The following interview, which I translated from Russian into English, first appeared at WhyChess on 23 December, 2011:

For a number of years Bartel appeared to have reached a rating ceiling at a little over 2600, with much of his time devoted to launching and editing the excellent Mat chess magazine (from which I’ve translated a number of articles for Chess in Translation). It was his friend Radosław Wojtaszek who was the first Polish player after Michal Krasenkow to break through the 2700 barrier, but now Bartel is close to matching that feat, with 2700chess.com recently quoting his live rating as 2691.8.

The podium of the 2012 Polish Championship: 1) Mateusz Bartel 7/9, 2) Bartłomiej Macieja 7/9, 3) Kamil Mitoń 6.5/9 | photo: Sylwia Rudolf

It now seems less of an anomaly, therefore, that Bartel has performed so well at the Polish Championship. He first won in 2006, and has now completed a hat-trick in 2010, 2011 and 2012, despite the higher-rated Wojtaszek having competed in each of the last three events. As Bartel commented in an interview for a Polish newspaper in the run-up to the tournament:

As usual I’ll be satisfied with a place on the podium, and I’m aiming for second place – that’s the same thing I thought last year and two years ago. I still haven’t won a silver medal at the Polish Championship despite always trying to get one. Actually, though, I’ve been quite happy with those last two “failures”!

After his third “failure” in a row, Leszek Kropisz conducted an in-depth interview with Bartel for his “Chess Curiosities” blog. The first question was whether hard work was the explanation for Bartel’s remarkable run of success:

Mateusz Bartel: Yes, I think work lies behind every success. However, in chess it often turns out that it’s the result of work that was done much earlier. In my case, I think, a lot depended on work I’d done in the run-up to… last year’s Polish Championship, and also a little later in the period from April – June 2011. At the time I barely played at all, but that meant I was able to train. That bore its first fruit in a truly pleasant series of 62 games without a loss, followed by winning two strong tournaments.

Leszek Kropisz: This time round the defence of the Polish title might have put you under pressure, particularly after your success in Moscow. Did you feel that?

In my case it ended up being exactly the opposite – I didn’t feel any pressure at all, as after winning in Moscow even a poor performance would have been understandable. So my play was relaxed and much quicker and riskier than usual – which paid dividends.

Did you believe that over the course of a single year you’d be able to increase your playing strength so significantly? I recall last year you said you were trying to catch up with Radek, had seen what the work done by a top player looks like and would try to implement it yourself. Can we judge that to have been a success?

It looks that way. I learned a lot from Radek, and also from Bartosz Soćko and Grzegorz Gajewski – as I had the pleasure of training with all three of them last year. Each of them has skills I don’t possess, and working together with them made it possible to get a closer look at what they do well. Whether I’ve significantly increased my playing strength is something that’s hard for me to judge. What pleases me most is that I’ve finally managed to stabilise my results – I’ve had fewer big setbacks. That’s certainly had an effect on my rating.

Bartel goes on to give the following game-by-game account of his victory. You can play through all the games (and the win against Fabiano Caruana at the Aeroflot Open) in the viewer below:

Game viewer by Chess Tempo

Game 1: Bartel – Olszewski (1 – 0)

For many reasons this was one of the toughest games of the Championship. Firstly, it’s always difficult to get into the swing of a tournament. Secondly, my opponent is very strong (a year ago Michał ended up in 10th place and was fighting for a medal until the last game), and thirdly – due to fatigue. After an interesting encounter I managed to win the game due to my opponent’s mistakes in time trouble.

Game 2: Moranda – Bartel (0 – 1)

In this game, not for the first time in my life but for the first time in the tournament, I got a little lucky. Although I’d prepared well I didn’t have a good understanding of the nuances of the position, and after a strong manoeuvre (Bd2-c1-b2) my opponent was better. I then compounded that by losing my way and after 21.Bxd5 Wojtek had a much better position. Subsequently, however, I managed to escape by giving up the exchange, after which Wojtek started to play very inaccurately. We finally got an ending where I was down an exchange but had threatening pawns, and my opponent didn’t manage to find an effective defence. At the end there was a Rook + Bishop v Rook ending, but in a version where White was bound to lose.

Tablebases reveal that with perfect play White could have held the ending with Rook + h-pawn v. Rook + Bishop. His last chance was here, after 67...Bf4. 68.Rd8! was the only move to draw, while after 68.Kd1 Bartel didn't give Moranda any more chances.

Game 3: Bartel – Macieja (1/2 – 1/2)

This game didn’t go well for me – true, I surprised Bartek with the move 3.g3, after which he fell into a more or less 35(!)-minute think, but after that Black didn’t have any problems even for a moment, and I was actually the one who had to try and avoid defeat.

Game 4: Wojtaszek – Bartel (0 – 1)

Wojtaszek and Bartel in good spirits in the previous round | photo: Sylwia Rudolf

One of my best games at the Championship and one of the best of my life. I surprised Radek in the opening (he certainly didn’t expect the move 3…dxc4), but then he quickly showed that it’s hard to surprise him – I didn’t particularly know the plan of Ne2-g3 and then h4-h5. Luckily for me, Radek played 13.0-0 instead of 13.Qg4 and after 13…Qh4! it turned out that Black has the wind in his sails. After that Radek also played the unimpressive 17.Qa4 (17.Qf3 was better), and after 20.Nxd5 he ran into 20…Rf5!. At that point White’s position wasn’t yet lost, but it was worse and defending such a position, especially in time trouble, was very difficult. I played that game well and didn’t allow myself too many inaccuracies, so I also didn’t make Radek’s task any easier.

20...Rf5! here turned the tables - after any other move White is on top.

Game 5: Bartel – Mitoń (0-1)

By far my worst game at the tournament. The cause of the defeat was very simple – when I played 16.b4 I simply gave up a pawn, as I hadn’t seen that on the 17th move Black has the defence Bd4!. Although Black’s position wasn’t yet won by that point he already had an advantage. After that Kamil didn’t give me the slightest chance of complicating matters and claimed a deserved win.

Here Bartel had missed 17...Bd4! - the knight fork on e2 prevents White from winning a piece.

Game 6: Soćko – Bartel (0-1)

As with the game against Radek this was one of the best games of my life. I managed to play a positional piece sacrifice against a player I have very bad results against. It’s always nice to win such games and the effect wasn’t even spoiled by the fact that after the inaccurate manoeuvre Bd8-b6 White could have saved himself with 30.Qxh3.

Bartel decided to "punish" the risky 16.g4 with 16...Nfxe4!? 17.Bxe4 Nxe4 18.Rxe4 f5 19.gxf5 Bxf5. Computers still slightly prefer White, but Bartel was in his element!

Bartel gave a detailed commentary on this game at Chess-News (also available in Russian).

Game 7: Bartel – Bulski (1-0)

My opponent was in good form at the Polish Championship and confirmed that by how he played this game. Although initially in the opening he played the rather dubious 8…Ba3, for a long time after that he made the best moves. In typical fashion I got a bit carried away when I gave up two pawns, and after the strong 18…d3 and 19…d2 I was on the verge of defeat. The computer claims Black would have been close to a win if he’d played 22…Nd5, but during the game that wasn’t easy to find. Later Krzysiek strove for unnecessary simplifications and the result of that was an ending where I was better. Just when it seemed as though the game was going to be a long one Krzysiek played the suicidal 36…b5. After that White was within touching distance of a win and it was always getting closer. When the rook ending arose White should definitely win, although my opponent’s resignation was premature – I’d still have had to make a few precise moves.

Bartel's position is hanging by a thread. Here 22...Nd5! is the move that gives Black a clear edge. Bulski instead played 22...Bg6.

Game 8: Kempiński – Bartel (1/2 – 1/2)

I always slip from Robert’s grasp at the last moment. The grandmaster from Gdansk frequently gets a much better or won position against me, but with surprising regularity he then fails to win. On this occasion, in the spirit of a few previous games from the Polish Championship, I left a pawn en prise. The sacrifice was absolutely unnecessary and Robert ended up with an extra pawn. True, I had some kind of compensation on the light squares, but it was extremely elusive. If Robert had gone for 31.Nc2 I’d have been on thin ice. After the move in the game the situation was simplified and there was quite a smooth transition to a clearly drawn ending.

Game 9: Bartel – Markowski (1 – 0)

Recently I’ve had very good results against Tomek – perhaps chaos on the chessboard is a good method to use against the five-time Polish Champion? I decided to keep to that strategy and complicate play as far as possible. I played a very dubious opening and no doubt got a worse position. However, it only required a few inaccurate moves from Black and allowing White to play f4-f5 for White’s attack to become threatening all of a sudden. The climax of the game and the Championship was visually appealing – first giving up a piece on g6 for the attack, and then the decisive blow of giving up the exchange on b6.

Bartel finished a fine attack with 27.Rxb6! Rxb6 28.Bxd5+ Kh7 29.Qf5!. It's either mate or 29...Qxg6 loses the queen to 30.Bg8+.

Play-off: Bartel – Macieja (1 – 0)

As a 1-1 score would be enough for me (if the two 25-minute games proved indecisive Bartel’s better tiebreakers would give him the title – CiT) I could allow myself more freedom than my opponent. You could see that in the opening – Bartek knew more about the English Opening than I did and said himself that he knew a path to a drawn ending. However, he wanted to play for a win in the first game and that proved fatal. Although he had a good position, ultimately – due to time trouble – he went wrong. I then got an ending with a material edge. I didn’t convert it very convincingly, but I nevertheless managed to get the win, thanks to which the second game was unnecessary.

A tense final-round draw against Anton Korobov allowed Bartel to claim first place at the Aeroflot Open and a ticket to Dortmund | photo: RCF website

Let’s return to the Aeroflot Open, where your win against Fabiano Caruana had a worldwide resonance. How did it happen? Where did the brilliant Italian go wrong? Perhaps you were perfectly prepared for that opening?

I think Fabiano lost the game in his head. My unexpected draw offer on move 10, combined with my opponent rejecting it and immediately going on to make a number of poor moves, meant that the Italian rapidly found himself in an unpleasant situation. No doubt he wanted to beat me, but the situation on the chessboard quickly became “one-way traffic”. After that he faced an uphill struggle psychologically, and he didn’t cope with it – the result was a miniature, a painful loss. I think that’s the worst game Caruana’s played in the last couple of years.

Here Bartel played the quiet but lethal 22.Bg5!!. Caruana resigned, as it turns out there's no good way of dealing with the threat of Be7.

What do you think about Bartłomiej Macieja, the silver medallist?

Bartek was probably the greatest surprise of this Championship. Recently he’d seemed to be taking a more relaxed attitude to chess, but this Polish Championship really mattered to him. (Macieja may have been extra-motivated after criticism from some sections of the Polish chess community for recently playing – and doing well in – a series of relatively weak events in Central and South America. It was also suggested that lower-rated World Junior Champion Dariusz Świercz should have been chosen in his place for the Polish team at the European Team Championship – CiT)  He was decently prepared for the games and you could see the energy and will to win in his play. Of course Bartek got into his usual time trouble, but on this occasion it didn’t deprive him of a single point. His score of 7 out of 9 was absolutely deserved.

And Kamil Mitoń, the bronze medallist?

I’m glad Kamil ended up with a medal – after all, he’s one of our best players and he’d never stood on the podium before. He started badly with two draws, but after that Kamil won the next three games in a row, including against me. To be honest, he didn’t really give me a chance, although some of the guilt was mine as I simply handed him a pawn. At +3 Kamil played confidently and he added another plus without any great difficulty. Kamil can have some regrets about the game against Bartek Macieja – no doubt he could have squeezed more out of it. In that case he’d have been fighting for first place to the very end.

You’re still the editor-in-chief of the magazine “Mat”, so it seems that hasn’t got in the way of your success. Are you planning to stay in that role?

As I’ve already mentioned more than once I currently don’t have a lot of work to do at Mat – I’m mainly writing articles. The “dirty work” is done by Michał Rudolf. I’ve been trying to help him out but that doesn’t take me a lot of time, and certainly much less than it once did. As I love what I do I treat it as a hobby – so yes, I’ll remain the editor-in-chief of Mat.

