Hovering amid the din

‘I am extraordinarily patient — provided I get my own way in the end’. That’s a disposition fit for a chess player, even if it was Margaret Thatcher who said it. Learning when, and how, to mark time is an essential practical skill, so the classic text Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky dedicates a whole chapter to the motto ‘Do not hurry’. When I won a 163-move, 7.5-hour game against Nigel Short in 2009, I did feel I had got the hang of it.

But it’s so much easier to exercise patience when you have plenty of time, like I did. (Thatcher had it easy too — she was locked in some glacial negotiation with the EEC.) How much harder it is to restrain the impulses amid the hurly-burly of a blitz game. When fresh tactics bubble up every few seconds, it’s so tempting to hitch yourself to some quixotic stratagem, to see where it takes you. The best blitz players seem able to remain steadfast, just as a helicopter can hover motionless, amid the din. They ignore the half-baked ideas, and wait for something better.

A perfect example was the game below, from the Abu Dhabi Super Blitz Challenge, which was held last month on the Chess.com website. Vladislav Artemiev, from Russia, won the $5,000 first prize in a tournament with more than 1,200 titled players, of whom 300 were grandmasters.

His opening was nondescript, and around move 20 Black’s position was entirely comfortable. With the exchange of bishop for knight on move 23, Artemiev forestalls any activity and carries on playing solid moves, without airs. On move 27, his proposal to exchange queens is rejected, but no matter. More shuffling, and later the rooks come off instead.