_{Image designed by @schamangerbert}

Team battle in a few hours!

Link to the tournament

Been playing bullet chess!

Interestingly, I tell people I’m not a fast chess player; however, my statistics don’t agree with me, not until recently. I once hit 2500+ Elo in bullet chess. But I have recently struggled in 2200+. I blamed it on my poor internet connection, but this struggle lasted for more than a month. I almost thought I had lost it finally. I lost most games on time. In other games, I try to play very fast, but I lose pieces and eventually still lose. It was a case of the faster I play, the faster I blunder, and when I play slower, I tend to run into time scrabble faster.

I’m back to 2400!

After months of struggling below 2300, I finally got back to 2400+, and soon I’d start heading back to 2500, where I belong. Have you had difficulties passing a rating barrier you know you can pass? It can be very frustrating. A look at my graph even tells the story of my struggle.

Let's look at the last bullet game I played to cross 2400

ZukoRedemption 2471 (0) vs ZGM_Samostically 2399 (1)

A positional setup from the Colle System, as white played d4 as his first move. 1.d4 is one of the openings I do not enjoy against because I feel it has less aggression, or rather activity, unlike e4. There aren't many fireworks on the chessboard; instead, positional play that requires punishing any small inaccuracies you may find.

So my plan whenever I play against 1.d4 is to break the center as quickly as possible, which explains why I love playing the Budapest gambit, although I did not play it in this game.

This is when I gained the advantage with the move Bf5. On first sight, one would think I am giving out a free bishop, but if you look again, you will see that I am attacking the queen with my rook on e8, and that is not all. White's bishop is under attack by my bishop on f5 as well, and the winning idea behind this is that if white defends his bishop with Qd1, I have a strong move that wins a powerful piece after I exchange the light-squared bishops.

Re8+
A move that forces white to give up his queen since there's no escape route for the king on g1. From here, it was almost game over. Enough time on my clock and a winning position.

After Bb4+, white no longer had the zeal to continue, as what comes next is a checkmate in 3 moves. With this win, I crossed 2400.

Here is the link to the game
Game Link

And here is the Game PGN:

[Event "rated bullet game"]
[Site "https://lichess.org/bEtpZHJd"]
[Date "2025.07.20"]
[White "ZukoRedemption"]
[Black "ZGM_Samostically"]
[Result "0-1"]
[GameId "bEtpZHJd"]
[UTCDate "2025.07.20"]
[UTCTime "08:50:16"]
[WhiteElo "2471"]
[BlackElo "2399"]
[WhiteRatingDiff "-7"]
[BlackRatingDiff "+7"]
[Variant "Standard"]
[TimeControl "60+0"]
[ECO "D04"]
[Opening "Queen's Pawn Game: Colle System"]
[Termination "Normal"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 d5 3. e3 c5 4. Nbd2 cxd4 5. exd4 Nc6 6. c3 e6 7. Bd3 Qb6 8. O-O Bd6 9. Re1 O-O 10. h3 Re8 11. Qe2 e5 12. dxe5 Nxe5 13. Nxe5 Rxe5 14. Qd1 Rxe1+ 15. Qxe1 Be6 16. Nf3 Re8 17. Nd4 Bf5 18. Qd1 Bxd3 19. Qxd3 Re1+ 20. Qf1 Rxf1+ 21. Kxf1 Bc5 22. Be3 Qxb2 23. Re1 Qxc3 24. Rc1 Qd3+ 25. Ke1 Bb4+ 0-1

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Thanks For Reading!