What’s your assessment of the Polish Chess Federation board after three years in power?

It can’t be anything other than very positive. Of course, the Federation could and still can do more – that’s always the case. However, the leap that’s been made in the last three years is very significant. There’s still a lot to do and they can’t rest on their laurels, but the facts are indisputable – more and more serious companies are cooperating with the Federation, we’ve got good Polish Championships, the Federation has an impressive headquarters and they’re trying to help (teach) the regional federations to acquire sponsors. Next year we’re going to have the Men’s European Championship and the European Team Championship in Poland. Finally, we’ve got the Wojtaszek COMARCH Team (a project where the Polish-based global IT firm Comarch is sponsoring cooperation between Wojtaszek and some of Poland’s most promising young chess players – CiT). There’s a lot more that could be mentioned. I think even the results of our players – Darek Świercz’s World Championship, Radek finishing runner-up in Europe and seeing his rating jump, or my recent results are also partly down to those in charge and the good atmosphere they’ve created.

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov attended the closing ceremony and played chess against Tomasz Sielicki, President of the Polish Chess Federation, Deputy President of the ECU and a keen amateur player (Elo: 2011) | photo: Sylwia Rudolf

In your opinion, which Polish players have the greatest chance of reaching the so-called super-grandmaster level of 2700+?

I don’t want to talk about individuals. In actual fact, many players at grandmaster level are capable of making a leap. It all depends on whether someone’s willing to get down to working hard or not, and whether they’re able to draw conclusions from defeats, and so on.

What are your next chess plans? Are you going to concentrate only on the July super-tournament in Dortmund?

I’ll start thinking about Dortmund after the European Championship, which is going to take place soon in Bulgaria. Then I’ll also play a few games in the Polish and Czech Leagues and no doubt also in Lublin (although it’s not yet clear what the tournament format will be this year). (Last year Alexei Shirov won a strong 8-player round-robin tournament – CiT) And then Dortmund…

At what point in your life did you finally decide to devote yourself to chess?

I think the key was winning the Polish Championship in 2006. Towards the end of 2005 I wasn’t sure whether it was worth keeping playing chess. The success in the Polish Championship in Krakow motivated me first to take a break from my studies and then to undertake training sessions, as a result of which I jumped to 2600. After that there were a lot of ups and downs, and overall I stood still for a few years, but now I’ve made some progress. I hope it isn’t over yet.

Do you treat chess only as a sport, or is it also relaxation – occasionally playing games for fun with friends?

For me chess is a contest. So playing for fun doesn’t really interest me – yes, I can play with friends “to relax”, but always to win.

Which books would you recommend for someone trying to raise the level of their chess and improve? Do you have any general advice about playing technique that you could share with your fans?

There are so many books that you could recommend hundreds of them. It’s worth picking up Kasparov’s books – in general, they’re all wonderful. From the point of view of openings Marin and Avrukh are wonderful authors. You can’t forget about tactics either, but for that almost every book is good.

Do you still play on the internet?

Barely at all, of late. My desktop computer broke and I don’t want to connect mice to my laptop :)

What can we wish the new-old Polish Champion for 2012?

A Polish medal at the Olympiad in Istanbul. A medal for the men, to be more precise. (The Polish women’s team won silver medals at the 2011 European Team Championship in Greece – CiT)

In that case I wish you a medal at the Olympiad and thank you for the interview!

Standing out from the crowd... | photo: Sylwia Rudolf

Links:

• Interview above at Leszek Kropisz’s website (in Polish)
• Kropisz’s interview with Bartel after the 2011 Polish Championship (in Polish)
• Extensive interview with Bartel by Marek Cegliński for the Rzeczpospolita newspaper (in Polish)

Giri at Tata Steel Chess 2012 | photo: Fred Lucas

Anish Giri is currently the world’s most promising junior, but although he now represents the Netherlands he started his chess career in St. Petersburg, Russia. One of his first coaches, Asya Kovalyova, explains how a chess superpower let a prodigy slip through its grasp.

Although still only 17, Anish Giri has already won his first super-tournament and is a fixture in the list of 2700+ rated grandmasters. His only competition for the title of most-talented junior comes from Fabiano Caruana, who is nevertheless two years older. Giri is the son of a Nepalese father and Russian mother and grew up in St. Petersburg, where he was born on 28 June 1994. In 2002 his father took a job in Japan, with Giri eventually following him there, although the family would still regularly return to Russia. In 2008 they moved again, this time to the Netherlands, and Giri soon switched chess federations. Nevertheless, the language Giri speaks at home is Russian, and his first success in chess came in Russia.

Asya Kovalyova is a chess coach at Sports School No. 2 in the Kalininsky District of St. Petersburg (for more information see the Wikipedia article on the Soviet system of sports schools, and the school’s Russian homepage). In an interview with Sergei Lopatenok for www.online812.ru she describes her first impressions of Anish Giri and how a lack of money delayed his claiming the IM title.

How did Anish Giri end up at your school?

He came to us as a first-grader. He was brought along by a boy who lived in the same yard. That kid was talented, but a funny thing happened: he gave up chess when Anish started to do better than him. His grandmother just couldn’t understand how Anish had only just come along but was already beating her grandson, and she stopped bringing her grandson to the classes.

Did you recognise Anish’s talent quickly?

In the initial stages classes are held in groups, and of course you immediately pay attention to a kid if he raises his hand and is ready to answer your questions. In a couple of months it became clear the kid was talented, and in something like half a year I realised he wasn’t simply talented. He also had an extremely high intelligence. At one tournament Anish was given Karpov’s book “My Best Games: 100 Wins in 30 Years”, and a couple of days later he’d read the whole of it, although after all it wasn’t a work of fiction but an analysis of games. It was as if he’d photographed them and knew them by heart. An intellect of the very highest level.

Is that down to his parents or something he was born with?

It’s God-given. It’s something you can’t develop and you can only get with your genes. He was born like that.

Did his parents play chess?

His dad didn’t, I think, while his mum played, but the way everyone knows how to play in Russia, at an amateur level. Essentially she simply knew how the pieces move. But the parents supported their son’s interest, and that was their main task in the early stages.

The family lived in Japan for a certain length of time. In terms of chess was that time lost for the boy?

You could say that. First his father went, then his mum, for a while the boy stayed here with his grandmother, but then he also went. You could say he didn’t study for a year and a half. He tried to do something over the internet, but that’s not serious if you’re talking about professional training. There was a period when Anish needed to be kept in chess and inspired, and I think us coaches (Andrei Praslov also worked with him) can take some of the credit for saving him for chess.

What level did you get him to?

When he left us he had an IM rating. In order to complete the relevant paperwork we needed to pay FIDE – to transfer 17,000 roubles to Switzerland. [In 2007-8 that would have been about 700 USD – CiT] The director of our school took that upon himself. In a meeting with Chazov, at the time the head of the Sports Committee, he said we had a talented kid but couldn’t pay the fee and asked for help. Chazov wrote to the chess federation, although that’s a national organisation while we’re a municipal school. As often happens, the federation had its own problems at the time. It’s remarkable that the city didn’t manage to find 17,000 roubles. Chazov could, of course, have found it.

But couldn’t his parents have paid that 17,000 roubles?

The family was having a tough time financially – thousands of roubles was a lot of money for them. They had three children, after all. There were grants from the All-Russian Federation, but Anish didn’t get one. Perhaps they were more interested in Muscovites and had individuals they were promoting, but they didn’t help someone who really needed it. Then as soon as the family ended up in Holland the boy was immediately targeted. He moved in February, played his first tournament in April and then again and again, and in December he had a grandmaster norm. You need to invest in talent. They did everything for him there despite his having a Russian passport. He turned out to be in demand and plays exclusively in super-tournaments. Here, on the other hand, I heard a radio interview with Glukhovsky, the editor of the “64” chess magazine. He was talking about Giri and made it sound as though we’d failed to spot him in Russia. But how can you say we failed to spot him if we sent letters to Moscow to coaches who deal with juniors asking them to pay attention to our guy.

Giri with his sisters and Sopiko Guramishvili celebrating New Year 2012 in Reggio Emilia | photo: Martha Fierro, Accademia Internazionale di Scacchi

Do you have any contact with Anish and his family now?

We regularly exchange greetings, and I talk to his grandmother.

After becoming famous many sportsmen give their coaches flats and cars. Has it reached that stage for you?

There isn’t such crazy money in chess as in tennis or football. When you reach the level of World Championship matches then it’s a different matter.

And does a chess coach at a children’s sporting school earn as little as a school teacher?

It’s possibly a little better for us on account of a greater number of hours.

Do children still come to study chess?

The parents bring them. Of course in the USSR chess was treated with much greater respect and now children have far more options for expressing themselves and keeping themselves busy. But nevertheless, people still play chess, although it’s extremely rare to encounter a pupil like Anish.

Ilyumzhinov introduced chess as an obligatory school subject in Kalmykia. Have there been any such attempts in St. Petersburg?

A couple of schools have experimented, but that only lasted as long as they received support from the chess federation – above all, financial support. When that ended, and it became something the headmasters didn’t need, everything was shut down, although in the Kirov District there’s still one school that’s working on that.

• Interview at www.online812.ru (in Russian)

Ilyumzhinov | photo: Chess Moscow

In an interview with Sport Express, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has explained the decision to hold the next Candidates Tournament later this year in London. He also talks about plans for a new Men’s Grand Prix and the sale of the rights to the World Championship and other major events.

Yuri Vasiliev’s interview with Ilyumzhinov was published today and coincides with the signing of two contracts. One was with Irina Lebedeva, the General Director of the Tretyakov Art Gallery, which will be the venue for the Anand – Gelfand World Championship match (photos of the signing ceremony can be found at the Chess Moscow website). The other contract is more controversial, and involves FIDE granting the company “Agon” the rights to hold the World Championship matches, Candidates Tournaments and World Cups for the next few years. They will also be responsible for the Men’s Grand Prix, which Ilyumzhinov claims is about to make a comeback.

Agon is run by Andrew Paulson, an American businessman who’s worked in Russia since 1993. Ilyumzhinov told Vasiliev that Paulson first wrote to FIDE eight months ago offering to invest millions of dollars in chess. After long negotiations a contract was finally approved by FIDE at the recent Presidential Council in the United Arab Emirates (see ChessVibes for more details).

In the interview Ilyumzhinov notes the main advantage is that FIDE now has an organiser for all of the upcoming major events, and continues:

FIDE also has financial guarantees. So, for example, the Candidates Tournament will, as I announced in your newspaper, start in London on 23 October, and half a million dollars is already being transferred to FIDE’s account this week. For the running of the coming cycles FIDE should receive around 10-12 million euro. As well as that, FIDE will, as before, get the 20% cut of the prize fund and a percentage of the profits that the head of Agon is counting on making in the next four years.

Andrew Paulson | photo: Bloomberg Businessweek

It looks like “a rain of gold” for FIDE, but the American businessman probably didn’t just have business in mind when he said at the Presidential Council that he wanted to raise chess to new heights?

Yes, of course, we don’t live by bread alone! It was also impressive and pleasing that Agon’s budget for this year includes a significant sum for the promotion of chess.

It’s great that the Grand Prix series is returning! After all, chess fans were confused: first information appeared about it in FIDE’s plans for 2012, but then that disappeared without explanation. [As news editor at WhyChess I “broke” the story of the returning Men’s Grand Prix, though at the time the plans envisaged the first stage taking place in New York right now – CiT]

In the next one or two weeks chess fans and professionals will get a clear schedule for the major events – with a list of the cities, dates and size of the prize fund. By the way, the prize fund will be increased, the tournaments will become more appealing and we hope that all the best players will take part. This year we’ll start with Chelyabinsk and Tashkent, and next year Agon is planning to hold these prestigious events in major world capitals: Paris, Madrid, Vienna and Lisbon.

Could you give us some more detail on London? You told Sport Express that the Candidates Tournament would take place in the English capital from 23 October to 13 November. Is it being held using Azerbaijan money?

