31 December 2012
Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012
Hi everyone,
In an interesting observation, GM Alexey Dreev has said that classical chess is losing popularity because of computer use and rapid chess is the way to go in the future. He was speaking to Russian chess news site chess-news.ru. The European Rapid Chess Champion Alexey said, “In classical chess 20-30 moves made by the players aren’t their own. Not in every game, but in most of them. The recent encounter Jakovenko – Gelfand is the best example of it. Dmitry decided to check his opponent, Boris forgot the theory on 41st move! Classical chess loses popularity under pressure of computers… This process has already started, but not everyone pays enough attention to it. Rapid is more entertaining. You should have preparation, but you don’t have time to learn all that variations by heart! So, the one whose overall chess skills are stronger – wins. I consider this to be fairer. It’s absolutely wrong to think that rapid chess is not objective! Only the strongest wins in it. You may play a classical game against the opponent whose rating is 2200, but who has memorized what Houdini has advised him, while rapid shows who is who immediately. What is more important, in rapid the role of computers goes down!”
Speaking about analysis and preparation, he said, “Depends with whom you are comparing. Let’s say, Vishy Anand with his team, or Sergey Karjakin if talking about Russia. Sergey’s preparation is focused on computer preparation. He has assistants who analyse with computers. Actually that’s just a huge work, hard labor, hellish work. I’ve done that as long as I’ve been helping different players. The main problem is how to memorize all that. At least that’s a problem for me. There are people with exceptional memory who have a huge advantage against others. As Garry Kasparov had once. Well, of course I write down some variants, but only to a definite point in analyses, not to absurdity!”
From Alexandra Kosteniuk’s
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