As we know, rating is difficult to gain, and playing 100 games a day going +0 is just as difficult. The aim of this blog is to give 5 tips so you can increase your bullet rating, whether it be by 10 rating points, or 100!
Keep your Openings close
By this, I do not mean physically, I mean knowing what openings you want to play, and the openings you know best. This will help save vital seconds in the opening, which can then be spent in the middlegame or endgame. This is one of the tips that helped me the most on the road to 2000.
Understand the Co-ordination of your pieces At first, this may seem very broad, but the deeper you understand this technique, the quicker you will be able to calculate and the more accurate your moves will be. Knowing where to plant your pieces or how they interact with eachother is vital for any form of chess, not just bullet.
Pre-moving Pre-moving, the way in which we have won and lost countless games of chess. This skill is really useful, but there is only one problem - you can't teach it! It comes along with instinct. When you start to play more and more games, you will understand when to bring pre-moves to the board. The better you get at this, the more time you will save, and ultimately the more games you will win.
Middlegame plans In a sense, this ties in with the first tip, knowing what your opening wants in the middlegame. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this! It can save precious seconds and can help you maintain an advantage or keep equality from an opening. Transitioning from one phase of the game to another is one of the hardest skills! The better you become at this skill, the better your overall chess will be.
Play when your body is ready to! From personal experience, this is the most important tip for all forms of speed-chess. I found days when I dropped 20 rating, but kept on playing and then lost another 80 rating points. On the other hand, there were also days when I would finish and see that I had gone up 70 rating points. Just imagine if you could cancel out the bad days and keep the good ones. That is up to you. Your mindset can make you play hundreds of rating points lower than what you are. That is why this is so important!