Yes, it is. The sponsor of the London Candidates Tournament will be Azerbaijan. By the way, long before the end of the Candidates Tournaments their representatives are going to announce that they’re planning to bid to hold the World Championship match in 2013.

Vasiliev here asks a long question (seemingly based on a slightly confused reading of Magnus Carlsen’s comments at ChessBase) about the dates for the Candidates Matches in London, noting that Carlsen is among those who’ve criticised the schedule and suggested holding the event in spring 2013.

FIDE chose precisely those dates for compelling reasons. As you’ll recall, due to various circumstances we had to move the Anand – Topalov World Championship match and the Candidates Tournament. As a result the cycle dragged on for years. We were heavily criticised for that, and Grandmaster Carlsen was one of the critics.

This year two stages of the Grand Prix will take place and next year we have to hold four, so we need to keep to the schedule. When it came to London there was an additional motivation: this outstanding chess event will take place immediately after the Summer Olympics. That will work to enhance the prestige of chess.

Are Andrew Paulson and his Agon only interested in men’s chess?

Initially Paulson and his team will only deal with men’s chess, but in the future they’re also planning a women’s Grand Prix and the Women’s World Championship.

Does FIDE still have some leverage for influencing the decisions taken by Agon? Something like the UN Security Council veto?

A kind of “interface” exists between FIDE and Agon – with two of their representatives and two of ours. If something doesn’t suit us we can block any decision. You can call that right a “veto”, if you like.

In conclusion, what about your favourite child – the “Chess in Schools” program? Are you making any progress with that?

Last year I visited something like a hundred countries and held talks with presidents, prime ministers and public figures. There was great interest in the initiative everywhere. I’m glad that representatives of big business also support FIDE. Today one of the biggest oil corporations worldwide will announce a contract with FIDE. We’ll receive a few million dollars for the development of the global “Chess in Schools” program and support for the chess movement on different continents.

The signing of the contract for the Anand-Gelfand match took place against a suitably artistic backdrop | photo: Chess Moscow

Interview in full at Sport Express (in Russian)

Averbakh was born in Russia in 1922. As a boy he saw Emanuel Lasker play, and he went on to be an eyewitness to almost the entire rise and fall of the famed Soviet School of Chess. Although overshadowed by some of his better-known contemporaries he was a talented player who won the formidable USSR Championship in 1954 and tied for first place with Mark Taimanov and Boris Spassky two years later (Taimanov won the playoff). A noted chess journalist, author and arbiter, he’s now focussed on the history of chess and other board games, where the range of his erudition is dazzling. The new interview includes fascinating examples stretching back 25 centuries and encompassing countries all around the globe.

What follows is a full translation of the Russian original at the Russian Chess Federation website. The photos of Averbakh are taken from the interview, as well as from the same site’s report on Averbakh’s 90th birthday celebrations.

Yuri Lvovich! First of all, we’d like to wish you a Happy Birthday!

Thank you.

It would be interesting to find out what you’ve been doing and what you’ve been taking an interest in.

At the moment I’m mainly studying the history of chess.  Actually, it’s more than that – the history of the intellectual games that existed before chess. Do you know the simple children’s game “noughts and crosses”?

Yes, of course.

But did you know it was already described by Ovid in Ancient Rome? He has a work entitled The Art of Love. There he writes that it’s essential to be able to play “noughts and crosses”.

But what’s that got to do with the art of love? Crosses are boys, noughts are girls?

Well, it’s about how to deal with a woman, that you need to play with her…

The crosses always win, in contrast to how things work in real life…

No, if you play correctly you get a draw. So it’s a very ancient game. I suspect the Greeks had it as well, and Plato claims that all the games known to the Ancient Greeks (that’s the fifth century BC) were taken from the Egyptians.

And the Egyptians are actually from outer space?

Hardly. The games arose out of necessity. I can tell you about a visit I once made to Nepal. Funnily enough, I ended up there by mistake: the Nepalese wanted to invite the Deputy Chairman of the Sports Committee, but someone mixed things up and invited the Deputy Chairman of the Chess Federation. While I was there I managed to get to know the King of Nepal – he arrived by helicopter and landed right in a stadium. They warned me at the time that locals were obliged to kiss his hand, but they said that as a foreigner if the king stretched out his hand to me I should shake it and not kiss it!

In Nepal chess is known as “wise move” – “buddhichal”: “baddha” or “buddhi” means “wise” and “chal” is move. As well as chess they also have their own national game which is known as baghchal, or “leap of the tiger”. They hold regular baghchal championships in Nepal. The game’s played by two people on a square board, and there are two kinds of pieces: on the one hand – 20 goats, while on the other – 4 tigers. The tigers can of course take the goats, while the goats only have the right to push or crowd out the tigers. Obviously that game reflects the real situations goatherders would encounter when their herds were attacked by tigers.

I actually gave a lecture on the topic of “Games and Real-Life Events”. I’ll give another example. In 1732 Carl Linnaeus made a trip, while still a student, to Lapland. That’s in the far north of Scandinavia, where Sweden, Finland, Norway and Karelia meet. It turned out that the Laplanders play an original game: in the centre of a square board which is 7 by 7, 9 by 9 or 11 by 11 (the number of squares must be odd so there’s a central square) stands the King of Sweden. Around him are 6 fair-haired Swedes, while on the edges of the board are the enemies, the Muscovites. What’s that about? Not long before that, in 1709, the Battle of Poltava took place. So it was a faithful reproduction of Poltava, after which the Swedish King had to flee to Turkey. He stayed there for 14 years, by the way.

Recently I gave a lecture in Germany where I talked about the discovery I made that a long time before the Laplanders a similar game was invented by the Britons, the Celtic tribes that lived in Britain. That occurred in the 5-6th century AD, when the isles were invaded by the Anglo-Saxons.

So such “chess-like” games, if I can put it like that, arose in different locations around the globe?

Yes. The Romans brought their games with them to Britain and the locals borrowed them and then passed them on to the Laplanders.

So it turns out that modern chess is a synthesis of many similar games?

Yes.

Or do the “Indian roots” nevertheless dominate?

There are various theories, and none of them has been fully proven. There’s a lot of speculation, of course. However, given that the game includes representations of elephants and chariots, which were features of the four-part Indian army (elephants, chariots, cavalry and infantry), it’s still probable that chess was born in India. [The Russian word for the chess bishop also means “elephant”, hence the Chess in Translation logo! – CiT] The Indians are absolutely convinced about it, although they have no direct evidence; not a single historian has fully managed to resolve that problem – there’s not enough data.

But you’re inclined to believe that theory?

Yes. There are people who think chess came from China, but the Chinese have different rules, and the main thing is that originally Chinese chess wasn’t a game. It was instead used to predict the outcome of battles, and a magnet was used as well as the pieces.

In general, the history of chess is interesting because it’s very closely interwoven with the history of humanity and the history of the development of human thought. In Iran I heard a saying that’s attributed to Ardashir I, the founder of the Sassanid Dynasty (the heyday of Ancient Iran): “I don’t understand a sultan who’s incapable of playing chess. How can he rule his kingdom?” And it really is true that in Iran chess was used to train young princes.

And do you know what the treasury was called in England until the 19th century?

No.

The Chamber of the Chessboard! [The English term Averbakh refers to, and which I use from here onwards, is the Exchequer, which is actually still in common use today. For instance, the UK government’s finances are the responsibility of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The etymology is from chess. “Shah” was Persian for king, “shah mat” was “the king is dead”, or now “check mate”. “Checked/chequered” began to describe not just the chessboard but the general pattern – CiT] William the Conqueror introduced a harsh system of taxes and created a special chamber for collecting taxes. The table on which the taxes were counted for wood, water and so on was covered by a black cloth divided into squares, which recalled a chessboard.

An Exchequer of Ireland was established in 1210, and is shown in this 15th-century illustration

The members of the chamber (they received the noble title of Barons of the Exchequer and had the right to include the board in their coat of arms) were known for their incorruptibility, and the taxes were probably gathered better than they are in Russia today. So the chessboard in the coat of arms was a symbol of integrity, while the process of collecting taxes itself was perceived as a battle between the treasury and the tax-payers.

And the treasury always won?

No, it varied… Another interesting fact: at the end of the 13th century the Italian monk Jacobus de Cessolis gave sermons where he compared the state to chess. He said: “In life, as on the chessboard, each piece has its own rights, but also obligations”.

Cessolis compared rooks with provincial governors, while he saw the pawns as the third estate, which included peasants, doctors and many more people, all the way down to crooks and gamblers. He considered chess to have been invented during the rule of the biblical tyrant Evil-Merodach, the son of the legendary Nebuchadnezzar: “While he was mowing down sages in Babylon left, right and centre and confusion reigned, the local nobility turned to the philosopher Xerxes with a request that he invent something to save the lives of the sages and princes and persuade the king to save the kingdom and rule it justly”. As you’ve no doubt guessed, the philosopher invented chess, and it calmed the tyrant’s temper.

So the educational significance of chess has long been known?

Yes, of course. In general, thinking people down the ages have, as a rule, been fond of chess. Napoleon loved it as well although he played very badly. Why? He was used to commanding hundreds of thousands of people and deciding the fate of whole countries – what were those small pieces to him? Of course he didn’t study chess, but it won’t just share its secrets with you without that! So Napoleon played badly, but he enjoyed the game and played it until the end of his life.

So it’s a paradox: Napoleon loved chess, but chess didn’t love him?

Yes, the title of my article on Napoleon was “Unrequited Love”. But did you know that Nicholas II was also fond of chess? In the chess museum in the Central Chess Club there’s a photograph of him playing. His cousins – the King of England and the German Chancellor – also loved chess. So what was the First World War? Three cousins organised a massacre in which ten million people died. There’s a “chess battle” for you…

Yuri Lvovich! It seems as though some unseen hand has guided you through life: you’ve probably visited every country with some relevance for chess?

Yes, that’s absolutely true! I’ve been to India three times, and I’ve been to a lot of other places as well.

But which country did you like most of all?

Italy. But I ended up there relatively late after I’d already travelled around half the globe – largely due to my knowledge of English. But do you know how I learned it?

When I finished school and enrolled in the Bauman Institute the question arose of which language to study. Our class consisted of 27 people and the overwhelming majority of them chose German (which I’d also studied in school, by the way). But I decided to go for English. It turned out there were only three of us for one teacher, and thanks to that we managed to learn the language quite well.

I was studying at the Thermal and Hydraulic Machinery Faculty in the Internal Combustion Engine Department. I studied engines and my thesis was on the Junkers diesel aircraft engine. If jet engines hadn’t been invented we’d still be flying diesel-engine planes, as diesel is cheaper and more economical. By the way, diesel engines have recently started to be installed in many luxury cars.

Anyway, it was even proposed that I could defend my thesis in English, but I decided there was no point showing off, as after all no-one would understand a thing.

Then I started working in a secret institute, where the administrative posts were occupied by generals and the director was the outstanding scientist Mstislav Keldysh. It turned out that knowing a language meant a 10% pay increase. My friend and I studied a little, took a paid exam and started to receive the increase. My work consisted of looking through English journals and selecting material which might be useful for us. As a result I very quickly began to earn 2500 roubles a month. When I switched to become a chess professional I was paid 1200 as an international master. It was only when I became a grandmaster that I started to get 2000 roubles.

On the other hand, it probably meant you had quite a lot of free time?

Yes, a whole new life had begun! After the thaw chess players started to travel abroad more often and unexpectedly it turned out that I had almost no competition. Previously it was obligatory for a head of delegation to travel with us along with a “plain-clothes art critic” [a KGB officer – CiT], who would often also be the interpreter. After the thaw the “art critics” ceased to travel. And among grandmasters themselves only three people knew a foreign language – Keres, Kotov and me. So if, for instance, the chess federation received an invitation from somewhere in the Far East the question would arise: who should they send? Keres felt he would earn more in Europe, and Kotov thought the same. But I liked travelling and would willingly go even to “exotic” countries. That’s how I visited India, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and lots of other places. So fate decreed!

