I have learned as much from a few games as from most of my defeats.

J. R. Capablanca

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Llibert Teixidó, the photographer, asks Alexei Shirov (51):

–Don’t you have a chess board or piece? We would need it to take the photo.

–In general, today we chess players study digitally –answers the Spanish Grandmaster–. We analyze games on mobile. Still, I usually carry a small board with me, you never know. If you give me three minutes, I’ll go up to the room and bring it…

Llibert Teixidó nods.

We have time, since it is ten in the morning and the day of the tournament, the prestigious Llobregat Open Chess (it ended yesterday), does not start until four in the afternoon, and that is why Alexei Shirov disappears for a moment and goes up to his room, go for the board.

We stayed waiting for him in the lobby of the El Castell hotel, in the heart of Sant Boi, while we contemplated the manger that someone had set up there. The West already exudes Christmas.

Alexei Shirov reappears three minutes later, perhaps less. He brings the board and the pieces and now he poses for Llibert Teixidó, he poses as a challenger for the camera.

Then, we talked in Spanish.

His, with a Slavic aftertaste, is impeccable. Shirov, who was born and lives in Riga (Latvia), has been Spanish since July 1996.

–Why did you become Spanish?

–I had been living in Tarragona for a year. I have never felt Latvian. I have been Soviet and now, Spanish.

–And why did you come to Spain?

–My first wife was Argentine and I wanted to live in Europe. Since she was a Spanish speaker, I thought of Spain. I liked the language, she studied it. And Latvian nationalism has never interested me. I was always a Russian in Latvia.

–¿…?

–At first, we Russians wanted to leave the Soviet Union, but then the Latvian nationalists gave problems to the Russians who wanted to stay in Latvia. In Riga, we Russians lost the battle on all sides, they took away our rights to Russian education… I arrived in Spain and stayed. Then I sold the house in Tarragona for family reasons and returned to Riga, and I am still there, suffering from the nationalist struggle in the country.

(As a Spaniard, in 2000, Alexei Shirov was proclaimed runner-up in the world after bowing to Viswanathan Anand; if I ask him about his current ranking, he tells me: “I estimate that I am in the World Top 100, but the ranking does not interest me much , the truth”).

Alexei Shirov spends the conversation playing with the black lady.

He turns her from one side to the other, twists her, turns her upside down, then lays her down.

–Does the chess player have a different mind from that of the rest of mortals?

–I almost prefer not to talk about myself. I consider myself an ordinary man.

“Any man doesn’t play chess like you do,” I observe.

–What I like is to play. It’s been that way since I was six years old, when my father Dimitri and my older brother, Maxim, taught it to me. At that time, being a chess player had prestige in Riga. I knew how to play checkers, but all those pieces move identically. Chess is more complex, complete and deeper.

–And didn’t you prefer to play soccer?

–My father had chess books, I devoured them. Since he was clearly superior to children my age, I started playing with children two or three years older than me. Those were my childhood friends. I think chess imitates life.

-Because?

–It teaches you to make decisions under rules and that is important. For some, life has no rules! The thing is that chess is a game and, if your opponent makes a mistake, you punish him to beat him. And you can’t do that in life, you can’t go around punishing people for a mistake.

–You have been in the elite for 35 years, don’t you get tired?

–I am approaching retirement as a chess player. After fifty years, it is impossible to have the same level as at 35. Anand can continue playing, but no more than three or four tournaments a year. The same happens to me. Therefore, I am inclined to share my experience and write books, things that I cannot do during tournaments.

As he says goodbye, he apologizes.

He regrets not having offered me a better interview:

–During the competition, your mind is somewhere else –he tells me.

“You don’t need to apologize,” I reply.

Your talk has been a treasure, hasn’t it?