Anish Giri

Dutch GM, World No. 6

“It’s very simple. I play Titled Tuesdays to maintain form, to practice for Blitz. It was much easier to play before, of course, because now you need to set up Proctor. That’s why I didn’t play Titled Tuesdays for a long time, but in preparation for the GCL, I decided that I need to play a couple of Tuesdays, because it’s time to overcome this barrier. It’s still uncomfortable to set up two cameras. I would prefer to play from the couch, but here you have to sit at the table and so on. But I never had any technical glitches, no problems in that regard.

I don’t play Freestyle Friday because I’m not sure that playing Freestyle is as useful as playing regular chess. I thought it was better to spend an hour playing regular chess, regular Blitz, than Freestyle. But I’m not so sure anymore, because results of weekly tournaments show that players perform similarly in both regular and Freestyle chess. Perhaps it’s just the same game.

And I really like 3 0 Thursday, it’s a very cool tournament because everything is very fast. It’s literally over in an hour and a half. Of course, all the online pros like Hikaru, Jospem and Lazavik beat me, but nevertheless it’s a very, very pleasant, fast tournament.”