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The Grandmaster
Nigel Davies

10/23/04
Grandmaster Nigel Davies: Chess and Life

"A chess player's life is very difficult", announced veteran GM Milorad Knezevic, with just his head, feet and stomach sticking out of the Mediterranean. The strange circus of European tournaments conferred on titled players an unprecedented degree of personal freedom as you got to stay in one out of season holiday resort after another and played a little chess in the afternoon. During the good times there was money too, as for rules there were very few:

1) Don't insult the organiser's wife.
2) Don't attempt to sleep with the organiser's daughter.
3) Don't make too many short draws.
4) For Eastern European tournaments bring the organiser a good bottle of Scotch (implying he is a man of breeding and good taste). Under no circumstances get him a bottle of local vodka (implying he's an alcoholic).

If you followed these simple rules you were never short of tournament invitations, living for free whilst banking any prize-money. Of course the problem for many chess professionals came when the Berlin Wall was torn down letting thousands of cheap Soviet exports onto the market. Not only could they play well but they saw nothing wrong in 'arranging' their last round games to contribute most to the 'team prize fund'. When asked about our results we'd joke that we were "third behind two bus loads of Russians".

Faces we'd known all our lives started to disappear. Where did they go? Some of them made enough during the good times to set themselves up in some kind of business (usually chess related) so you see them now and then. Others have national newspaper columns. I know of nobody who managed to rejoin 'the real world' (9-5 job etc). Most are still competing for the ever-dwindling chess prizes, a handful ended their lives by their own hand, but a large number have switched online gambling and poker.

And the moral of the story? Once you have a taste for this kind of freedom it's hard to give it up.

Photos © Larry Fletcher 2004
Nigel Davies takes on fellow Grandmaster Art Bisguier as Victor Niederhoffer looks on. (2/23/4)

Nigel Davies is a trader and an International Chess Grandmaster residing in the United Kingdom. Visit his Web site at www.tigerchess.com.