Alexander Grischuk and Valentina Gunina are 2009 Moscow Blitz Chess Champions!

Hello everybody!

It was a big chess feast in Moscow on August 30th. It seemed everybody was playing blitz. Unfortunately the tournament showed that I have to work a lot more in order to get back into top form.

I talked with Anatoly Karpov who attended the closing ceremony and he said that blitz is the first indicator of good or bad chess form.

The main men's tournament was won by Alexander Grischuk who scored 17 points out of 21 games and took the first place ahead of Alexander Morozevich and Sergey Karjakin who finished the tournament with 16,5 points each.

On the photo above I am with Sergey Karjakin and his wife Kateryna Dolzhikova.

I played in the men's tournament and achieved only 5 points which is by far not the best blitz result in my career. Despite the fact that the tournament was very strong, the only explanation lies in the lack of practice. However, I played a few interesting games and I will try to post some videos shortly. Even though I was not playing so well, I managed to beat Grandmasters Alexey Korotylev (ELO 2597) and Evgeni Vasiukov (ELO 2485), and I drew Grandmasters Maxim Dlugy (ELO 2518) and Vadim Zviagintsev (ELO 2635).

Here is my biggest disappointment of the tournament:

In this position I was playing Black against Alexander Grischuk. It's Black to move, try to find the best continuation for Black. I didn't find it and at the end lost the game.

The separate women's tournament was won by Valentina Gunina (on the photo below)

who scored 13,5 out of 17 followed by Daria Charochkina with 12 points and Alina Kashlinskaya with 11,5 points.

Despite the result I enjoyed a wonderful day with my darling daughter Francesca.

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com