Top chess quote: I understood for the first time in my life that Kasparov was very vulnerable, says Nigel Short

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011


Hi everyone,


Everyone's going to love this interview. An insight into the great chess mind by one of those most talented and maverick chess grandmasters out there. Nigel Short says, for the first time in his life - probably - he figured that Gary Kasparov was vulnerable. 

Grandmaster Nigel Short, who played in October a nostalgic blitz match in Leuven, Belgium against Garry Kasparov, and lost this competition by a narrow margin, 3.5-4.5, answered a couple of Mikhail Golubev’s questions for www.chess-news.ru.

M.GOLUBEV: How would you evaluate the match and your result?
N.SHORT: It was better than I expected prior to the match. However I understood - probably for the first time in my life - as soon as we started playing that he was very vulnerable.

M.GOLUBEV: Maybe it was better to play 9.h4 in the decisive game? Recently Vallejo won a decent game against Sanikidze in this variation.
N.SHORT: Possibly. Anyway, I made a poor psychological choice in the last game because he is very good at attacking.

M.GOLUBEV: Is not Kasparov just a lucky guy, generally?
N.SHORT: Not really.

M.GOLUBEV: I know that you headed the Playchess.com blitz rating list for a while. Are you still spending time for playing blitz on the Internet?
N.SHORT: I play way too much blitz chess. It rots the brain just as surely as alcohol.

M.GOLUBEV: Have you ever played the unofficial internet blitz games against Kasparov?
N.SHORT: I don't recall. However I do remember playing him a series of friendly blitz games in Megeve, France, many years ago. The first six games were won by black! If I am not mistaken, we final score was around 6-6 which was, of course, an exceptionally good result for me.

M.GOLUBEV: Is it possible that the blitz competitions would be considered at one day as a fully legitimate form of the professional chess, with its own rating list an so on?
N.SHORT: I think that blitz chess is seriously underdeveloped as a tool for promoting chess. There ought to be separate blitz ratings. Unfortunately though now we have a world championship where the three disciplines (classic, rapid and blitz) are mixed together and this is just wrong.

You can read the Russian version here.

Tweet

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
www.chessblog.com
Also see her personal blog at
www.chessqueen.com