Do you have a memory of your first encounter with chess?
Yes, that was in our second home in Hanover. It wasn’t even a real chessboard. It was a sheet of plastic with a checkerboard pattern on it and some figurines I found. I just wanted to know what that is. That was my first encounter with chess. I was five at the time, and of course you didn’t really understand what chess was then. You just see something that might be interesting and you want to discover it. At home there was a real chess set, a plug-in chess board, very small. At some point I threw my mother out of bed in the morning and wanted to know the rules. She then explained to me how the figures move.
When did you first defeat your parents?
Neither of my parents are chess players. It was interesting with my father for maybe a month, but then I was slowly getting better than him.
When you were five, you won against your father, a university teacher?
Yes, it was relatively quick. I don’t really know why either. As a child, you simply start playing the game and at first have no understanding of what exactly you are doing. It was just interesting. I spent time doing it and when something goes well it’s fun, that’s how it was. Of course at that age you don’t think about where it’s going to go. It was just my hobby. Chess fascinated me from the start, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it voluntarily.
Looking back, is there an explanation as to why this complicated game was so easy for you from the start?
No, I can’t think of any particular explanation. I remember sometimes coming home from school and just looking at chess DVDs. Apparently I kind of enjoyed that. I really can’t say what my motivation for playing chess is. It just fascinated me from the start.
What happened next?
In the neighboring town there was a small chess club. There was a club night on Tuesday and we sometimes went there. There were a couple of Chess Base DVDs at home that I dabbled with a bit. Things you could do alone. Then at some point it started with the Rheinhessen Championships, very regional, and these regional championships went pretty well pretty quickly. So that at the age of six I was already able to play in the U10s at the German Youth Championship.
“My goal is simply to keep getting better.”
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Image: Samira Schulz
How do you introduce a child to this complicated game?
Chess is something very special. If a kid doesn’t want to play chess, you probably don’t stand a chance. But if a child develops an interest in it, it can become something. It doesn’t all have to happen that quickly. You can also do it slowly and calmly, not as quickly as I do.
Is there such a thing as nesting parents? In the kind of tennis parents who want their children to become Wimbledon champions at all costs?
Of course there are also over-ambitious parents in chess. In chess you can get relatively far with pure diligence, because it has a lot to do with work. But at some point there can also be a point at which the child says, I’m not enjoying it anymore. At some point you need a really strong inner drive to keep going and training that much. You really have to sacrifice a lot and invest a lot of hours. Ultimately, this only works if a child really wants to do it.
