Looking for quality ...

Most players play bullet chess like its a bloody foot race, bashing out moves with no real thought or even an attempt at finding moves that contain the essence of real chess. (I call this kind of souless chess, "Mouse racing," I even have a blog on this subject.) 

I try - the large percentage of the time - to make high quality moves. Some of my students have even remarked that: "Your bullet games look better than my tournament games." I also watch the bullet games of the "big time" players on this server, they also play good, solid chess. {mostly} 

I try to play good chess moves - all of the time, regardless of the times on the clock. I also encourage my students to do the same. GM Alexander Kotov, the author of the book: "Think Like a Grand-Master," said that "The way you play chess ... the large majority of the time ... is the way that you will play in a tournament." So, for me, the choice is clear; I must play good moves or I will most likely lay an egg in my next tournament! (In other words, human nature is inescapable, if you play crazy, silly, nonsense moves all of the time in bullet ... you will definitely ... sooner or later, especially in time trouble ... make a mistake in your next real, over-the-board encounter.) 

I offer this game as proof that my task is not impossible: 
(I did my initial analysis with Komodo 11, and checked it with Houdini and Stockfish.) 

FYI By the way ... as a precursor to writing this blog, and just for grins and giggles, I ran this game through the ON-LINE analysis several times. (Quick, 3-4x; Medium, 5x; and Deep, 6x.) The reason I kept doing it, {over-and-over again} is that I kept getting a different result!!!!!! One time, I would get a CAPS score of 72%, the next time, it would be 94%! (I thought I was losing my mind, I even wrote staff about this and Shaun responded.) 

I guess a mean average - pretty close to correct, IMO - would be 88-94%. (Now I can see why so many people have said that CAPS {scores} are inaccurate! This really blew my mind!!) 

I closed just about every app I could close, rebooted my computer and ran only Google Chrome and tried it again. This time three passes through gave a CAPS score of 93% ... which I suspect is about the correct score for this game. 

Many masters have told me that - in bullet chess - I should forget about searching for good moves and just bang out the first move that comes into my head. (I reject this philosophy of bullet chess completely!) 

I also study my losses ... sometimes for hours at a time. Certain variations - (don't expect me to tell you that!) - cause me a ton of trouble. I firmly believe that, if I am totally familiar with a position, I should be able to generate moves quickly and easily. I will also confess that the star move of this game was discovered during the analysis of another game in the exact, same variation. (Proving that quality study time is NEVER wasted!!!) 

I have literally lost 10 (or more) bullet games in a row. Often times, I am winning easily ... but run out of time. The MAX time you should use for any move is 5-10 seconds ... but if you do this too often, you will (also) lose on time. (So, for me anyway, the key to getting faster is to study that line and the more familiar that I am with a position, generally the quicker that I can play.)  

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For further reference:  

1. My website ... ... ... for my old "Game of The Month" feature. (Top notch, in-depth analysis of games!! There is a special emphasis on the openings, my web pages here have won a number of awards, CJA, USCF, etc.) One game - that features this opening. 

Thanks for checking out my blog ... I am thinking about turning this into a series ... ... ...