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Comment by vpa10 | Hacker News Reader

This is not how I see it. Carlsen lost one insanely long online bullet match on lichess.

He narrowly lost an online banter blitz match. This is not blitz, since also you have to talk while playing, which does not seem to suit Carlsen's personality.

In classical, you can often "almost lose", except that Carlsen does not "actually lose", as exemplified by his ongoing record non-loss streak.

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People are reading a bit too much into this loss. It is a big deal that someone was able to beat Magnus Carlsen at any time control, especially in this era where Magnus has seemingly reached a new level of chess skill, but bullet is by far the the easiest for a champion to make a mistake or series of them. Magnus is ridiculously strong at bullet but I’ve watched his live-streams and sometimes he blunders really badly, that’s just part of bullet. Although he is incredibly strong at bullet, probably 50-100 points higher than the world #2. Anyone not a high ranked GM wouldn’t stand a chance of beating him in a series of more than 5 games. But I’ve seen him lose to players he is obviously better than. He’s the #1 so they try their hardest. Nothing comes easily for Magnus.

“Although he is incredibly strong at bullet, probably 50-100 points higher than the world #2”

Are you forgetting about Hikaru Nakamura?

> "probably 50-100 points higher than the world #2"

He can't be 50-100 points higher than himself. Hikaru is #1.

https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_blitz

That's blitz. Bullet is a faster time control

Oh, you're right. Google pulls up FIDE's blitz rankings when you search for bullet chess rankings.

Bullet games are not officially rated

The classical time control chess is boring. It really feels like an exercise in memorization.

I stopped watching those as almost every tournament ends in armagedon. Its a statement of the incredible skills top players poses, but its incredibly boring to watch draw after draw.

Quicker time controls are more dynamic and allow to play subpar move to throw off your opponent. Often you can see some crazy attacks.

In the banter blitz I saw, they aren't really bantering, just making offhand comments during downtime.

I watch a variety of games on Twitch, and I am fairly sure that no player would claim they play optimally while commentating themselves and explaining their thought processes.

They don't really banter in 'banter blitz', they explain the position and their strategy, which is much more interesting.

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