Specifically, mating and tactical patterns that win material. All these themes are chapters in this work and critical components of playing bullet successfully. This book was written with an emphasis on enjoyment and fun. I suspect that you, dear reader, will be treated to more blunders in one book than you’ll find in a hundred others combined. A record not meant to be broken.

Certainly this book will not teach you to be as good as Hikaru, but it will teach you to be a sharper tactician and a much stronger bullet player.

Enjoy!

Yasser Seirawan

Amsterdam

August 2009

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

Chapter 1

What is Bullet Chess?

Experienced bullet players will likely spend less than a minute on this chapter, but that’s the whole idea of bullet chess, isn’t it?

What is bullet chess?

In this book, we use the term bullet chess interchangeably with the more awkward term one-minute chess. At the Internet Chess Club, however, bullet is used to describe any game with less than three minutes per player, while blitz is used for games with between three minutes and 15 minutes per player.

Isn’t one minute fast?

Yes, it is.

Is bullet still chess?

Of course not!

This is the fundamental truth about bullet chess that many players fail to understand. Bullet is certainly a form of chess, and much of what you’ve learned about chess applies to bullet, but bullet should never be confused with conventional chess itself!

When non-bullet players scoff it’s not chess! the correct response from a bullet player is who said it was?

Then why play bullet?

Because it’s fun!

Why aren’t there any books on bullet chess?

Bullet chess is a fairly recent development, so it’s not surprising that no one has written a book on it. In any case, in-depth analysis of one-minute games seems like an absurdity, and what else can you do in a chess book?

But if you can’t analyze the games, what can you write about?

First of all, absurd or not, we do analyze bullet games in this book, although we hope we are not too critical. Bullet is hard to play, and even harder to play well. Apart from analyzing the positions on the chess board, we also try to explain how bullet differs from normal chess and how understanding these differences can improve your bullet play.

It is important to realize that bullet chess is not really about truth, to the extent that some chess players use the term to refer to the objectively best moves, but rather whatever works. Bullet chess won’t often help you in your search for chess truth, although it will certainly help you learn how to play chess more quickly! But bullet chess will teach you a lot about chess psychology, as there is always a reason that any particular move is played. It may not be a good reason, and it may not have much to do with the actual position, but there is always a reason. In this book, we explore the reasons why players do what they do when they are short of time, especially when it comes to making mistakes.

While we will often discuss moves and variations in the pages to follow, it will always be with an eye to the clock, because that’s what bullet chess is all about.

A few ground rules

In the rest of this book, bullet chess will often be referred to simply as bullet.

For both complete games and game fragments, we have identified the players only by rating. One of the attractions of internet bullet is anonymity, and we have protected our sources. It isn’t giving away much, however, to reveal that where one player’s rating is over 2800, it is one of the authors.

All games in this book were bullet games, with each player having one minute for the entire game. The games were played at the Internet Chess Club (www.chessclub.com).

Any critical comments in our annotations are purely for instructional purposes.

Chapter 2

Why Bullet Is Fun

Having explained what bullet chess is, we now turn to a more important question – why would anyone play it?

The public image of chess is of a dignified, quiet game played by either elderly gentlemen or deep thinkers (the evil genius Kronstein in From Russia with Love comes to mind). Chess is always thought to be a hard, slightly scary game where thought is required. The sedate, contemplative nature of chess is embedded in the popular consciousness.

Thought, of course, requires time, and the idea of playing an entire game of chess in no more than two minutes strikes most non-players as absurd, then impossible. It is just too much at odds with their image of the game.

Many chess players have the same reaction. They (correctly) think but that’s not chess, and then (usually incorrectly) think I could never do that.

This reaction is consistent with what we know about the psychology of chess players. Naturally enough, almost every chess player aspires to play perfect, error-free chess (although no one can), but they don’t realize that if everyone did the result would be dreary, boring games. Some argue that top-level chess has already reached this stage.

Chess is a game of mistakes, and it is understandable that many chess players instinctively shy away from playing a version of chess which is guaranteed to lead to mistakes – and often very bad ones. With only one minute for the game, both sides are almost sure to blunder, and so the illusion of possible perfection is gone before the first move is made.

Players who balk at playing one-minute chess are failing to see the whole picture. They shouldn’t be worrying that they will make more mistakes – they should be rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of all the mistakes their opponents will make.

With this in mind, let’s look at some of the reasons we think bullet chess is fun.

It doesn’t matter if you lose

People play chess for all sorts of reasons, but most players would rather win than lose. The beauty of bullet is that it doesn’t matter if you lose! Since bullet isn’t serious chess, it really doesn’t matter, even in chess terms. Bullet is purely for fun, and people who think it’s more than that have other issues they might consider addressing.

You always have a chance

In slower games, if you lose even a pawn to a grandmaster you are probably toast (these days that depends on who the grandmaster is, but you get the idea). In bullet, on the other hand, there is always a chance to pull off a miracle.

The following examples illustrate the important point than in bullet there is always hope.

White (1878) – Black (2068) [A00]

After a chaotic battle featuring intense hand-to-hand combat and an exciting kingwalk, White’s attack has won out. With five seconds left, against his opponent’s four seconds, it is almost inconceivable that White could lose. For example, 42.Qe8+ Kg7/h7 43.Qf7+ Kh8 44.Ng6 is mate, all with check.