But why did you like Italy in particular?

Because in Italy you can take a single step, and it’s a step across a thousand years. You move from Ancient Rome to Papal Rome, i.e. ten centuries all at once. In Italy you can enter some shabby little village and suddenly see a wonderful old cathedral with paintings and sculptures by the great artists of the Renaissance. That’s what makes Italy interesting.

Did you find any interesting documents there connected to Gioachino Greco and Stamma?

When I was working on Calabrese, or Greco, I was curious how a young man with no education, with a social position only slightly above a servant, could spend time with the cardinals in Rome and travel all around the world? He first set off for Nancy, to the Duke of Lorraine, then with a letter of recommendation from that Duke – to Paris, and from there – to London and then back to Paris, and then in the retinue of the future wife of Philip IV of Spain he travelled to Spain. From Spain he set off for South America, where he died at the age of around 30. I had the suspicion that Greco was an agent for the Jesuits. They had a rule that if one of their agents dies he leaves all his property to the Jesuits. Greco did precisely that – he bequeathed everything to the Jesuits. And I asked some Italian acquaintances: “Could you have a look in the Vatican archives and see if there’s any material there connected to Greco?” So far they haven’t been able to find anything, but they discovered a curious document which makes it possible to determine quite accurately when modern chess emerged.

The 1656 London edition of Greco's manual

In general, it’s thought that the modern rules were finally established in the 18th century, or even in the 19th century, because the Italians long preferred the so-called “free castling”. Now, however, we know when the bishop and queen became powerful pieces, because in shatranj they were weak. That happened in around 1470 – which was when the first book on modern chess was published.

It was written by a Spaniard named Francesc Vicent. The Spaniards called chess “de la dama”, or “the game of the lady”. But which lady? It’s been suggested that it might have been Joan of Arc. No, it couldn’t have been, as she wasn’t called a lady but a maid, as she was only a girl. It turns out that chess was named in honour of Isabella of Castile, the queen during whose reign Spain was unified and all the Muslim emirates were abolished. Moreover, Pope Alexander VI was a Spaniard, and his daughter Lucrezia Borgia had a chess teacher by the name of Francesco. There’s a real suspicion that it was that same Francesco who wrote the first book on modern chess. The second was written by Lucena, and the third by Damiano, from Portugal.

Vicent’s book was preserved in the Santa Maria de Montserrat Monastery (located in the Pyrenees, on the border between France and Spain); incidentally, I’ve been there. But either during the Napoleonic Wars, or later still when there was a fire in the library, the book was lost. It seems, however, that it’s recently been found; a book’s been published in Spain with the title “Vicent Returned”.

It’s interesting that according to those same rules the queen and king were of equal significance, and the loss of the queen was equivalent to the loss of the king. In 1996 Kasparov visited Spain for a live chess exhibition, where they staged a game described in one of the ancient books. During the exhibition Garry showed a simple combination: the bishop takes on f7 with check, then knight to e5 check, and the knight takes the bishop on g4. But the thing is that the move knight to e5 was impossible back then as the queen on d1 would have been en prise… It was only later that people reached the conclusion that the queen could be exchanged and even sacrificed. Those are the sort of unexpected details you discover.

And besides working on the archives what else do you like to do? Do you watch any TV programmes or films?

Not always, you know. In general I like to watch discussions, although sometimes they make an awful impression on me. Here’s what I’d say: in Russia people aren’t capable of discussing, unfortunately. They’re not capable! They all start speaking at the same time, interrupting each other. If one person is speaking then everyone else should be silent. Zhirinovsky, for example, doesn’t let anyone else get a word in edgewise. It’s just impolite!

At the moment the media is talking a great deal about meetings: on Bolotnaya Square, Sakharov Avenue… [Where rallies have been held protesting against the alleged falsification of the recent Russian elections – CiT] What’s your opinion on that?

Positive. I think you have to allow people to express themselves. The policy of establishing a strict hierarchy of government, which has been in place for the last 12 years, hasn’t done any good. It’s become something like an inversion of Soviet power.

During Soviet rule – you said in one of your interviews – there was a slogan: “chess is a political weapon”. What did that mean?

I’ll give you a simple example. In 1923, when the Chess Union was created, there were 3000 qualified chess players. Ten years later we had 500,000 chess players. Does that tell you something? Unquestionably.

Chess appeared in my home when I was three years old, so in 1925. That was obviously related to the Moscow International Tournament. I learned to play chess when I was seven, and was still interested in it when the Second Moscow Tournament took place in 1935.

Did you go to the tournament?

No, but in our class we held a Category 5 tournament, and I gained that qualification. I was very proud of myself and brought home the certificate, but my dad just looked at it, threw it down and said: “If only you were more disciplined”. I had problems with that… So my father only took me for a chess player when I became USSR Champion.

But why didn’t you go to the tournament in 1935? Did you really not want to take a look at Lasker and Capablanca? Or was it difficult to get in?

You have to understand that I wasn’t yet so fascinated by chess. But nevertheless, I did end up seeing Lasker. At the time I was living on Bolshoi Afanasievsky Lane off Arbat Street, while on Starokonyushensky Street next to the Austrian Embassy was the Komsomolets Building. Simultaneous displays were organised there for Lasker and Spielmann, and I went to watch how the champion of our school, Alik Prorvich (he later worked for Soviet Sport), got on against them. The first person I saw there was Isaac Linder, who arrived in a red shirt. Isaac recalls that although Lasker beat him, he was full of praise for him. So that was the first time I saw Lasker.

77 years later Isaac Linder (92), also still an active chess historian, helped celebrate Averbakh's 90th birthday

But the person who made the greatest impression on me was Nikolai Dmitrievich Grigoriev. Back then I was looking for a place I could play chess, and went to the Ministry of Justice Club, which was located on the corner of Ilinka Street and Bolshoi Cherkassy Lane. By the way, that was where I first saw the People’s Commissar for Justice Nikolai Krylenko. I was stunned by his large, totally bald head, and also by his red eyes. It was only later that I realised he was systematically sleep-deprived as they were preparing all those political trials… Anyway, Grigoriev gave a lecture in the club, showing some of his famous pawn studies. They made an enormous impression on me, and that was the first time I sensed that chess wasn’t simply a game but was something more, that it was an art. And I also had the urge to master that field. That’s how I got involved in chess. My first success was a win in a simultaneous display against Alik Prorvich!

Back then I was still keen on volleyball. We had a very good gym and wonderful coaches. I was quite a decent volleyball player, a candidate for the Moscow team. Strange as it sounds, I wasn’t tall enough; I started to grow only when I’d already stopped playing volleyball.  Just for curiosity’s sake I can tell you: when I started to play I was four centimetres short of the necessary height. In ninth grade my height was 1.69 m, but in the tenth – 1.82. I’d grown 13 centimetres in a year! I’d even faint at times as my heart couldn’t handle the strain. I grew until I was 25 years old, though in first grade I’d been the shortest in the class.

Yury Lvovich, you studied chess at the Young Pioneers Stadium, didn’t you?

I barely studied at the stadium and simply played there at a Category 3 tournament. My opponents were Tolush, Kotov and Chistyakov, while Linder took first place. Isaac is two years older than me. He was born in 1920 and back then he was undoubtedly stronger.

At one point the trainer at the Stadium was Yudovich, but then he moved to the Pioneers Palace. I also moved; besides, it was easier for me to get there. In order to reach the stadium I had to cross Arbat Street, get on a tram at Smolensk Square which ran along Garden Ring and then turned left to the Belorussky Rail Terminal. The journey took at least an hour. But just then they’d opened the first metro line, “the red branch” as it’s known today, and it became very convenient for me to travel to the Palace.

"Master Averbakh"

In team events I initially played on the third board for the Palace. I no longer remember who was first, but second was Vitya Khenkin. Then gradually I became the first. And when it was being decided in 1938 who should travel to the USSR School Championship they sent me. Everyone else there had Category 3, while I had the right to play in Category 2 tournaments. There was a story behind that. I was playing in a tournament with a Category 2 norm, I had 6.5/9, and suddenly it was decided that schoolchildren shouldn’t play against adults, and I didn’t finish that tournament. In order to get Category 2 you had to play a minimum of ten games. So they didn’t award me the category but just gave me the right to play in Category 2 tournaments, although I still couldn’t use that as there simply weren’t any Category 2 tournaments for children…

But thanks to that (I was the only schoolchild who had such a right) I travelled to the USSR Youth Championship, and on the basis of my results I was immediately awarded Category 1. So I’d actually jumped one step, immediately becoming a first-category player. At the time it was a great honour. I recall one of the first-category players saying: “Has it come to this? Guys like that (your humble servant) are getting the first category!” But a year later I took first place in the adult quarterfinals in Moscow. Then I finished first in the semifinal and immediately got into the final. True, I finished second from last, but the person who finished last was the one who’d made such unflattering comments about me.

And besides volleyball and chess it seems you also boxed?

I only boxed for a year; I can explain why. When collectivisation began in 1929 a huge number of children and adolescents immediately appeared in our yard because, to put it bluntly, the whole Moscow region rushed from the countryside to the city. In our yard there was a club which was turned into a dormitory for workers. It was a real rabble, where a cult of strength reigned. Therefore if you wanted to be equal in the yard you had to be able to give as good as you got. That’s why I took up boxing for a year.

How do you keep yourself in shape now?

In no way at all of late, unfortunately. I swam until very recently, having gone to the swimming pool from 1964 to 1996. The thing is, however, that they fitted a pacemaker and told me I mustn’t wave my arms around. And it’s also somehow become hard to get up early. Unfortunately, therefore, I still haven’t adapted. But I think I will adapt.

Do you continue to engage in social and educational activities?

I’ve always maintained relations with the Institute (and now Academy) of Physical Culture and given lectures there, while recently we established a chess faculty, strangely enough, in the Construction Institute. We’re also trying to make that into a chess centre. And we’ve also set up a scientific and technical library. The authorities were very sympathetic towards us.

Soviet players at the famous 1953 Candidates Tournament (from left to right): Tigran Petrosian, Alexander Kotov, Paul Keres, Yuri Averbakh and Efim Geller

The Anand-Gelfand World Championship match is taking place in May in Moscow. Are you going to follow it?

Yes, of course. Moreover, we’re planning to hold a seminar for historians in the library during the match, where we’re going to say something about chess history. The thing is that just now a great number of chess books are being published but, unfortunately, from the historical point of view they’re becoming worse and worse. For example, one book which was recently published by a serious publisher gives Dilaram’s mate, but Dilaram is unexpectedly transformed from a woman into a man! And there are plenty of such idiocies, unfortunately…

In general, I think history has its subtleties. First and foremost, all my experience tells me that in history two times two never equals four. It can be anything else whatsoever, but not four! And besides, history is written by the victors, and the defeated are always guilty. For example, we’ve all heard that Richard III was a hunchback and murderer. In actual fact, he wasn’t a hunchback. At the time there was a struggle for power between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. York won and, of course, they described all the events from their point of view. Another well-known story is of Mozart and Salieri. But Salieri didn’t poison Mozart! Moreover, Mozart’s children were taught by Salieri. However, as brilliant an artist as Pushkin pilloried the poor guy… [Pushkin’s “little tragedy” was popularised in the West by the film Amadeus – CiT]

Or here’s another interesting example from Russian history – Vladimir the Great. Why is he famous? For the Christianisation of Rus’. And his son, Yaroslav the Wise, is mainly famous for his daughter marrying the French king. But that out of the five children of Yaroslav the Wise all of the sons became kings while the daughters married kings – for some reason no-one knows about that. Why? Because in the Tale of Bygone Years, where Yaroslav and Vladimir are described, Vladimir is good – he converted Russia, while Yaroslav isn’t, because he relied on the Vikings and they had a great influence in Novgorod during his reign. So Yaroslav is very “bad”. But that’s not true at all. Yaroslav produced “Russian Truth”, one of the first legal works in Rus’. So the history of states is a history of a constant struggle for power. It was precisely such a battle that led to the invention of a game – chess. With its help people learned to fight and to defend.

