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  Rapid Chess as a Stress Test for Real Strength Rapid chess occupies an uncomfortable position in the hierarchy of formats. It is too slow to excuse chaos and too fast to reward exhaustive precision. Because of this, it has long been misunderstood. Some treat it as diluted classical chess. Others treat it as “blitz with manners.” Both views miss the point. Rapid chess is neither a compromise nor a midpoint. It is a stress test —one that exposes how a player’s thinking deforms when time is present but insufficient. In classical chess, a player can afford inefficiency. A poorly structured thought process may still arrive at a good move if given enough minutes. In blitz, thought itself becomes fragmented; instinct dominates, and even poor habits can survive through speed. Rapid chess punishes both extremes. It demands efficient thinking : enough calculation to be accurate, enough intuition to be fast, and enough discipline to know when calculation is no longer worth its cost. ...

  Why This World Rapid Title Matters On 28 December 2025, Magnus Carlsen won the World Rapid Chess Championship for the sixth time. On the surface, this is a familiar sentence. Over the last decade and a half, chess audiences have grown accustomed to reading some variation of it. Titles, records, statistics—Carlsen has accumulated enough of them that any single achievement risks being absorbed into the background noise of sustained excellence. That would be a mistake. This particular title, won in Doha at the end of 2025, is not merely another addition to an already crowded résumé. It is a tournament victory that reveals something essential about modern elite chess, about competitive longevity, and about the specific way in which Carlsen continues to dominate when many of his peers—players of comparable talent—struggle to maintain relevance under similar conditions. To understand why, one must first discard a comforting illusion: that chess greatness is primarily about str...