A Story of a former colleague.
I had a colleague named Sumeet.
I still remember the first time he tried bullet chess.
It was late, one of those nights when there was a production bug, and we were dependent on SREs and had to wait for a few minutes to check if the issue was in the cluster itself.
I logged onto my favourite chess platform (I am not telling you which one hehe — because of the ongoing debates), looking for a quick game to soothe our overactive minds.
I usually played a 10/30 minutes game. Sumeet used to play on board.
But that day, we found the adrenaline rush of bullet chess — a time control so fast that thinking seemed optional.
Bullet chess, for the uninitiated, is a version of chess where each player typically has one minute to make all their moves. Sixty seconds. That’s all. It’s a domain where instinct takes the wheel, and calculation is left scrambling to keep up.
At first, it was weird.
I’d always thought of chess as a slow, methodical game — a battle of minds spread over hours.
Bullet shattered that illusion. Here, it was about survival, about gut reactions, and seizing the smallest opportunities before they evaporated.
Six months later, today, I saw Sumeet’s profile.
He had played 2732 matches in the last 180 days. I started thinking.
This game was a perfect recipe for addiction.
Each game feels like a quick gamble, and the stakes — your online rating — are always on the line.
It wouldn’t have been long before he found himself playing dozens of games in a single sitting, telling himself “just one more” after every loss?
No wonder he did not come for lunch and sat in the meeting rooms for hours.
Now that I connect the dots, I can understand.
Was this the reason why he had been called by the HRs every now and then for meetings and catch-ups before finally being asked to leave?
Playing bullet during work breaks, between tasks, and even when he should have been sleeping. Ah damn, now that I remember, his to-do list had openings, tactics, and missed opportunities all over it too.
This moment I realize his addiction had crossed a line. Why didn’t I think of this before?
Let me go talk to him!
In case we are meeting for the first time, come over here, it’ll be worth the roller coaster of articles that are gonna come up in the next few weeks.
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