Nihal Sarin discussed important aspects of playing in a Bullet tournament. Nihal notes the importance of distance to the game server, and talks about how he played at the Bullet Chess Championship 2026.

Nihal Sarin

Nihal Sarin

Indian GM

“In Bullet, it’s not just the internet speed that matters, but the server location too. The ping used to be quite high.

When you pre-move, it’s supposed to take 0.1 seconds. With the lag, sometimes it becomes 0.2 seconds. It might seem negligible, but it makes a massive difference. In a second, you can already make only five moves instead of ten.

The server being in Mumbai helped significantly, I believe. I played the final day of the Bullet Championship from the S8UL gaming house. I took my personal mouse, the Logitech G Pro, which I’ve seen Hikaru use as well, but I used their desktop, which is a lot more powerful than the one I have back home.

These things definitely matter, especially in Bullet.”

The Bullet Chess Championship 2026 took place from June 24 to 27 on Chess.com. Nihal Sarin defeated Alireza Firouzja in the Grand Final with a score of 15.5-7.5 and in the Grand Final reset with a score of 9.5-5.5. Nihal became the 3rd unique Bullet World Champion after Alireza and Hikaru Nakamura.

Credit: Esports World Cup