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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

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.





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8 comments:

  1. Alexis Cochran, New ZealandNovember 2, 2011 at 1:37 PM

    Whoa

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  2. Brenda Kroll, BerlinNovember 2, 2011 at 1:58 PM

    That's an amazing comment by Nigel Short. But possibly it holds all that much weight because it is coming from the British grandmaster. Possibly this news would overshadow the news of Naka working with Kasparov. What with Kasparov working and playing against all the young talent (he beat Maxime too) sometimes I feel it's only a matter of time when suddenly we would hear that Kasparov is coming back to play a tournament. That would be awesome really.

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  3. Amrit Puri, Knights Chess Club, New DelhiNovember 2, 2011 at 2:04 PM

    If Short is saying that then it means something.

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  4. Kasparov is invincible. I don't agree.

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  5. I would really like to see Kasparov play again.

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  6. Very interesting comment but maybe it won't ruffle Kasparov at all. It would make him even more attacking the next time he takes on Short. Frankly, I think Kasparov cannot be counted out. He's working with all these youngsters. I agree with the point made by another person on this blog @Brenda. Kasparov is keeping pace everyone. Watch out.

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  7. What is Carlsen's opinion on the subject?

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  8. Henry Chippendale, ParisNovember 3, 2011 at 10:53 AM

    Maybe Short now finds Kasparov vulnerable because he has been playing regularly. But would he hold the same opinion for a 'regularly-playing Kasparov'? I like both of these players. I particularly like Short for his creativity and humour, Kasparov is of course Kasparov. Waste of adjectives even to try describing him. I like the pick of news here on the blog - better than all the same headlines all over the place. Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete

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