Sunday 2 May 2010

Does blitz matter?

I recently read an argument by Hikaru Nakamura about why 'bullet chess' (ie 1 minute chess) is worth playing. As you can play so many games in a sitting, even if you lose a game, the result doesn't actually matter, as you're already playing the next game.
Obviously this argument can be pushed up the chess time chain to blitz and even rapidplay. Play 30 games of blitz in a row and the losses aren't as important as the 1 brilliancy you played. And the knock on effect of this attitude is that you can chance your arm a little more, knowing that the refuted brilliancy's don't stack up against the ones that worked.
I suspect this may have been Mikhail Tal's thinking while playing this blitz game back in 1956. On move 9 Tal (Black) sacs a pawn, and then follows it up with a piece sac. All perfectly unsound, until move 14, when his opponent misses the best (and kind of obvious) defence. Then it is just sac - sac - win.

Szukszta - Tal [E86]
Blitz , 1956

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f3 0-0 6.Be3 e5 7.Nge2 c6 8.Qb3 exd4 9.Nxd4 d5 10.cxd5 cxd5 11.exd5 Nc6 12.dxc6 Re8 (D)
13.Kf2 Rxe3 14.Rd1 Ng4+ 15.fxg4 Bxd4 16.Rxd4 Qxd4 17.Qd5 Re2+ 18.Kxe2 Bxg4+ 19.Ke1 Re8+ 20.Be2 Rxe2+ 0-1

1 comment:

Paul said...

I have played bullet chess and believe me the name is well chosen I like a little faster time limit-3 minutes ! LOL