Best Rated Victories on Lichess (Bullet): Winning on Time

Image by DanRais from Pixabay

As I have mentioned in the previous several articles I've written, in bullet chess the most important resource you have is time and doing whatever you can to manage your time will essentially make it or break it for your games. I've lost countless good games because I had no time but I've also won many games by flagging other people, sometimes it was the only way for me to win and the following game is one such example of that.


Looking back at the game and with the computer's help, I find that in this game, I was somewhat holding on against somebody who was much higher rated and inevitably stronger than I was. But there was a certain point, as there always is, when I made a big mistake and that led to a big disadvantage which crippled me throughout the rest of the game. However, as you will see during the latter phase of the game, I was able to flag my opponent so that I could steal some rating points from them. But let's look at that critical moment for now.

Until about move 23, I was actually in a good position with the computer evaluating White at +2 which means I've got the advantage. However, my next move caused a sharp decline in the computer's evaluation from +2.5 to -1.5 which means it was that big of a mistake and you will see why. I made the move Nxd5 obviously trying to win a pawn and trade down my pieces but what I didn't take into account is the fact that such a move would cause my position to crumble and activate Black's pieces opening the floodgates for a very strong attack.

After trading down the pieces, my opponent played f4 and the computer evaluated this position at a slight advantage for Black but it was still manageable for White even though I sacrificed the exchange for this position. I could have simply played the move that the computer had suggested moments ago when I was still at +2.5 but I exchanged pawns which was a big blunder because my opponent came swooping in my flanks with Qxh3, attacking both my knight and rook and I had no good way of defending. I could have played my queen to e1 but it would just be harassed to no end so I decided to do the move Ng6 at this point. But my opponent just attacked my queen. Now, you might be wondering why my opponent didn't take my rook which would have given him a winning position, but to be honest, I don't know either.

Anyway, play continued. I sacrificed my queen and tried to play the endgame with a knight and rook versus a queen and rook which is obviously lost but being the reckless player I was, I didn't lose hope because I knew that in bullet, there was more than one way to win the game. We made several more mistakes along the way, we were most likely struggling to keep our time in check so we were just blitzing most of our moves. Then, he sacrificed his rook for my knight and queened a pawn, giving him two queens against my rook. But I was unfazed and continued playing. He ended up giving away his other queen and just continuously checked my king until he ran out of time.

And that my friends is how I won a chess game against someone who was 400 points higher than I was and currently one of my best rated victories on Lichess. Now, you might think that I was very cheap with that win, and I admit, it was but a win is a win. That's just how online chess works and I've learned to deal with that. Instead of grumbling about it when I am on the receiving end, I just try to make use of that myself.