Optiver Mental Math Tips: Speed Drills That Work
Mental math is the gatekeeper of the entire Optiver process. The 80 in 8 screen sits at the very front: if your arithmetic is not fast enough, you never see the trading games, the interviews, or the office. These mental math tips and speed drills are the fastest way to build test-ready speed.
The Core Mental Math Techniques
Learn these tricks and they stack with practice: break multiplications into sums (47 × 6 = 40×6 + 7×6), round-and-adjust for subtraction, convert divisions into friendlier fractions (divide by 25 = multiply by 4, then divide by 100), and memorize multiplication tables through 25×25 plus key squares. None of this is clever — it is arithmetic made mechanical through repetition.
Speed Drills That Actually Transfer
Drill 1: daily 8-minute Zetamac sprints, tracking your running average toward 65+. Drill 2: 100-problem sets of your weakest operation (usually division and decimals) untimed, then timed. Drill 3: "escalation sets" — start easy and increase difficulty every 20 questions to simulate the Optiver 80 in 8 ramp. Drill 4: do sets while distracted or tired, because test-day pressure degrades untested speed.
The Mistakes That Keep Candidates Slow
Reading every answer option instead of solving then matching. Writing too much down — paper should catch intermediate results, not hold every digit. Practicing without a timer, which builds accuracy without speed. And ignoring the last third of the difficulty ramp: most failures happen on questions 50–80, so your drills must include hard questions, not just comfortable ones.
Our 2027 Optiver Online Assessment Exact Questions & Answers pairs the speed drills with the real 80 in 8 question types and worked answers, so every drill you run trains the exact test you will sit.
Nobody passes 80 in 8 on talent. The passers are the ones who drilled until speed was boring.
FAQ
What is the fastest way to improve mental math speed? Timed daily sprints (Zetamac) plus deliberate practice on your weakest operations. Most candidates need 4–6 weeks.
Should I memorize multiplication tables for Optiver? Yes — through at least 25×25, plus squares. Retrieval beats computation on a 6-seconds-per-question test.
Do mental math tricks really help on the Optiver 80 in 8? They help, but drilled speed helps more. Tricks save a second per question; weeks of timed practice save minutes.
Can I use scratch paper on the Optiver 80 in 8? Yes, paper and pen are typically allowed — but the best candidates keep writing to a minimum.
Preparing for Optiver's 80 in 8? Our 2027 Optiver Online Assessment Exact Questions & Answers has the exact questions and answers — $79 one-time, instant download.
