Thursday
Jan122012
Timman Interview
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 10:22PM
ChessVibes has a nice interview with Dutch GM Jan Timman, a former world championship finalist. Timman is playing in the B-group in Wijk aan Zee starting Saturday, and I appreciate his attitude about his chances there. He's realistic about where he is now, at 60 and some years separated from his time at the top, but this realism isn't a depressed fatalism. He is confident about his ability to play good games and doesn't rule out the possibility a successful result. I hope he has one!
tagged Jan Timman, Wijk aan Zee 2012
Reader Comments (3)
Good quote from the interview: I believe that in certain positions, where it was all about manoeuvring, I might have been a bit better than Kasparov but the thing was: you almost never got these positions on the board. Against him, with his opening repertoire he made sure that he would always get a dynamic position in the middlegame and in that dynamic position he was superior, better than other players. Otherwise he wouldn't have achieved these successes. I mean, there have been more players in the past who were specialized in the opening, and who were very good in this phase, for example Portisch, Polugaevsky... but they weren't any better in the middlegame than other top grandmasters. Kasparov was. Sure, when you had survived the opening it was sort of a relief, but it didn't mean that all danger was gone.
Timman's comments about the new biography were interesting, as were his comments regarding Nakamura's comments on Kasparov's abilities past the openings. (Also Timman's comment about Kasparov working with Carlsen and Naka.) Good stuff!
"Schaken met Timman" aahh, good times! :-)