All Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz interviews

by Macauley Peterson
8/19/2017 – Following on the heels of the Sinquefield Cup, the Saint Louis Blitz and Rapid lasted just five days, with each webcast lasting about 4½ hours. Most player interviews took place at the end of the day, after the rapid or blitz games concluded. For posterity, we've once again compiled quick links to all those post-game chats with Maurice Ashley and Cristian Chirila. | Photos: Lennart Ootes

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Rapid review

The format of rapid and blitz meant that most players only descended to the commentary webcast studio once per day at the end of play, but by then they were typically talkative, making for instructive and light-hearted banter. But they also stood for spot interviews between rounds with GM Cristian Chirila.

To make it easy to review these interviews, we've linked to the start of each one from within the full round videos provided by the Grand Chess Tour, via the Chess Club and Scholastic Center's YouTube channel.

Of course Garry Kasparov was the star of the show, and we heard from him one more time after the tournament's conclusion:

Garry Kasparov's final interview | Source: CCSCSL on YouTube

On this DVD a team of experts gets to the bottom of Kasparov's play. In over 8 hours of video running time the authors Rogozenko, Marin, Reeh and Müller cast light on four important aspects of Kasparov's play: opening, strategy, tactics and endgame.

Feature on Kasparov's return (Day 4) | Source: CCSCSL on YouTube

Day 1 - Rapid rounds 1-3

Round 1
Round 2
Round 3

Day 2 - Rapid rounds 4-6

No Round 4 Interviews

Round 5
Round 6

Day 3 - Rapid rounds 7-9

Round 7
No Round 8 Interviews

Round 9

Day 4 - Blitz rounds 1-9

Longer interviews following Round 9:

Thoughts on wildcards | Source: CCSCSL on YouTube

Day 5 - Blitz rounds 10-18

 
Longer interviews following Round 18:

Hikaru Nakamura was dissatisfied, but still finished shared second | CCSCSL on YouTube

Levon Aronian's winner's interview | CCSCSL on YouTube

Links

Topics: Fabiano Caruana, Garry Kasparov, Grand Chess Tour 2017, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Peter Svidler, Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz 2017, Sergey Karjakin, Sinquefield Cup, Viswanathan Anand
Macauley served as the Editor in Chief of ChessBase News from July 2017 to March 2020. He is the producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast, and was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.

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Raymond Labelle Raymond Labelle 8/20/2017 07:22
Not every chess player has this syndrome, but some of them (not that rarely): that feeling that they should win all their games if things went normally - a loss is an accident or undeserved.
Karbuncle Karbuncle 8/19/2017 08:42
@ Tom, it's why I love 3-min with no delay or increment. I've won thousands of blitz games where I was much worse and often totally lost, but I had over a minute left to my opponent's 5 seconds, and I'd win on time. I use the clock to base my level of thought on, although I will admit I perform worse with increment blitz, where my opponent will build back up to plenty of spare time to win the position from.
ivanw ivanw 8/19/2017 06:02
Well said "Tom Box"
Tom Box Tom Box 8/19/2017 05:25
It’s irritating when people win games they lost in the post-mortem. In the interview Kasparov kept saying how he had a better position and then blew it. That is the nature of blitz: time vs quality. Kasparov was consistently spending more time on the clock, so it is natural that he might get a better position, but then he blundered when short on time; the price you often pay for thinking too long. Always smug in victory, Kasparov is an ungracious loser.
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