Aronian wins World Blitz!

Armenia's Levon Aronian, winner of 2010 World Blitz Championship. Photo by Anastasiya Karlovich.

Blitz is something that most chess players enjoy playing. Watching a good blitz battle is as exciting as any sporting competition can be. The tension build-up, the pensive pauses and the culmination of rapid fire moves are facets of blitz we all enjoy. It is no surprise that many of the top players in the world also enjoy this activity and can be seen at the Internet Chess Club in pitched marathon battles.

In Moscow, twenty of the best blitz players in the world (minus Viswanathan Anand) assembled to determined who would wear the crown of the fastest player in the world. The defending champion was Magnus Carlsen, but there were many strong challengers. The tournament was a double round-robin with a three-minute time control with an extra two seconds for each move. GM Levon Aronian of Armenia (above) won the event.

There were 38 rounds of blitz and there was extensive video footage brought by Sergey Sorokhtin giving the exciting ebb and flow of play.

Enjoy Sorokhtin’s videos at YouTube!

Final standings (after 38 rounds)
#
Name
Fed.
Flag
Rating
Pts.
Wins
S.B.
1 Aronian, Levon ARM
2801 24.5
20
433.50
2 Radjabov, Teimour AZE
2744 24.0
18
447.00
3 Carlsen, Magnus NOR
2802 23.5
19
431.75
4 Gelfand, Boris ISR
2741 21.5
17
398.75
5 Nakamura, Hikaru USA
2741 21.5
17
397.50
6 Karjakin, Sergey RUS
2760 20.5
15
396.00
7 Kramnik, Vladimir RUS
2791 20.5
16
384.50
8 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar AZE
2763 19.5
17
362.25
9 Svidler, Peter RUS
2722 19.5
13
361.00
10 Eljanov, Pavel UKR
2742 19.0
16
345.00
11 Grischuk, Alexander RUS
2771 19.0
12
348.50
12 Mamedov, Rauf AZE
2660 18.0
14
333.75
13 Nepomniachtchi, Ian RUS
2720 18.0
13
326.25
14 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime FRA
2703 18.0
12
349.50
15 Movsesian, Sergei SVK
2721 17.5
16
315.25
16 Andreikin, Dmitry RUS
2683 17.5
13
314.25
17 Grachev, Boris RUS
2654 16.5
10
313.00
18 Savchenko, Boris RUS
2632 15.5
14
286.25
19 Caruana, Fabiano ITA
2709 13.5
11
249.25
20 Ponomariov, Ruslan UKR
2744 12.5
7
235.25
PGN Download (380 games from TWIC)

7 Comments

  1. Yesterday Judit defeated Ivanchuk 2.5 – 1.5 to advance to the final against Topalov. Today, she beats Topalov by the score of 3.5 – 0.5!
    She is my favorite player, you got to love Judit!

  2. oh thanks for the info Bady ! havent seen the games yet, i dont remember them callin topy a genius though on their traditional sites. He almost managed to get a zero score that would made me a CHESS PROGNOSTICATOR!!! is he still a 2800 traditional guy on the fide scale? Naka was sick in the second half of that blitz tourny. Ya know Um startin to think that the international chess community thought that Fischer’s genius was just all about him. Do you think they beginnin to realize that its just how the U.S. is built? I was asking Susan Polgar on her site is Kasparov really a Chess Ambassador or a CHESS APOLOGIST, um not sure. Peace.

  3. Nakamura-Carlsen Private Blitz Match

    There were rumours that the two giants got together after the World Blitz Championship to play a match. According to a report from Macauley Peterson, Carlsen asked him to ask Nakamura if he wanted to play 100 games. Peterson scrambled to find a set and the venue was Henrik Carlsen’s suite. They played for six hours and a total of 40 games at 3’+2″. The following video is game 38 and it is approximately 4:00am.

    I witnessed a similar match between GM Maurice Ashley and IM Stephen Muhammad after the 2003 U.S. Championship in Seattle. That match was 14-14 and lasted more than four hours. However, the Nakamura-Carlsen match result has been kept a close secret.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button