Fixing the mechanics of my bullet chess
21 comments
·June 14, 2025fasterik
I think this depends highly on your mouse skills. Most of the top bullet players I've seen play on stream (Andrew Tang, Hikaru Nakamura, and Daniel Naroditsky) use drag-to-move.
A notable exception is Magnus Carlsen. He uses click-to-move, but I think his skill in bullet comes from his baseline chess skill and not his ability to move fast.
joeyagreco
on computer, the difference between the 2 is negligible in my opinion, since either way you have to place the mouse at the start and then navigate to the finish with the only difference being if you are holding down left click or not.
on phone/tablet, the difference between the 2 is massive, since you don't have to slide your finger across the screen and can just tap tap (and even use multiple fingers if you want.
jpablo
On a computer click click is a lot slower since you have to come to a complete pointer stop in your release. If your pointer is still moving in the release square most interfaces would detect that as some attempt to start a drag
retsibsi
On Lichess, this isn't the case; if I set my movement preference to 'click two squares', a click on a piece is registered immediately on mousedown regardless of cursor movement.
(When I set my movement preference to 'either', it's a bit harder to test, but I think a brief click-and-drag always counts as a click provided the mouseup happens within the initial square.)
b2fel
>I’ve always been a good deal better (maybe a couple hundred ELO points) at blitz (3+0 or 5+0) than bullet (1+0).
I believe this is just due to how the ELO system works on sites like lichess and chess.com - you can also see the difference between blitz and rapid, and rapid and classic, and it's the case for EVERY player.
tibbar
I'm not sure if this is true anymore. Some years ago chess.com increased bullet ratings by 150 points to better align them with blitz ratings [0].
[0]https://www.chess.com/news/view/10-minute-chess-now-rapid-ra...
daft_pink
Wow! I play rapid, but I love that trick as I like to premove, but this is a better strategy than premove in many cases. Thanks!
pvg
APM but for chess, outstanding.
compiler_queen
[dead]
snitty
I only use chess tools that allow for vim bindings. /s
wuiheerfoj
Not quite vim bindings, but lichess supports typing pgn for moves (at least for blindfold)
mdaniel
lichess.org is a treasure and as a friendly reminder https://lichess.org/patron#:~:text=No%2C%20because%20Lichess...
jpablo
This doesn’t make any sense. Click and click is slower than click+drag, it’s just obviously two extra movements (a full extra press and an extra release).
You can also drag and hover while waiting for the opponent move and release if the expected move shows up or right click to cancel the drag if not the expected move.
Also dragging and hovering over your target square is super useful to visualize your move and catch any last millisecond mistakes.
I do t think any of the top bullet/hyperbullet players does click and click. I think I have seen Magnus doing click and click in very old chess24 blitz videos but I’m not sure he did that in lichess playing bullet orin chesscom scc for example.
Ferret7446
> Click and click is slower than click+drag, it’s just obviously two extra movements (a full extra press and an extra release).
From a pure physics standpoint, maybe, but humans aren't ideal physics actuators. Your muscles' ability to fire, your nerves' ability to fire, and your brain's ability to drive those (and also recover from each action) affects the dynamics.
In particular, your ability to precisely release heavily obstructs your hypothesis. There's a reason that sharpshooting guns still fire on trigger pull and not on trigger release.
Imagine a game where you need to precisely hit many targets quickly, and you can either click on a target or release a click on a target. You will be much more precise and quick only clicking even though you're doing "extra movements" releasing between each.
retsibsi
> Click and click is slower than click+drag, it’s just obviously two extra movements (a full extra press and an extra release).
I don't think this is right, because the second release is irrelevant (a click-click move happens on the second mousedown, not the second mouseup) and the first release can be done in parallel with the mouse movement. So really it is:
mousedown -> drag -> mouseup
vs.
mousedown -> (mouseup while moving) -> mousedown
tibbar
I never use a mouse, which probably makes a difference here: it's all via touchpad.
dmurray
That seems massively relevant and should be in your post, assuming you're the author. Dragging on a touchpad is a nightmare for me: I would click and click with a touchpad, but would much prefer a mouse where I drag and drop. Click and click on a phone works great too.
(I'm playing at a significantly higher level than you, but nowhere near the elite players).
null
jpablo
Not having the right click to cancel a drag would certainly be a huge difference
null
Touch screens (especially tablets) are also great for bullet because you can just tap-tap move, with as many fingers as you like!
Small unrelated nit: It's Elo rating instead of ELO, as Elo just stands for the surname of the rating system's creator, Arpad Elo.