"The second factor is being rushed. Anything approaching a hard stop on playing tanks my game like no other. I’d find myself cramming as much losing as possible in before the deadline."<p>This does not make sense to me. He is playing bullet chess games that last at most 2 minutes. If you start a bullet chess session and have 30 minutes to play, you can play at least 15 games. The "rush" comes from having to make all your moves in 1 minute, not from having only 30 minutes to play chess.