Sunday Book Review: Bullet Chess

Bullet Chess
One Minute to Mate

Hikaru Nakamura and Bruce Harper
Foreword by Yasser Seirawan
Russell Enterprises, Inc. (2009)
softcover, 247pages
figurine algebraic notation


When you have 60 seconds to either win your game or lose on time, you have to be fast. You have to think fast, you have to move fast, you have to recover fast.

Albert Einstein (who, as far as I know, never played bullet chess) argued that as objects go faster and faster, approaching the speed of light, things change. So, too, in bullet. For example, players

must accept that time (on the clock) is every bit as important (and sometimes more important) than the position on the board. As we shall see, it can be worthwhile to trade even a significant amount of material for an advantage of a few seconds on the clock.

Have no fear, though, the GM and the FM have covered all the squares in this, the first complete book on bullet chess.

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

Bullet chess came of age with the rise of internet playing sites. While it has always been possible to play super-quick games with an actual board and set of pieces, there is always the untidy chaos of hands and pieces flying all over the place... The computer interface connecting you to the Internet Chess Club or the Free Internet Chess Server or wherever takes care of all that.

Why play bullet? Because it's fun, the authors argue. And you can play a whole lot in a short amount of time. And it can be addictive (see Chapter 18).

Grandmaster Nakamura is a whiz at bullet, and his games (many included in Bullet Chess) are exceptional examples of this chess variant. Some places, like ICC, he owns bullet.

FIDE Master Bruce Harper's comfortable and thoughtful writing style (which was showcased so well in his remarkable three volume set covering the games of GM Duncan Suttles, Chess on the Edge) is apparent throughout Bullet Chess. 

If you must play bullet, the chapters on using the software's/site's "pre-move" function is essential, as is everything that Nakamura and Harper have to say about bullet openings (they are often not your father's chess openings).

Russell Enterprises, Inc., has done a good job assembling the book, with a pleasant layout and effective use of space, diagrams and text. I found few typos/dypos. A whole lot of bullet fits into almost 250 pages.

I admit that my thinking is a bit too slow to enjoy (or even survive) bullet chess, but there is an aspect that I still find utterly fascinating, and which drove me to pick up Bullet Chess in the first place

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.

Among many things, Bullet Chess is a fascinating study of errors in thinking, which has been a theme running through my clinical practice for over 3 decades, and which is a core concept in understanding outlaw openings such as the Jerome Gambit.