Why did the Indians invent their game? Because in the first centuries AD a flood of savages from Central Asia rushed through the passes in the Hindu Kush to reach northern India. They had to learn how to fight off the attacks. The result was the emergence of chess. However, we still stick to the opinion that Central Asia was comparable in cultural terms with India. In actual fact, they were wild tribes who had only one idea – plunder and conquest.

Man didn’t immediately become a thinking being. First he was, in essence, an animal in human form. Do you know how Genghis Kahn fought? He placed his prisoners in front of his armies so people couldn’t fire at them. The times were different… Rus’ became an obstacle on the Mongols’ path; it came under the yoke but it saved Europe. I recall how at one point the Mongols wanted to hold very widespread celebrations for the anniversary of Genghis Kahn. A special decree was passed by the Central Committee of the Mongolian Communist Party about how great he was – he united the Mongolian tribes. But when the cattlemen united their pastures were no longer sufficient and they had to seize those of others… In general, people somehow managed to convince the Mongolians that the celebrations shouldn’t be held on quite such a large scale.

A historian shouldn’t be guided by the present day, but should try to take a very human look at things. In that way many events are perceived entirely differently. Do you understand?

Yuri Lvovich, did you ever discuss historical topics with Garry Kasparov?

I did, but I told him I didn’t support the New Chronology. I’ll explain why. Firstly, history isn’t arithmetic. History was written by monarchs; they relied on some source and tried to imitate the Greeks, or the Romans. It was no accident, after all, that Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives. He would take one Greek and one Roman and compare them. The monarchs would simply lie more in one place, or less in another, and you need to accept that calmly. The second point is that it’s one thing to recall what happened yesterday, but something else entirely when you recall what happened 50 years ago. Naturally you perceive things completely differently. In actual fact, Russian history contains an awful lot of lying, and that’s to put it mildly.

For example, the story about Ivan Susanin and the famous Life for a Tsar… Susanin was the tutor of Michael, who would be chosen as tsar only a year after the downfall of Susanin. Could a simple peasant have known about that, a year before Michael was put on the throne? Of course not.  It was simply a normal human reaction not to want to allow the looting of his master’s estate. In the history textbook my mother learned from it was written that a band of either Poles or Cossacks was roaming the eastern part of Rus’ looking for landed estates to plunder. And Susanin led them away from that place. The “Life for a Tsar” that ensued is simply a lie. So that’s how it is. I think a historian should be sceptical. He should check something a hundred times before saying it.

I’d like once more to repeat my thought that overall the history of chess is very closely entwined with the history of the development of human thought. That’s what makes it interesting.

The world's oldest grandmaster with some younger players at Moscow's Central Chess Club

• Interview at the Russian Chess Federation website (in Russian)

The literary content of the interview is no doubt partly due to the interviewer, Yarina Senchishin, who describes herself elsewhere as “poet, translator and FIDE master”. She introduces the interview at “Den” (Day) by explaining how she knows Ivanchuk:

Vassily Ivanchuk and I met in front of the Taras Shevchenko statue in Lviv and went to one of the cafes close to the market square. We’re old friends who’ve known each other since the second half of the 1980s. We met when we were both seventeen and played in the same team, achieving our first chess successes. Even back then no-one had any doubt that Vassily was going to have a brilliant chess future. One of the world’s best chess players, when you talk to him he’s emotional, unpredictable and not given to saying too much. Therefore I had to try and get Vassily talking. Here’s what came of that.

On modern chess

Vassily, what, in your opinion, is modern chess? You started playing when the old regulations were still in force and games were adjourned. Now it’s all very different.

In regard to adjournments I think I was very lucky, because that helped me to improve my chess analysis skills. If games were adjourned nowadays people would undoubtedly use chess programs for the analysis. On the other hand, when I sit down to play a game now I know it’ll be over after a certain number of hours. What the result will be is another matter, but we’ll finish the game and there won’t be an adjourned position “hanging” over me.

Is it possible to play chess at quite a high level today without using computers?

It all depends on how you use them. If you don’t use computers for the work at all, then it’s unlikely you’ll achieve great results. But if you use them too much or unskilfully, then that can also do serious harm.

Now that there are very powerful chess programs is there still room for human creativity? Do you still produce new ideas in the openings?

Of course, I’ve been doing that all my life.

On literature

Have you ever thought: “If I hadn’t taken up chess what else would I have done?”

Perhaps some kind of scientific activity, or else I could have become a writer. I like writing.

That’s an area where it’s still perfectly possible for you to fulfil yourself. We still don’t, after all, have a good chess novel in Ukrainian literature.

And there aren’t many in world literature either.

But why? There’s Nabokov, for example. Have you read “The Luzhin Defence”?

A very poor novel. I didn’t like it. But the “pearl” is, of course, “Marabou” by Kuprin. In those six pages chess players are represented in an unimaginably unappealing light. An anti-advert for chess. [You can read “Marabou” here]

I also didn’t particularly like Nabokov’s novel, although his style is wonderful. I constantly had the feeling that the author wasn’t an active player and the situations he described seemed artificial.

Yes, perhaps Stefan Zweig’s “Chess” novella is more or less ok. There are decent films about chess – “Grandmaster”, “Queen Sacrifice” about Mikhail Tal, “White Snow of Russia” about Alexander Alekhine… I read a lot. I can read anything. Sometimes it depends on my mood. It wasn’t long ago at all that I read about the philosophy of Epicurus. I want to read about the history of the origins of different religions. I’m interested in philosophy, history and also fiction. Out of modern literature I recently read books by Iren Rozdobudko, Natalka Sniadanko and Maria Matios. I liked Rozdobudko’s works the most. Among the classics I like the work of Mikhaylo Kotsyubinsky and Olga Kobylanska. I recently reread “The Land” and other works. I liked them. It’s not a straightforward style of writing to take in, but you can feel the inner depth.

Where do you get the books you read: from your home library or do you visit book shops?

I’ve got a big library at home, but sometimes I drop into shops. There I can choose a book based on the advice of acquaintances or listen to the advice of the book sellers. Sometimes I exchange books with colleagues at tournaments. Almost every chess player brings books to tournaments and sometimes they recommend them to colleagues/rivals. For example, Grandmaster Alexei Shirov gave me “Norwegian Wood” by Murakami to read, while Grandmaster Kramnik gave me “Time Regained” by Marcel Proust. Sometimes the “vice versa” principle operates. I remember when my coach was still Mikhail Nekrasov and we once talked about literature and he told me: “Don’t read Hugo. He’s a very boring author”. The first thing I did when I returned to Lviv was to find the works of Hugo. I read and enjoyed them.

Did you read “Les Misérables”?

Yes. In Russian translation. And also “The Last Day of a Condemned Man”.

And did your and, as it happens, also my former trainer, Vladimir Stepanovich Buturin, recommend anything for you to read?

Yes, he did of course, and he talked a lot about history and geography. He was a very intelligent man.

Chess is often described as a model of life. Do you agree with that thought? If yes, then has chess helped you to find a solution to real life situations?

It’s an obvious fact that many people don’t play chess and there’s no reason to assume that someone who doesn’t play chess is somehow deprived. On the contrary, perhaps doing some other activity allows them to achieve a higher level of development. Chess players of course have their own particular world view, although it also depends on the person as you can’t say that all players perceive the world in the same way. There are certain qualities, however, both positive and negative, that are inherent to chess players.

For example?

I’d say that for a top-level chess player sincerity and openness are negative qualities.

But why in particular for a top-level chess player?

Because sincerity can work against a chess player when he blurts out some important information.

Nobody said you had to use your hand... | photo: Fred Lucas

On school

You look back with some nostalgia when you recall your school. Did you have any favourite subjects?

I didn’t so much like subjects as teachers. I remember my Ukrainian teacher very well – Gikavets Miroslava Dmitrievna. I still remember much of what she talked about. By the way, she once told me: “I’m amazed you’re capable of playing such a serious game as chess, as you’re a born clown”. In some ways she was right.

What’s your attitude to the idea of introducing chess lessons into schools? Is that a possible means of intellectualising the nation?

Chess can have a place in schools, of course, but exclusively as an elective subject. Why torture children with chess if they don’t like it? Those children who like it, on the other hand, should go to chess clubs. By the way, since the second half of December 2011 the Vassily Ivanchuk Chess School has been operating in Lviv. Children are going to study there from the age of five.

You don’t think it’s worth studying chess like mathematics or literature?

In general our school syllabus isn’t well thought out. For example, I remember my own school years. All those logarithms and integrals… Why did we study all of that? Of course, for the children who took an interest in maths it was necessary, but how many such children were there in the class? They could easily have studied all that in clubs. When the school syllabus is being established they should take into account what to offer all the pupils, and what should be individual or at least for those interested.

On happiness and success

In order to maintain your form do you work every day or do you give yourself longer breaks?

I study chess when I want to, because when I don’t want to the proportion of useful activity is low. When your head’s working well you can do a great deal in a short period of time.

Professional success and happiness – are they mutually compatible?

Here’s what I’d say. Take Julius Caesar. Not a stupid man. When Julius Caesar was asked what he considered the greatest happiness in life, he replied – freedom of choice. I can’t say I’m 100% in agreement with that thought. Moreover, for the majority of humanity freedom of choice in difficult situations can hardly be considered happiness. It gives rise to doubts, and if you take the wrong decision – to serious disappointment, but every hour, every minute, we make a choice, taking decisions that are more or less important. It’s a process that continues all the time.

Happiness is freedom of choice? | photo: Fred Lucas

Do you remember the moment when you clearly realised: “That’s it! I’ll do chess and nothing else?”

I can’t recall it because there never was such a moment. I simply work on chess and continue to work on it, without posing such questions.

So chess is the natural sphere of your existence?

Yes. It’s something I’ve played and something I’ve achieved success in. I continue to play and it’s natural for me. It’s like a centipede. If it thought about how to place its feet it would be difficult for it to move, but instead it just moves, and everything works out well for it.

On public fame

Do you watch television?

Barely at all.

Do you follow news on the internet?

I still sometimes read chess news, but it’s very rare for me to read general news.

Where do you get your information about what’s happening around you?

I talk to people. If I’m interested in something I can ask those who know more about it: “Please tell me what’s going on”. Then I draw my own conclusions. Sometimes when I’m interested in something in particular I can go onto the internet and look, but I don’t read everything at once.

Do people recognise you on the street?

They don’t recognise me that often. I’ll tell you a story. I was once travelling in a train from Kiev to Lviv. Apart from me there were three other people in the compartment. Overnight, of course, they didn’t recognise me. And then in the morning one of them went somewhere, and when he returned he started to talk excitedly: “You know what a celebrity’s travelling with us? Vasyl Virastuk himself!” And they ran to have a look at him. They called me as well, but I said no. They were really amazed by that.

• Interview at “Den” (in Russian)
• All the photos above are the work of Fred Lucas from this year’s Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk aan Zee

The original article in Russian can be found at the RCF website.

Anatoly Karpov

Spassky is a genius of a chess player. He was and is a part of the great history of chess. He trained himself and his character, because at one point he was impressionable and emotional, which prevented him from achieving victories. But he worked on himself and was able to change, to become World Champion. His matches against Petrosian and Fischer have of course become part of the treasury of chess history. I know he’s had health problems and I wish Boris Vasilievich a quick recovery of the old strength he always had. I also hope he can continue to promote chess actively and come to visit us often in Russia!

Vladimir Kramnik

I want to congratulate Boris Vasilievich on his birthday and to wish him, above all, good health! He’s had a difficult time in the last couple of years but it seems the situation has stabilised and things are on the mend. I’d like Spassky to return to active chess life as soon as possible, especially as that’s something he really wants himself. He’s a sociable man and loves meeting different people.

Today I don’t want to speak about him as a chess player – plenty’s been said about that, including in the long interview I devoted to the World Champions. I’d like to speak about him as a personality. For me, the main lesson of his life is that Spassky always acted in accordance with his own convictions. It seems to me that he lives in harmony with himself.

