Standards Do Not Always Fall

Back when I was playing Chess in High School, there was (some) snobbery about Blitz Chess, where each side gets only five minutes for a full game. In Searching for Bobby Fisher the classical coach (Ben Kingsley) is very dismissive of the game and blitz hustler (Laurence Fishburne), IIRC. But the thing is, you get a bunch of pattern matching training very quickly. No doubt part of the reason that there is a batch of incredibly young grandmasters is that you have an online community and the ability to analyze with computers that are stronger than any human, but part of it is also that they can play as many games in a week as I could in a year (even though I played Blitz, it was a 30 minute drive to the club, which was open one evening a week … on a school night).

So while I am sometimes the “grumpy old man yelling at clouds,” sometimes I am not.

And blitz with five minutes per player per game? So …. so …. slow. (But you can save time by making your next move before your opponent moves).

Enter bullet, at one minute per game. No doubt there are purists rolling over in their grave. But, as a counterpoint, you can watch a ten year old beat the G.O.A.T. Magnus Carlsen and celebrate for a few seconds before the next game starts, then stroll over to Agadmator’s for a full analysis.