My Bullet Rating as a Mental Health Barometer

For me, Bullet chess has become more than a game. It acts like a barometer of my mental health.

My rating tells a story: my highest Bullet rating was 1845 in July 2024. In some arena runs, I sometimes even perform at a 2000+ level. At my peaks, I can play sharp, intuitive chess where everything flows. But I’ve also dropped as low as 1300 in May. These swings of 500 points or more are not just about chess skill — they reflect what’s going on in my head.

I live with long-term depression and its companions: memory lapses, concentration problems, and self-hate. These issues directly impact my chess. When I’m doing well, I tend to hover between 1600–1800. In worse phases, I drop into the 1400–1600 range. The fascinating (and sometimes painful) part is that my rating graph often trends upward or downward before I even consciously realize that my mood is improving or declining. My Bullet performance acts almost like an early warning signal of my mental health.

Sometimes, I play my best games late at night when I’m very tired — paradoxically, exhaustion can reduce overthinking and let intuition take over. Other times, tiredness simply means blunders and time pressure losses. The cruel part is that I can never predict which it will be before I start playing.

Once I do start playing, I tend to continue compulsively. If it’s going well, I feel validated — proof that I can still play good chess. But if it goes badly, it fuels the voice in my head calling me an idiot. The effect is even harsher in Blitz and Rapid than in Bullet: spending 20+ minutes playing a good game only to throw it away with one concentration lapse feels devastating, like I wasted all that time proving my own stupidity. Bullet is more forgiving in that sense — the rating is volatile, swings happen fast, and I’ve stopped taking it too seriously as a measure of ability.

Still, I can’t ignore how closely my Bullet rating graph matches the rhythms of my mental state. It isn’t a reliable regulator — I can’t decide beforehand whether playing will help or harm me — but it has become an unintentional tracker. When the graph rises, it often signals my mood improving. When it falls, it’s a red flag of decline.

---

How others perceive my swings

One side effect of these huge swings is how other players perceive them. In my low phases, I’ve been suspected of sandbagging; in my high phases, I’ve been accused of cheating. Neither suspicion is true — I never do either.

The reality is that my performance genuinely varies. I’ve played many games with 90%+ accuracy, sometimes even with no blunders, mistakes, or inaccuracies. But I’ve also had games where I look like someone who barely knows chess at all, missing simple patterns, threats, and opportunities. That gap between my best and worst is very real and unbelievably frustrating. It tears me apart when I can't access a skill that I clearly have. In bad phases, I often wonder whether that's it now. Years of trying to improve sacrificed on the altar of depression and, let's be honest it's probably also a factor, age. I'm 56.

In the depths of frustration, I sometimes start playing “stupid” openings or random moves. Strangely, this can actually stop a losing slide, because it throws opponents out of book and out of their comfort zones. Sometimes, surprise works better than it should. But the impulse to experiment with objectively bad and stupid openings are born from frustration, not from sandbagging, trolling or dishonesty.

The accusations, however really hurt. A mind struggling to survive does not need false accusations. They are not helpful at all. So please err on the side of caution before accusing anyone of cheating or sandbagging. Your opponent may be someone who struggles with mental health issues and similar massive performance swings. They are already in a fragile state of mind. Think about the impact your words or actions can have on such a person, give them the benefit of the doubt and some decent human consideration. It can happen to anyone. Don't assume you are immune : almost everyone does until it hits them.

---

Questions for others

• Do other players notice the same kind of link between their chess performance and their state of mind?
• Is it common for Bullet, with its speed and intensity, to amplify what’s happening mentally?
• And a question for any psychologists out there: has this connection between chess performance and mood disorders like depression ever been studied?

---

For now, I see my Bullet rating not just as a number on a screen but as a kind of barometer for my mental state. It rises when my mind is clear and focused, and it falls when concentration and mood slip. Sometimes it tells me more about how I’m doing internally than I can consciously recognize.
Chess, in this way, has become an unintentional mirror — volatile, honest, and often incredibly harsh — reflecting both my peaks and my troughs.