Boris Vasilievich never flirted with the authorities. He never settled for awkward compromises. When the Soviet system collapsed many people had a favourite excuse: “That’s just how the times were. What could we have done?” Those people joined the party at the first possible moment, then left it at the first chance they got, they informed to government agencies… They say: “We’re not to blame, that’s what the times were like!” I really don’t like that, as I think a person always has a choice. Spassky, as well as Tal, prove that really was the case. Adapting to the “rules of the game” imposed by the times is the fate of weak and calculating people. Always remaining true to himself is, in my view, one of the main personal achievements of Boris Vasilievich.

Spassky is now living in the Parisian suburbs, while I’m in the city itself. Of course, we sometimes talk on the phone and I’ve visited him at home a few times. Boris Vasilievich was at my wedding, for which I’m very grateful to him.

In 2001 or 2002 on the way to the tournament in Monaco I spent a few days with him at his dacha near Grenoble. The nature there is fantastic: the air is pure and there are wild boars running about! Each day we went for a long walk. I was really amazed at Boris Vasilievich’s physical condition back them: he was something like 65 but could walk around for 3-4 hours, and at a good pace. Frankly, after such walks I felt pretty tired, but Boris Vasilievich urged me: “Come on, maybe we can do another circuit!” That was quite a decent circuit, a couple of kilometres. He told me a lot of stories. In general, he was a wonderful story-teller. About Mikhail Moiseevich [Botvinnik] and other chess legends. In the evenings we’d dine together with his wife, always over wine. But the food was in the Russian style – baked potatoes, something else, and the conversation continued.

He showed me his office, his old journals. I dug around in his chess library – it was incredibly interesting. We had a great time! We even went to play tennis a couple of times.

I think everything will be ok and Boris Vasilievich will recover, because overall his health is very good, herculean. The main thing is that he doesn’t lose heart and believes that he’ll soon be back among society.

Of course, I want to personally congratulate Boris Vasilievich, so I’ll phone him now and, I hope, I’ll be able to see him soon!

Spassky analyses with Kasparov and Larsen in Tilburg 1981

Garry Kasparov

Boris Spassky was my first chess idol. 1969, when I started to play chess, was precisely when he became World Champion, and my dad supported him. The “Petrosian – Spassky: 1969” match collection was my first chess book. And years later, on the foothills of Olympus, it was precisely under the influence of Spassky’s games that as Black I armed myself with the Tarrasch Defence and the Tartakower-Makogonov-Bondarevsky System.

At the time Boris Vasilievich gave me, a young man, valuable chess advice, and always had a friendly attitude towards me. As my elder he didn’t call me anything other than “Akimych”. His wit was the stuff of legends. In 1985 he christened the FIDE President “Karpomanes”, while in 1986 at the Olympiad in Dubai, when I started to fight for chess democracy and was busy creating the GMA, he instructed me: “Chess, Akimych, is a monarchist game…”. It’s a pity Spassky still hasn’t got round to writing a book – there’s a lot that he could tell.

While congratulating you, dear Boris Vasilievich, on your glorious anniversary, I want to wish you the quickest possible recovery. And please continue to delight us with your brilliant aphorisms!

How many chess legends can you recognise?

Acknowledgements (as given at the Russian Chess Federation website):

Photographs: Lev Poletaev (www.e3e5.com), Vladimir Barsky, ITAR-TASS, www.kramnik.com, Garry Kasparov’s archive, www.chessbase.com
Material prepared by: Eteri Kublasvili, Vladimir Barsky and Dmitry Plisetsky

Kirill Zangalis states that the interview, published today by the Soviet Sport newspaper, was actually conducted by him in Moscow in September 2010, shortly before Spassky suffered a stroke. The grandmaster’s recovery meant the text of the interview, which took place outdoors in warm autumn weather, was only approved in recent days. The photos, unless indicated, are taken from the “Congratulations to Boris Spassky on his 75th Anniversary” at the FIDE website.

I don’t like Moscow. It’s a difficult city. What linked me to it was the “Chess Week” newspaper. That was intended for the provinces and children and had a circulation of around 20,000 copies. I was the editor-in-chief for one and a half years. It suffered from a lack of money and at some point everything fell apart. And now I mainly only come to the capital on business…

You correctly noted that the best times for chess are behind us. I think the golden age came to an end somewhere in the late 1960s, which corresponded to the peak of my career. At the time everyone knew Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Tal, Petrosian, Bronstein, Geller, Korchnoi, Stein, Polugaevsky and a few others.

Spassky - Larsen at the USSR vs. World match in 1970 | photo: ChessBase

In 1970 the so-called Match of the Century took place in Belgrade: the USSR team vs. the Rest of the World. All the great grandmasters were present at that match. We should have been at least about six points better, but we almost lost. Our team wasn’t unified team because the board order was decided by the USSR Sports Committee. I decided not to engage in an argument with such authority – I recalled the history of the powerful Persian King Darius III, who once, on surveying his 100,000-man army complete with powerful battle elephants, each of which in contemporary terms would be equivalent to an intercontinental missile, wept.

“What’s wrong, your highness?” someone close to him asked.
“I was imagining that in a few decades nothing will remain of this power. My soldiers and I will all have grown old.”

I experienced something like that myself, as the leader of the Soviet chess armada.

Boris Vasilievich, is it true that you almost died from hunger in an orphanage?

That happened too. In the summer of 1941 I was evacuated from the besieged Leningrad with my older brother Georgy, to the village of Korshik. That’s 50 kilometres from Vyatka. We were incredibly lucky as we slipped out in the second group: the first and third were bombed.

Your parents died?

No, miraculously they survived. My dad was a soldier. My mum buried my grandmother and survived only because she inherited her ration card. My father was on the verge of death from starvation and even ended up on the death ward. You’ll never guess how my mother saved my dad: she sold all her things and bought a bottle of alcohol. She arrived in the ward and started to look for him among dozens of people, but he’d lost so much weight that she didn’t even recognise him.  My father was stern despite his weakness and shouted at her: don’t you recognise your own husband? After that he drank the whole bottle and got up. A miracle? No, they say vodka has calories. The moment my father recovered they immediately travelled to our orphanage, when I was dying from hunger. My parents took my brother and me to the outskirts of Moscow where we lived until the summer of 1946.

How did you learn to play chess?

In the orphanage I learned the rules of the game while watching the older children playing. One evening, when there was no-one there, I took away an outside pawn and used the rook to eat up the whole white army.

In 1946 you returned with your family to your native Leningrad…

Yes, and a couple of months later I was in thrall to chess. Once, on the Kirov Islands in the Central Park of Culture and Rest, I accidentally came across a glass-enclosed veranda, which had a black knight on the front. It was a sunny day and the wind was rustling the leaves of the birch trees. It seemed as though there was nothing particular to catch the imagination of a child, but I saw a fairy-tale world.  And it captivated me. Behind the glass there were tables, on the tables were boards, and on the boards were pieces. I lost my sense of reality. Each morning I’d rush to the park.

You were only on the chess throne for three years, or one cycle…

You can’t imagine what a relief it was when I ceased to be World Champion. Those were the very toughest years of my life, when responsibility pressed on me and I didn’t get any outside help. I was the king and I had to answer for every word.

The moment I became the Champion my trainer, the Don Cossack Bondarevsky, told me: “Now you can arrange your own life: enter the party, become the editor-in-chief of “64” (Petrosian was the editor), travel to the Damansky Peninsula and take up some social activity. “No, vater, that’s not for me”. “Well, you’ll see for yourself”. (I called my trainer “vater”.)

You made it into the Candidates very early on, buy you only won your match in 1969.

Yes, at age 19 in 1956 I played in the Candidates Tournament. It was obvious that sooner or later I’d become World Champion, but it was sooner said than done. “You’ll suffer from girls”, said my trainer Alexander Kazimirovich Tolush. And he was right. The first time I got married was early on, at 22. Almost immediately I realised that my wife and I were opposite-coloured bishops. Military actions commenced. I ended up in hospital because of nerves. I was saved by Mikhail Yurevich Cherkes, the manager of the Moscow railway. He provided me with a one-bedroom flat while my militant wife moved into my socialist mansion. That was how we split up, and it was the green light for the chess throne.

When did you sense it was time to storm the heights?

It was in 1963 at the match between the teams of Hungary and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in Ordzonikidze. At the time I told my trainer: “Vater, perhaps I should become World Champion?” – “Ok, let’s do it!”. That was how our work began. I remember all my trainers with great reverence and respect. Vladimir Zak gave me a weapon, Alexander Tolush sharpened it, Bondarevsky hardened it. With that weapon I became World Champion. But that took six years of fierce struggle against Petrosian.

People say you weren’t particularly hard-working?

I played my systems and didn’t particular like to learn new ones. I relied on my skill in the middlegame. By the way, it was the same for Capablanca. Overall, of course, I knew the openings badly, but in my own systems I felt confident.

But after all without openings you can’t make progress, it’s the ABC of chess!

That’s nowadays. At the time I quickly got my bearings in any position. I’d find a plan and my main strength was that I had a good feel for the critical moment. If you’ve got that talent you have the ability to find the only correct path in a critical position. By that I mean not only an individual move, but a whole concept based on calculation and an evaluation of the variations you’ve analysed. That’s a talent that even the World Champions haven’t always possessed.

So why didn’t you manage to overhaul the iron Tigran Petrosian in the first match?

I came into the match against Tigran Petrosian completely exhausted after getting through 98 difficult qualifying games. During the final stages there were bloody matches against Keres, Geller and Tal. The most difficult match was against Keres, which turned into a street brawl. Geller was relatively weak in defence and I only needed to attack him at all costs. I didn’t allow Tal to seize the initiative. That approach brought me success. However, in order to beat Petrosian I needed something new. It’s very important to be imbued with a sense of the inevitability of your own victory. Your opponent senses that. But for that you need to have spirit and matter in harmony. In my case I was a poor student, unsettled and very far from higher thoughts. In the first match I flung myself at Petrosian like a kitten at a tiger, and it was easy for him to parry my blows. But by the second I’d matured and turned into a bear that was always putting the tiger under pressure, by which I mean I held him in a grip that even if it was loose was constant, and he didn’t like that.

How did you manage to withstand such pressure?

I restored my strength through sleep. Sometimes I’d sleep for ten hours a day. Of course, it also helped that I did sport. In my student years I did the high jump – my usual result was 175 cm. Later tennis became my faithful assistant.

Could Petrosian have held on in the second match?

It seemed to me that Petrosian was mentally tired of being the Champion. After all, he held the crown for six years without being the strongest player. That was evident from his tournament results. Perhaps that had a certain effect on him.

Finally, a quick story. After the 17th game (I think that was the decisive one) there was a terrible knocking on the door of my Khrushchev-era flat, and then an unknown voice with an accent said: “Listen, Boris, don’t you dare beat our Tigran!” “I’ll be sure to beat him”. Strangely enough, my reply calmed the rabid fan down.

There are legends about your relationship with the World Champion Robert Fischer.

I was friends with Bobby. He was an unusual man. I saw him for the first time in 1958, when he was 14, and liked him immediately. I got to know him better in 1960 at the tournament in Mar del Plata. Fischer was an absolutely unsocial man, an alien.

During the match in 1972 you were enemies?

Of course, but only during the struggle. We always had great respect for each other.

You won the first game easily, but Fischer made a point of not appearing for the second. You could have retained your title and left.

I could. And I was advised to do that. I’ve even heard criticism that I played that match for money. As World Champion I considered I was obliged to play the match. I had to play and there was no point in thinking about anything else. Victory brought me inner balance. The loss – clarity and financial compensation.

Why did Fischer win?

From a chess point of view Fischer was already stronger than me. His time had come. But in that particular match he put himself in quite a tough psychological situation. His conflict with the producers, his haggling with the Icelandic organisers to get paid box-office receipts, his fear of sitting at the board as after all up until that moment Bobby hadn’t won a single game against me and I was leading with a 4:0 score – all of that left him in a state of extreme uncertainty. But nevertheless, at the decisive moment, when the third game was supposed to take place, I made a serious psychological error: during an argument with the chief arbiter for the match, Grandmaster Schmid, Bobby behaved quite badly. I should have made a show of getting up and refusing to play – I’d have resigned that game and got a zero, but at the same time I’d have preserved my nerves. In that case Bobby would have got an empty point and nothing more, and my moral conviction would have grown.

