My Most Memorable Interviews: 35 Conversations with Chess Stars

The interviews in this book span over twenty years, over two decades. For years I went with my recording device to tournaments like Wijk aan Zee, Frankfurt Chess Classic, Hoogeveen... often to interview the interesting player of the moment in some hotel bar or quiet interview room. 31 out of the 35 interviews came about this way. That is… until March 2020, when out of nowhere, covid broke out. Suddenly chess tournaments were no longer held and a live interview with chess players was no longer possible.

 

Gert Devreese (born 1962) is a well-known Belgian chess journalist and since 1989 national editor at the Belgian paper De Standaard.  Gert is a chess player himself and is since many years fascinated by the intriguing personalities of famous chess players, their rivalries and friendships, the things that happen behind the curtains in the fascinating chess world, their interests outside chess…

That’s why Gert has been written since about three decades a lot of articles and interviews about chess for his own paper De Standaard, and (until 2008) the late Dutch chess magazine Schaaknieuws. From the year 2000 on, Gert became the regular interviewer of the magazine of the Dutch Chess Federation Schaakmagazine. In that magazine he was given space to make large, in depth interviews with the best players of the last two decades, as well people of the Kasparov as of the Carlsen generation. Celebrities such as Kortchnoi, Kasparov, Karpov, Kramnik, Topalov, Anand, Polgar, Kosteniuk… told Gert candid about their lives and their chess. They were followed by the Carlsen generation, people like Caruana, Nakamura, Aronian, Giri…

Gert Devreese enjoyed the rare privilege to be able to interview the great names (and many others) in the chess world from 2000 until now. He thought it would be a great idea to make a compilation of the most memorable of his interviews. Out of the harvest of dozens of conversations with top players, 35 interviews made the final selection. It’s a nice and intriguing travel through the recent history of chess on the one hand, but Gert also treats hot chess topics like chess in Covid times, Twitch and online chess, and the recent successful series The Queen’s Gambit.