Flanc de rei

Interview with Viktor Moskalenko:

Viktor Moskalenko, Ukrainian Great Master who for a couple of years has been living in Catalonia and has effective card with a Catalan club, has gained the Absolute Championship of this Autonomy obtaining 8 of the 9 possible points and without losing no round. The fact that a player of foreign nationality can dispute this match opposes with the fact that the Catalan players that at the moment they have effective card with clubs of other autonomies cannot dispute it. The only requirement that demands the Catalan Federation to be able to register is to have effective the federal card of the Catalan federation, card that is not possible to transact if effective card with another Spanish federation is had. On the matter, we asked to Viktor Moskalenko: 

• I believe that this is a regulation problem that is due to clarify. It doesn't stand to reason that I could play and has not been able to make it to Magem or Comas…among others. But from my point of view there is in addition another type of problem like the system of opened game for all the players with license of the FCE that causes that it is a little interesting match referring to quality of game. 

Do you believe then, Viktor, that the Absolute Championship of Catalonia must have another shape?

•  In general all the opened matches without sections of elo use to be matches in which you face during the first rounds players with a very important difference of elo and that many of your opponents do not have interest in playing with a GM. In my opinion the matches where competition by groups exist are more interesting since the quality of game is greater and where the luck of the matching is not a lottery as it happens in the open ones. For example, in the last round, in the Absolute Championship of Catalonia, players with 5,5 points matched with theoretically weak players, whereas players with 6 points faced titleholders. If we add that some of us cannot be classified for the Spanish Championship, then the luck in the matching is determining so that you can obtain one of the four seats that give right to classify itself for the Championship of Spain.

The Absolute Catalan Championship has with no doubt a special reputation, nevertheless only about twenty players had an elo greater than 2200 and only one GM: Viktor Moskalenko. Do you think that the opened competition system has influenced in the inscription of titleholders?

• I believe that the general opinion so much of titleholders as of players in general is that new formulas in the competition system would be due to study. Systems that combine the opened character of the match with the competition by groups of elo, so that the quality of the game increases and so the participation of the best players of the moment.

Another one of the great discussions that have been held during the present time, has been the new rate of game that has tried to impose the FIDE with the numerous protests of the international federations. Viktor, you have recently played a match of these characteristics. Do you think that this new rate of game of  40 plays in 75 minutes plus 15 minutes to finish and with an increase of  30 seconds by play helps the chess?

• From my point of view it is an excessively fast rate for a quality chess. Maybe it can be useful in some open matches where costs want to be eliminated playing one game in the morning and another one in the evening. What is clear is that with this rate of game you cannot think enough in the key moments without hurrying of time for the rest of the game. With the aggravating that you do not have time nor of standing up to stretch the legs or for having a coffee or even for going to the toilette without fear to that those lost minutes are decisive for the outcome of the game. This rate of game in that you have a bit more than 2 minutes by play until the control, is halfway between the fast and the slow chess and it does not help the quality of the chess. On the other hand the implantation of the electronic clocks needed for this rate of game can give some problems at a technical level: for example, if the battery of the electronic clock is exhausted or if by confusion the clock wants to be stopped and another button is pressed losing all the information of the time.