What were the special features of Fischer’s chess?

Strict logic and a computer-like approach.

How can you be friends with such a strange person?

Easily. For example, he couldn’t stand it when people phoned him, but I never bothered him. He always called me himself. Only on one occasion did I write him a letter. I was already living in France and had no money. At all. I needed work. I was invited to work on the Karpov – Korchnoi match in 1975 as a commentator. I asked Robert for advice. His reply was as follows: “Boris, whatever those people offer you, no matter what dirty money they promise you, never have anything to do with them. You’re an honourable man.” I listened to Fischer and turned them down.

Did you meet often?

Yes. Once we had a rendezvous in an empty restaurant. Robert, who had a persecution complex, rushed to search the premises. He was always looking for spies. I calmed him down: “Everything’s ok, Bobby. I’ve already destroyed all the Soviet surveillance cameras”.

Have you visited his grave?

Yes. I paid my respects at it in Reykjavik.

In 1976, after marrying your third wife, a French woman with Russian roots, you left the USSR.

Yes, I never hid the fact I wanted freedom. I dreamt of calmly playing those tournaments I was invited to. And Marina Stcherbatcheff gave me that option. For a long time they didn’t want to allow us, as after all back then marriages between socialists and capitalists were forbidden. But thanks are due to Leonid Brezhnev. At least he did one good deed. Marina appealed personally to the French President Georges Pompidou, and he managed to persuade Brezhnev.

A story like that of Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vlady…

I wouldn’t compare it. The whole world followed the romance between Vysotsky and Vlady.  It was a little different with us.

Where do you feel at home?

In France. It’s a good stepmother. Russia’s a sick mother.

But you’ve started to come here regularly.

I do a lot of work in Russia. I opened a school in Satka, where I teach little kids.

Do your children play chess?

No. Boris Junior, who’s now working in Tajikistan in the cotton business, once asked me to introduce him to the game. However, when he made the moves h3 and Rh2 for White I realised it was something he simply didn’t need.

Are you a happy person?

I’ve lived a good life.

Can you allow yourself not to work?

No, I need to feed my family.

There’s no prize money left?

You want to hear a story about prize money? In 1972 after losing to Fischer I got my hands on around 93,000 dollars.

A fortune for those times!

I’d lost it all four years later!

That’s impossible!

It turned out it was possible. Do you recall “Mimino”: “Vakh, what kind of person comes to Moscow without money? They went out on the town, drank it all”…

In the second showcase match against Fischer in 1992 the two of you received an unheard of fee of five million dollars. What happened to that money?

I bought my family and friends eight flats. Why did I need so much money? As long as I was fed and clothed. I’m a man of few needs.

First published but no longer available at WhyChess – more here

The following is a full translation of Kramnik’s Russian text at the Russian Chess Federation website:

I’d heard, of course, that Vitaly Valeryevich’s health was no longer so great, but such things always come as a shock… After all, he was only 67, which isn’t such an advanced old age nowadays.

We hadn’t seen each other for a long time as our paths somehow never crossed – I’d play in some tournaments while he played in others; but we always had a good relationship. Of course, when I saw the sad news on the internet memories immediately flooded back…

We worked together very closely from 88-89 to 94. We were neighbours: I was living back then in Tuapse while Tseshkovsky was in Krasnodar. From time to time someone would work with me – one local master or another. At some point it became clear that I could develop into a very strong player, so they decided to find me a coach who had a very deep understanding of chess. Tseshkovsky automatically emerged as a candidate – in the Krasnodar Region there were no other chess players at his level.

Kramnik was born in Tuapse on the Black Sea coast, about 150 km from the regional centre of Krasnodar

The only problem was that Tuapse and Krasnodar weren’t located very close to each other, so it wasn’t that easy for us to meet often. Moreover, he was still playing regularly himself, and posting very decent results. So we spent more time together at tournaments, and sometimes at training camps. On more than one occasion we stayed in the same hotel room when he was helping me at junior competitions. Of course we talked and worked a lot on chess. Back then I was still very young, so we didn’t quite communicate as equals. He certainly didn’t treat me as a child – he shared his thoughts with me and told me a lot of interesting things – but there weren’t any disputes or long dialogues between us, as after all we were people from different generations. He was a very intelligent, scrupulous man and never applied pressure or imposed his opinion on me. He’d apologise five times before expressing his disagreement with something. He was an honest, decent man, and had no malice at all. He might not get on with someone very well, but I never heard malice in his voice. He had no desire to settle scores with anyone or take revenge and so on. It seems to me he never did anything bad to anyone.

Tseshkovsky was a very interesting, original and unconventional chess player. Above all, he really loved chess. He was one of those rare people who could analyse any position. I remember his favourite pose: half-lying on the bed, supporting his head in his hands; in front of him – a magnetic chess set from Riga, which he always took with him. At junior championships when I returned to the room I could find him, for example, analysing some game from the “64” magazine; let’s say, Rodriguez – Gutierrez from the Columbian Championship. If a position caught his interest he could analyse it for three or four hours. He moved the pieces, had a think, moved the pieces, and again had a think… That seemed a little strange to me and I once said: if you like analysing so much perhaps it would be better to take some position from your repertoire? But he was ready to study any idea that caught his interest. That, of course, is a rare quality, found only among people who genuinely love chess!

It seems to me that Vitaly Tseshkovsky didn’t achieve all he could because he loved chess too much: he had an enormous love of playing and analysing, while the practical result didn’t particularly bother him. Of course, he had to earn money and take care of his family, but essentially he simply loved playing chess. I’ve rarely met such enthusiasm for analysis! He could be drawn into some study or even a selfmate. He’d put it on the board and spend half a day solving it. I was amused by all that, and us kids would laugh at him when he’d enthusiastically tell us: “A difficult puzzle, but how interesting!” There’d be some irrational position on the board – a selfmate in 10 moves or some such madness! And he’d share his emotions: “I already have a sense of what the construction should be, but I just can’t grasp the correct path…” It was a unique spectacle, and there are less and less such people…

Whether Tseshkovsky was at the same level as the great or a little below them is something I won’t try to judge; in general, it’s very hard to judge the scale of anyone’s talent. But it’s obvious that his sporting qualities were zero. He “got by” on account of his love of chess and his talent. If only he could have added sporting qualities… When he was on fire he would rip everyone apart, and no-one understood what was happening on the board! He had an amazing style: he really loved complex positions, and would deliberately complicate, complicate and complicate play… Moreover, by complex positions I don’t mean simply that they were tactical; he loved it when a lot of pieces remained and when, as far as possible, the struggle was taking place across the whole board. He loved to provoke turmoil on the board, when it was difficult to grasp what on earth was going on. That was his element, in which he’d outplay very strong grandmasters, and at times outplay them as if they were mere children. Of course he also had weaker sides to his game, but overall his style was very original and unconventional; I don’t even know who you could compare Tseshkovsky to. He always approached a position without any clear criteria for evaluating it: this is better, this is worse. He “diluted” me in this sense: after all, I’d studied the books of Nimzowitsch and Tarrasch, and the criteria there are very strict – this is good, this is bad. Vitaly Valeryevich, of course, understood chess more deeply than I did at the time and he was able to demonstrate that chess is much more multifaceted and not so categorical; sometimes it’s hard to grasp in general whether a position’s better or not. He enriched me in that regard.

I remember either in 1990 or 91 that we were at a training camp in Novogorsk before the World Junior Championship. The camp lasted a long time, about a fortnight, and it was boring to study all the time. At some point we sat down at the board and I said, “Perhaps we can play a little blitz?” He said: “Come on, then!” I was about 15 or 16 years old at the time and I was already playing pretty well. Of course, he was a stronger chess player, but I was young and my mind worked very quickly. Like any young chess player I loved to play blitz, especially against such a great player. He also really enjoyed it. And so we wound up playing for three days in a row, only taking a break for food and sleep. We didn’t even take any walks!

At first we kept a score, then we stopped, but it was about even: over three days perhaps someone won with a maximum of +5, while we played more games than you could count! No-one was particularly bothered about the score as we were both so caught up in the game, but for the sake of interest from some point we started to divide our marathon into 10-game matches. Sometimes I’d win a match, sometimes he would, but the gap was always only 1-2 points, no more.

Vitaly Valeryevich undoubtedly had a serious influence on my development as a chess player. As a youngster it’s very important to spend time with a strong player. I wouldn’t say that we analysed a great deal, although that also took place, but if you’ve got the ability to learn then it’s very important to have contact with a major player who sees the game differently and simply understands chess better than you do. He didn’t prepare special topics for our work together, but we’d simply sit at the board and start to look at certain positions, more or less related to my repertoire, though at times with no relation whatsoever. Sometimes he’d simply say: “I played an interesting game. Let’s analyse it!” And we could spend a few hours investigating that game. Of course, such an analytical process really enriched me. Tseshkovsky shared his thoughts, ideas and conceptions, and that was very useful.

In about 94 our cooperation came to an end because at that point chess had started to change significantly. Computers had appeared, while Vitaly Valeryevich worked the same way he always had, and wasn’t quite able to keep up with the growing volume of information. He analysed at incredible depth, but very slowly. That’s perfectly natural, but I had the impression that I simply wouldn’t have the time to process the necessary volume of information; it was better to sacrifice a little depth but look at more. I started to try working with different, younger people, who knew how to handle computers. Vitaly Valeryevich and I had no personal problems, but in terms of cooperating our paths gradually began to diverge. He was a man from a different generation, and it was hard for him to adapt to start working with computers. He loved chess more as a game than a profession. I was already in the Top 10, and I had “to work my socks off”, regardless of whether I liked positions or not. For example, a slightly worse endgame had to be brought to a clear draw. Vitaly Valeryevich, on the other hand, wasn’t mentally prepared for such work. He loved chess as creativity. I understand that perfectly and welcome it, but back then that was already insufficient in order to reach the top. Our paths diverged, although afterwards we would still sometimes see each other and talk. In any case, our cooperation was very useful for me.

Of course it’s sad that people are leaving us from the generation I was connected to in my childhood. Recently Igor Yulyevich Botvinnik passed away, and I was also very upset when I saw that news during the tournament in London. I didn’t expect it at all as he’d always been so optimistic and had never complained about anything… Frankly speaking, I didn’t even know that he was over sixty; it always seemed to me that he was quite young. Literally a year ago we met in Paris, where he’d come to visit with his family. We met, had a good time together, and everything was so cheerful…. When I was accepted into the Botvinnik School he’d handled all the technical details and was a very good-natured man. Such blows one after another, people passing away. It’s a great pity, as you lose a part of your past…

Igor Botvinnik, Mikhail Botvinnik’s nephew, passed away at the age of 61 on 5 December, 2011 | photo: RCF website

There are very few people left who are as selflessly devoted to chess as Vitaly Valeryevich was. He was a very independent, proud man, who didn’t like any kind of pressure, and was absolutely incapable of any bootlicking – that was incompatible with his personality. That was probably why Tseshkovsky was very rarely allowed to play in overseas tournaments, as at the time you often needed to “grease palms”, to smile at someone at the right moment, bring them a little present and so on. But he didn’t like any of that, so he rarely travelled. In that sense he was a man from a “lost generation”. I think if he’d gone abroad, like Korchnoi, he’d have become a major player, at Timman’s level – he’d have been a constant in the Top-10. Although it’s hard to imagine Tseshkovsky living abroad as he was so Russian, so connected to Russian culture. At home he soured a little: he had the talent, but no tournaments. He told me that at some point he lost interest in his chess career development. He realised that he wasn’t Karpov, he wasn’t so great that they’d give him all the tournaments, but on the other hand while he didn’t have the tournaments he had no chance of becoming great. Tseshkovsky said: “I’m not capable of behaving so that I beg for these tournaments”. In a certain sense he gave up and decided that he’d simply play chess for pleasure.

