Chess Satranç ajedrez échecs schaken Schach scacchi escacs xadrez şah шахматы šahmaty

How much difference it make to a professional player if he is stripped of the time granted to make his moves? Not much if you see the progress of the World Blitz Chess Championship 2009. These strong GMs are making astonishing moves even with just 3 minutes + 2 seconds increment games. How has this become possible? If you just go back to the historic match between Kasparov and Karpov in 1984 and 1985, analyze the games with strong engines on, you will see that even these legends made mini-blunders once in a while. Such mistakes will be duly punished in these strong computing times. Strong Chess engines have made the process of human analysis almost redundant. Of course, you still can do it on the board after the game, but one is sure to find lines later in detailed analysis. You can clearly see that the top players are really playing almost to their usual strength and the progress is not erratic. The ones in form perform anyway. From this one can conclude that the game will get shorter...

Alexandra Kosteniuk reached the world women's chess finals for the second time in her career. She awaits the winner of the Humpy - Yifan match. Yifan was very close to making it to the finals but for a huge blunder in an equal position. It was a mate in ten after taking a pawn and leaving her kingside open to attack. The match is now tied at 1-1 and the players battle it over rapid, blitz, and sudden death or Armageddon games. Yifan and Humpy have shown brilliant form in this tournament except for a few slips in the last couple of rounds.

Karjakin and Shirov go to war in a set of rapid and blitz games for a place in the finals of the World Cup Chess 2007 at Khanty Mansiysk. Karjakin is well known for his rapid and blitz skills. His style of play is also clean and less prone to errors. But Shirov is no push over. His immense experience will come handy. The difference between the winner and loser in tomorrow's games very significant. In addition to this, the finals will be of four classical time games followed by tie-breakers.