New Beginnings: Best in Blitz

Hi everyone! After a break from blogging, I have decided to drop the columns I have been writing so far this summer and try to write more inspired, different blogs. Shoutout to @MiddlegamerUmesh, @Rakesh, and @chesster3145, who helped me make this tough decision. And  thus, new beginnings begin.

One question that has come up a lot lately, in my experience, is whether someone could be much better in a 'variant' of chess than chess itself. The most recent example, which blew up in the chess world, was that of Oleg Badmatsyrenov, a fairly unknown international master from Russia. Badmatsyrenov's creative, aggressive and innovative style led him to defeat grandmasters Alexey Dreev and Francisco Vallejo Pons and take World #13 Alexander Grischuk to an Armageddon tiebreaker in the FIDE Fischer Random World Championship Qualifier. The question was whether the game of Chess960 (where the pieces on the back rank are shuffled)'s randomness helped Badmatsyrenov to the extent that he was on a level of the modern greats of actual chess, hundreds of points higher than his FIDE rating of 2443. Badmatsyrenov's uncompromising style led him to get quick attacks, thrusting his h-pawn up the board. Here is a masterful win against Grischuk, pulling his weight.

Despite Badmatsyrenov’s amazing play, he was accused of cheating by Grischuk and even former world champion Garry Kasparov. Thus, this instance of high level Chess960 play from a lower rated player was written of as yet another case of cheating in the sad world of chess. This may have been the most recent example of my point, but blitz chess (<10 minute chess) dates back much further than Chess960. With online chess, it is far more possible to reach a high rating in blitz, but even over the board, the ratings are always fluctuating. World Champion Magnus Carlsen is ‘only’ World #2 and World #4 in rapid and blitz respectively. Many players have benefited from this, like Iuri Shkuro. The little known Ukrainian GM organized several tournaments playing with much lower rated players and slowly gaining enough points towards 2828, making him the World #7 blitz player. However, Shkuro’s means of getting there didn’t seem very fair, like Badmatsyrenov’s. So, the question is: Can one be very good at blitz (or Chess960), but not standard chess? Let me know what you think in the comments.