Of course, there are lots of funny stories about him. There was one he loved to tell himself. Tseshkovsky was offered the chance to move from Omsk to Krasnodar so that the region would have its own very strong chess player. They gave him a big flat in the centre of the town on Krasnaya Street and offered good financial conditions, which immediately made him an eligible bachelor. And then he had a very serious romance and he and his beloved were already thinking about marriage. But – things just wouldn’t go well with his potential mother-in-law. It seemed as though she also wanted her daughter to marry a famous chess player, but nevertheless she had a dislike of Tseshkovsky. Now I’ll try to reproduce how Vitaly Valeryevich would tell it:

“One fine day I was standing at the bus stop, waiting for a bus and smoking. At that moment my future mother-in-law passed by and after brief greetings she uttered the following phrase:

– So, Vitaly, it turns out you also smoke!

After that I couldn’t restrain myself and replied:

– I also drink and love chasing after women!

And with that the romance suddenly came to an end.”

Tseshkovsky was a very direct man, with a sense of his own dignity. He could tell the chess leadership things to their faces. He was highly respected, but other people who were, let’s say, more tractable, would be sent to tournaments. It’s a pity that he didn’t achieve all that he could have done in chess. And in general, he could have lived longer. It seems to me that nature had granted him colossal – genuinely Siberian – health.

In his case it’s very symbolic that he died at the chessboard. After all, he played to the end – simply because he loved to play. I don’t think it brought Tseshkovsky much money, and any straightforward coaching activity would have earned him no less.

Farewell, Vitaly Valeryevich! May you rest in peace.

Original at the RCF website (in Russian)

First published but no longer available at WhyChess – more here

Carlsen also gives a detailed and thoughtful account of his cooperation with Garry Kasparov, where it’s clear he doesn’t share what seemed to be Hikaru Nakamura’s recent view that there was little to be gained but opening knowledge.

Magnus Carlsen talked to Evgeny Atarov of ChessPro for almost an hour, and the resulting interview covers a great deal of topics. As well as the highlights I’ve selected below he also talks, for instance, about the World Championship, poker, his fame in Norway and being accompanied almost everywhere by his father. The photographs of Carlsen at the Tal Memorial used here were also taken by Evgeny Atarov.

Carlsen on his approach to chess

I’m a professional chess player, and if that’s the case then I should do all that I’m capable of to fulfil my potential. I like to win and I strive for the best possible results… At the same time, I still manage to get a lot of enjoyment from playing! During a game I cease to think about the result as I become so enthralled by what’s happening on the board…

In terms of this tournament I recall two games – against Gelfand and Kramnik. I simply loved it when we got such unconventional positions! If every game could turn out as interesting as those I’d just be delighted. But chess, alas, doesn’t only consist of creativity.

And would your attitude to those games have changed if they hadn’t ended as well for you from the point of view of the result?

The result’s always important, of course, but I’m talking about getting pleasure from the game.

Are you talking about abstract pleasure from the game or about the ability to turn the course of the game in your favour?

Above all I like to resolve unconventional tasks at the board. Perhaps that’s why I don’t really like studying the opening – everything starts from the one position.

On working on chess

How much time do you devote to chess?

It’s hard for me to count. When I’m at a tournament chess takes up all my time. At that point I’m 100% focussed on the game. I switch off the television and telephone, I don’t exist for anyone… When I’m at home? If I don’t have a training session and there’s no upcoming tournament then I don’t study chess at all.

Not at all?

Absolutely!

And you don’t in any way maintain your “sporting condition”?

Well, if I want I can look at something that’s taken my interest. Or download fresh games… I don’t know, nothing specific. It’s hard to talk about any targeted work. It might seem strange, but I get a lot of benefit simply from looking at games. I don’t analyse them, I don’t switch on engines, I just scroll through them one by one, looking at new ideas, who plays what…

And that’s being said by the leader of the world rankings!

Well, everyone has their own approach. No-one knows how anyone else spends their time – Anand, Kramnik, Aronian…

On his chess development

Do you think you have a specific chess talent?

I don’t know. Everyone has a lot of different talents. Probably I’ve got something like that, but I can’t be 100% sure. Do you know yourself what it is?

I can only judge in terms of what others say about me. When I was about 12-13 many people said I had a great chess talent, that I’d turn into a great player. At that point I basically wasn’t bothered if I’d become a strong player or not – I simply played and enjoyed it…

In actual fact it’s very difficult to determine who’s more talented and who’s less so. Or who’ll become a genuinely great chess player, and who’ll remain no-one.

I still recall the scene with Alexander Nikitin, Kasparov’s coach, who at one of the first “Aeroflots” stood next to your table and witnessed you crush Dolmatov in 20 moves. He then went around the hall with the scoresheet of that game and breathlessly informed everyone: “This is the game of a genius”…

Yes, I remember that, I was 13 then (laughs). I want to thank Nikitin for the good promotion he did for me then. He’s an authority figure, and I even heard about it when I returned home. Yes, he also predicted a great future for me.

And were you really not embarrassed or disturbed by all the talk of genius?

I’ll say it again: I never considered myself a chess genius, and I never focussed on other people’s evaluations. I also react to them calmly now… Many people say I’m too sober. But back then I’d already wondered what the point was in all this excessive delight – you simply need to do what works well.

How much slower do you think your chess development would have been if you didn’t have a computer at hand?

I don’t know. I never thought about it. It seems to me (stopping to think), that the computer didn’t have any kind of fundamental influence on me personally.

That’s hard to believe… You stand out precisely for being ready to play any position “on sight”, for being ready to defend positions where “ugly” machine moves are required…

But that’s how it was. I can tell you that for the first few years I didn’t use the machine’s help at all, even as a database! Back then I simply put a board in front of me, took the books I was studying at the time and looked at everything on that. And the first time I needed a computer for chess was when I started to play on the internet.

Honestly, when I was about 11-12 I didn’t even know what ChessBase was. I realise that sounds pretty implausible from my lips – and the majority of people consider me a product of the “computer chess” era, but that’s how it was! I’d add that my computer “incompetence” in chess even amazed my first coaches. I had nowhere to show them databases, or my analysis…

Do you have any childhood notebooks with analysis which can be “documentary proof” of that? Are there any “living witnesses”?

Of course the people haven’t gone anyway – you can just ask my dad. As for any notes, I’m not sure. I didn’t particularly make notes.

So your chess understanding, your positional sense – it’s all human?

I think so, yes. And my fundamental chess understanding was formed without machine involvement. That was my approach to chess, my idea of the struggle.

On his style

So you can’t call yourself a tactician or a strategist?

I’d call myself an optimist! In actual fact I don’t have any clear preferences in chess. I do what I think circumstances require of me – I attack, defend or go into the endgame. Having preferences means having weaknesses.

Could you compare your impressions after a win in a subtle endgame or a whirlwind attack? Do they really not differ at all for you?!

I really don’t know what I like more in chess! Among other things a game can stand out for the feeling you get when it’s over, when you realise you’ve created something truly worthwhile… But something like that happens very, very rarely. In any case, over the whole course of my life – only a few times.

Well, and if you’re just a spectator, which kind of game do you like more?

I don’t know. I like the struggle in itself.

On “hypnotising” opponents

Viktor Korchnoi has claimed that Magnus Carlsen hypnotises opponents into making mistakes. Carlsen was aware of those comments when Atarov mentioned them, but went on to give a rather more rational explanation:

Well, you’ll admit it’s no wonder something like that was suggested given how often your opponents blunder?

Put opponents under great pressure during a game and they’ll make mistakes… I’m not able to assess how much more often they make mistakes playing against me.

Much more often!

I don’t know. I fight to the end in every game, putting everything into it. I don’t want to feel after a game that I did less than I could… Probably that mood has an effect on my opponents. Mistakes are a consequence of tension!

You strive to create tension on the board in each of your games?

I try! I can’t say it works out like that in every game. Take, for example, my game against Anand in this tournament: I simply didn’t manage to create any tension at all. But in all the others I strove as much as I could…

On openings

Carlsen agreed with the suggestion that studying openings occupied 80% of a player’s time, provoking the following question:

But… looking at your games you get the opposite impression! If you take the Tal Memorial, in the first four rounds you could have got 0/4 given the openings, but then you should have scored 3.5/4. You constantly outplayed your opponents…

Probably that’s because I like the middlegame and endgame much more than the opening. I like when the game turns into a contest of ideas and not a battle between home analysis. But that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen often.

That concerns you?

To an extent, but what can I do!

Work more on the opening, as the others do…

I already work more on it than I want.

But at the same time, as I understand it, you’re generally inferior to them?

Yes. It’s no secret for anyone that my opening preparation is inferior to Anand’s and Kramnik’s and that of many others. They’ve got much more experience, prepared ideas… They’re great specialists in that! But I try to place my pieces correctly on the board, so the advantage won’t be so great that I lose immediately.

On working with Kasparov

What impressions did the work leave on you? If it’s not a forbidden topic?!

No, it’s not a problem. We started working together in 2009, and worked quite closely for over a year. We had meetings in person as well as constant conversations on Skype. We analysed a lot together, we played, exchanged opinions…

What was the main benefit you got from working on the game with him?

Thanks to him I began to understand a whole class of positions better. It’s clear that he knew much more than me… At times it was difficult to keep up with the speed and depth of his analysis, but more often than not we were on the same wavelength. What can I say: it was a unique experience for me. Kasparov gave me a great deal of practical help.

Was he amazed by the level of your opening preparation?

Yes, he was shocked at how little it turned out I knew… But we didn’t focus on that issue. He shared his methods of working on the opening with me, and I’m grateful to him. Thanks to him I advanced in that area.

What else did Kasparov share with you?

He told me a lot about the peculiarities of the struggle, and a great deal about particular elite players. He has a very original view on the best players in the world.

Were you stunned by the energy he still has at 46?

Yes, he’s a very “energetic” man! It seems as though he’s simply sharing his opinion with you, but in actual fact he’s dictating how you should act…

How strongly did your views on the positions you looked at differ?

A great deal… Kasparov is a researcher, and he looks at every position as if it’s a theorem which should be proved, while I’m more pragmatic – I look for how best to use the opportunities for both players. He tries to bring everything to a final evaluation, +- or -+, while I’m not so meticulous, and the main thing for me is to find a path it’s worth following. From some things he said I realised that my approach is largely associated for him with the way Karpov took decisions. He knew him like no-one else – I can’t say it was unpleasant for me to hear such an assessment…

Did you often compete with Kasparov?

At the board? Yes, we played a lot of blitz games! It was an interesting battle. At times it was hard for him – you could sense he was out of practice.

From his games could you imagine how strong Kasparov was in his youth?

He’s a fantastic player. I’ve never seen someone with such a feel for dynamics in complex positions. And that’s in his 40s! Of course, it would have been very interesting to play against Kasparov back then, but as you know, we can’t turn back the clock… I think it would have been a wonderful challenge. They say Karpov was also magnificent in his youth. […]

Do you regret that your cooperation with Garry ultimately came to an end?

I don’t know. There’s a time for everything… Kasparov and I split on perfectly friendly terms, without taking offence. I consider him to have given me a great deal of useful knowledge. I think it was interesting for him as well. […] No-one can say how things would be now if we’d continued working together. From where I am today I think splitting up was the correct step.

In a sense you’d got what you wanted from Kasparov?

That might be the case, although there are no guarantees. Perhaps at some point I’ll regret my decision. But perhaps I won’t…

From his coaches and acquaintances it was clear that Garry was disappointed that the cooperation ended, as if you’d turned your back on “sacred knowledge”…

It’s hard for me to judge. Perhaps I disappointed him, but such was my choice.

And life goes on?

Yes, exactly! It seems to me that it’s wrong to reduce your life to one or two choices. I took the wrong path – and that’s that. It doesn’t work like that… I don’t believe in “fatal errors”. And even if I make some mistakes, they’re my mistakes, and I’ll take responsibility for them.

Interview in full at ChessPro (in Russian)