Crazy Bullet Chess #1: Coming Back from the Dead

I'll be sharing some of the games I've had in which I was just going berserk with my moves, not really caring or thinking about whether I'm making the right move or not and seeing what's going to happen which is why I decided to call them crazy bullet chess games because they felt that way when I played them and as I look back on them. When I was looking at this particular game, I checked the engine's evaluation and boy, there were so many points at which I was completely lost. But that's the thing about bullet chess. You can turn things around in a heartbeat. So let's look at this one.

For much of the beginning phase of the game, I was at a big disadvantage. White had a large space in the center and more developed pieces because his pawns kicked my pieces away while marching down my ranks. In the middle part of the game, I lost a rook and the engines just say it's hopeless for Black. But I was able to turn things around. The reason being I was very tricky and I had more time than my opponent.

In the midst of the chaos in the position, I was quick to spot a tactic that began to turn the tides for me. Mind you, with the move Bh6, I had a sort of miraculous saving grace from an otherwise hopeless situation. Having that in my arsenal and having the wits to utilize it effectively at a timely point in the game was nothing short of a miracle, I tell you. Anyway, things started to improve from there. White, perhaps in his confusion, decided to trade queens which is not something you should do when you have the upper hand and a promising attack under your belt. It was an inaccurate decision on his part and I grabbed that opportunity to make things slightly easier for myself. After trading queens, I started to consolidate my position which wasn't an easy thing to do. From move 27, I was starting to breathe easy but I had a lot of work ahead of me because of the position I got myself into but I slowly made progress. Until I made another huge mistake.

The move Kf6 was the point at which the computers went back from having some hope to utter despair once again because I was losing another piece. That probably gave my opponent something to chew on and he bit on it real quickly. So I lost a minor piece. Now, from this point, I was just pretty desperate so I was willing to do any trick in the book to get back in the game. Luckily for me, because I was playing so fast, blitzing out my moves one after the other, my opponent didn't realize that I took one of his pieces and he probably pre-moved which means I was able to get back the piece. From move 37 onwards, things started to look up for me and I even tricked my opponent into giving me one of his rooks. Because of that, I had a comfortable endgame. Of course, it didn't really end with a checkmate since my opponent was heavily down on the clock and he ran out of time.

This wasn't technically one of the games in which I was doing crazy moves but it was a crazy game nonetheless and I believe this was when I just snapped and said that I don't care about what moves I make and whether I go by the book. I'm just going to mess up the position as much as I can and pick up the pieces of what's left from the chaos. In that sense, in the games that I will be looking at, most of the moves I do in the opening are totally ridiculous. Pushing the a- and h-pawns for example or not really developing any of my pieces, those are the type of folly with which I applied myself. And to my surprise, it actually does work.

I often got annoyed when somebody would make totally ludicrous moves but get away with it in the end because they messed up the position just enough for them to slowly pick my position apart and confuse me to the point of giving up. Now, I'm using that strategy and it's somewhat working in some instances but as I have mentioned before, it doesn't work against everyone especially if you're going up against someone who's really knowledgeable in the game and is very familiar with the rules of bullet chess in that time is the most important resource you have. It's just for fun anyway and I'm just tired of losing too much that I've started not to care about the form. I mean, it's not classical chess anyway. We won't be sitting for hours on end trying to debate in our minds what our opponent's next moves would be and what would be the best response to that. No, we're just playing one-minute chess and trying to see who can outpace the other.