Kramnik has a point

[chesskobra]

Being able to 'see' the pieces in a new position is one part, but then if a fraction of a second is subtracted from the average amount of time he takes to solve puzzle rush puzzles (as overhead of having to scan the board), then it means he is even more impressive. Moreover, I think that being able to solve simpler puzzles extremely fast would be positively correlated with blitz play. A few days ago Daniel Naroditsky was on a podcast in which he said that to be able to play blitz well, you have to calculate many short tactics very fast unlike the deep calculations you have to do in classical.

[Uri Blass]

Being able to 'see' the pieces in a new position is one part, but then if a fraction of a second is subtracted from the average amount of time he takes to solve puzzle rush puzzles (as overhead of having to scan the board), then it means he is even more impressive. Moreover, I think that being able to solve simpler puzzles extremely fast would be positively correlated with blitz play. A few days ago Daniel Naroditsky was on a podcast in which he said that to be able to play blitz well, you have to calculate many short tactics very fast unlike the deep calculations you have to do in classical.

No need to calculate short tactics to play blitz well.
You only need to evaluate positions correctly and search 1 node per move.
Ask lc0 how to do it because I do not know.

[CornfedForever]

Some players are pretty fast at solving timed puzzles - almost always retain the top position in number of puzzles solved within 3 minutes (Puzzle racer/Puzzle storm - which is available in Lichess and Chess.com)

I once saw Nakamura doing puzzle rush or something. It was at lightning speed. Even before you see where is what piece, he moves and a new puzzle appears. Kramnik should watch Nakamura's puzzle rush sometime, and then try to do the same, to get an idea.

Nakamura's defense is also very active. When he is on the backfoot, he keeps creating a lot of activity and problems for the opponent.

puzzle rush is different from chess games and you do not have a new position when you need to see where are the pieces so I do nnot think that it is relevant for rating in games,

True of course....but not as much as you might think as spotting things quickly is more important in blitz/bullet than about anything else.

Top Blitz and Bullet players on chess.com tend to have a really high puzzle rush scores.
I check Kramnik's profile and see he's apparently never tried puzzle rush. I really don't think he would come terribly close to the top. His chess DNA finds him more happy to embrace 'control' whereas the very top at bullet/blitz are are more likely to embrace the chaos which almost inevitable occurs as time slips away.

I do wish his upcoming 'match' in Spain again Martinez was 36 online blitz games instead of 18 online and 18 OTB.

[Alexander Schmidt]

No need to calculate short tactics to play blitz well.

But it helps.

[swami]

Being able to 'see' the pieces in a new position is one part, but then if a fraction of a second is subtracted from the average amount of time he takes to solve puzzle rush puzzles (as overhead of having to scan the board), then it means he is even more impressive. Moreover, I think that being able to solve simpler puzzles extremely fast would be positively correlated with blitz play. A few days ago Daniel Naroditsky was on a podcast in which he said that to be able to play blitz well, you have to calculate many short tactics very fast unlike the deep calculations you have to do in classical.

True, however it's not simpler puzzles over there. It appears to go up in levels of difficulty as time passes, and there are also negative points/diminished time awarded for each wrong answers, and bonus for solving puzzles in a row. Database has over million puzzles with varying difficulty. Needless to say, top scorers are able to maintain the very high scores on average of many trials, which some GMs couldn't do.

[towforce]

No need to calculate short tactics to play blitz well.

But it helps.

The pre-moves are impressive, but so is something else: look how relaxed Hikaru looks! I'm nowhere near that relaxed when I'm playing at "game in 10 minutes" time. When I've watched strong players playing blitz, I've never seen anyone looking relaxed like that.

This tells me that he's not putting a lot of effort in, and he's not exhausting himself. You will NEVER see someone who is lifting weights close to the limit of what their muscles can do looking relaxed like that, and someone lifting close to their limit would not be able to do many repetitions without breaks.

It's likely that his opponents are exhausting themselves, which, just by itself, indicates an absence of independence between events - an essential component of evidence based on statistical distributions.

[Alexander Schmidt]

look how relaxed Hikaru looks!

OMG, yes, he must be cheating!

[CornfedForever]

Fun Fact: If you go to the FIDE website one finds that Daniel Naroditsky has a slightly higher OTB BLITZ rating than does Kramnik....and Jose Martines has a Blitz rating about 40 point HIGHER than either of them.

STD Rapid Blitz
Kramnik.......2753...2700...2644
Naroditsky... 2619...2645...2677
Martinez..... 2612...2641...2703
Nakamura....2794...2746...2874

Notice how at the faster time controls 2 players trend up while the oldest guy trends down and Nakmura takes the bathtub shape...and it's only the older guy who is finding so many players 'suspect' at online blitz.

When each last played FIDE rated OTB blitz, I don't know.

Oh, I am hearing that Kramnik is now finding Nihal Sarin 'suspect'. Sarins FIDE Blitz rating is higher than any of these save for Nakamura.

[JohnWoe]

Fast chess is just about speed. I'm 2300+ on bullet on lichess fairly easily. All I do is play KIA + KID super duper fast and win 90% of games in time. Ofc that's total BS. I'm actually 2100+ in 3+0 while playing on my phone. I don't need a gaming mouse. 3+0 is slightly more chess than 1+0.

The trick in fast chess 1+0 is to play the same opening all the time.
You are familiar with setups but your opponent isn't. After the opening you've got a 15s time advantage.
In 1min chess that's lethal. Just move fast and think later.

[BrendanJNorman]

Fast chess is just about speed. I'm 2300+ on bullet on lichess fairly easily. All I do is play KIA + KID super duper fast and win 90% of games in time. Ofc that's total BS. I'm actually 2100+ in 3+0 while playing on my phone. I don't need a gaming mouse. 3+0 is slightly more chess than 1+0.

The trick in fast chess 1+0 is to play the same opening all the time.
You are familiar with setups but your opponent isn't. After the opening you've got a 15s time advantage.
In 1min chess that's lethal. Just move fast and think later.

Should switch from 1+0 to 2+1 and see if there's any rating changes.

Would be an interesting experiment and probably give a good indication of relative mouse skills vs chess skills compared to other bullet players.

I'm a pretty slow player, and went in the reverse order.

When I switched from 1+0 to 2+1 my bullet rating shot to 2420 or so from 2300s.

Conclusion? I'm slooooooooow.