But with the game destined to end in less than ten seconds, one way or the other, there is no point in Black giving up. In any case, no one ever won a game by resigning, and it turns out that White contrives to lose in what is probably the only legal helpmate in the position:

42.Q×h6+?! Kg8 43.Ng6? Qf7 mate 0-1

If you think this sort of thing is rare, you either have never played bullet or you resign too quickly! It is almost certain that at this exact moment someone is blowing a completely winning position in a bullet game.

Here is another startling example, where the culprit had considerably more time than in the previous example.

White (2128) – Black (1934) [A00]

White has a massive advantage and cannot possibly lose – at least, one wouldn’t think so. There are only two dark clouds on the horizon. The first is that White has 10 seconds left, to Black’s 21 seconds. The second is that White was on game 85 of a 191-game bullet binge. This might account for what happens next.

29...Rb6!

Black courageously plays on, ignoring White’s threats. Only in this book could a move which allows mate in one be given an exclamation mark!

30.Qf5?

Missing 30.Qh8 mate, which would have deprived us of what follows.

30...Rcb8 31.Rd7

31.b3 was a bit safer, but of course White is still winning.

31...R×b2+ 32.Ka1 R2b6 33.R×e7!

With six seconds left, White finds a powerful blow which destroys Black’s defenses. It’s always fun to write things like that.

If White had only a second or two left, then Black might survive by playing 33...Rb1+, which would delay mate by several moves and possibly cause White to lose on time. But here, with White still having six seconds left, 33...Rb1+ wouldn’t accomplish much.

33...K×e7

34.Rd8?

A mouse slip! Black’s persistence is now rewarded. White’s intended 34.Rd7+ mated in two moves.

34...R×d8?

Overcome by happiness, Black grabs White’s unfortunate rook, missing 34...Rb1 mate! But with 12 seconds left, against White’s five seconds, his chances of winning are pretty good anyway.

35.Qe5+ Kf8 36.Qh8+ Ke7 37.Qe5+ Kd7 38.Qf5+ Kc7 39.Q×f7+ Kc6 0-1

White lost on time.

In the previous game, White at least had the excuse of being behind on time when he blew his winning position. In the next example, Black can only blame himself.

White (1953) – Black (1881) [A42]

White’s opening has malfunctioned and he has arrived in a completely lost position. With 11 seconds left, he launches a desperate counterattack.

25.Q×b7!? B×c3?

With a colossal 17 seconds on his clock, Black has no excuse for not finding 25...Rb8, which wins White’s queen and ends his hopes.

26.c×d6+ K×d6 27.Qc6+ Ke5?

Walking into mate, with 14 seconds left. After 27...Ke7 Black is still winning.

28.K×c3?

Missing 28.Rg5+.

28...Qf6?

Black, determined to lose, allows the mate White just missed.

29.Rg5+! Q×g5 30.Qe6 mate 1-0

With three seconds to spare.

The next example is a bit more complicated, but it serves to remind us once again that in bullet chess no position is so good that it can’t be wrecked – or salvaged, depending on how you look at it.

White (1894) – Black (1819) [B06]

After a badly played first 18 moves, Black has a nearly hopeless position. Nearly because White has 18 seconds left, while Black has 35 seconds remaining. Black, remembering that few positions are completely hopeless, plays on.

19.d×e5?

White took three seconds to make this dangerous capture, which opens the g1–a7 diagonal and gives Black some hope of counterplay.

After the stronger (and less greedy) 19.Q×f5!, Black could give in to despair with a clear conscience.

19...Qc5+ 20.Kh1 Nf2+ 21.Kh2 Ng4+ 22.Kh3 Nf2+

23.Kg3

With less than ten seconds remaining, White plays for the win. This somewhat impractical decision was likely made more with his heart than his head, because after Black’s obvious response...

23...B×e5+

...White blunders horribly.

24.Bf4? Qe3+

24...B×f4+! 25.K×f4 Qe5+ 36. Kf3 Qe3 was mate, although the move played wins as well.

25.Nf3

After 25.Kh2, White still gets mated.

25...B×f4 mate 0-1

Often players exchange mistakes, especially when time grows short, the position is complicated and both sides are attacking. Before we are done, we will look at many games where the players attack on opposite wings, but the play is even trickier when pieces both attack and defend at the same time, as it can be difficult for players to recognize this duality.

When a seemingly powerful attacking move turns out to inadvertently unhinge a player’s own defenses, entertaining play can result.

White (1882) – Black (2040) [A04]

White has just played 30.Nb5, initiating an attack on the queenside. Black thought for some time and decided against 30...Q×b2, which more or less holds the balance, and instead opts to begin a speculative attack which just gets him in trouble.

30...Qh6?! 31.N×c7

Now White stands better, because once his knight gets to e6, he will have an attack. Each player has 27 seconds left.

31...Bf3?

Black is firing blanks, but the objectively stronger 31...Kf7, covering e6, was not what he had in mind.

32.Ne6+ Kg8 33.Ng2

The immediate 33.Qa5! was strong too, but Black is not going to retreat, so it comes out the same.

33...Bf6 34.Qa5!

34...Kf7

Black thought for nine seconds (!) on this move and realized: 1) he has no attack; and 2) White does have an