Ana Matnadze: “I investigate everything about my rival. What scares him, what does he feel, what is he afraid of, what does he like. It's all in the way you play."

Child prodigy of world chess at the age of six, five-time European champion and world champion under-10 and under-14.

She is a Grand Female Teacher in 2002 and International Teacher in 2006. She has a degree in Germanic Philology, she speaks Spanish, Catalan, Georgian, Russian, German, English and Portuguese.

She has been hooked on Spain since she was twenty, she became a Spanish citizen and has lived in Barcelona since 2004.

Her name is Ana Matnadze (Telavi, Georgia, 1983).

"My problems," she says at one point in this phone interview, "I solve on the board."

Ask.

“I haven't had any difficulties being able to play because I'm a woman, quite the opposite,” she said.

Answer.

Not only was it an obstacle, but women's sport in Georgia is the predominant sport, especially women's chess.

There the figures are women.

Q.

What do you think is due?

R.

Culturally and historically, women in Georgia have always had a very active role.

It is documented that in the 12th century there was already a queen.

And that time was the golden age of Georgia.

The poet of her palace dedicated a book to her where she says: "The cubs of a lion are the same, whether they are male or female."

That book is very famous, you can look for it [Matnadze refers to Queen Tamara, of whom the poet sang: “Her works are brilliant, after all, the cubs of a lion are equal to their parents, whether they are men or women"].

Q.

Your mother taught you to play.

A.

At four years old.

Q.

Your father.

A.

My father doesn't know how to play [laughs].

Is incredible.

In other words, he doesn't even know how to place the pieces.

He follows me in tournaments, he likes the atmosphere, he is proud of me and when we see a game he tells me: "And now what are you doing, where are you moving?"

Q.

Do you remember the first time you beat your mother?

R.

No, but yes when we both signed up for the first time in a tournament.

And he touched me with it!

It was a long game.

I beat him, but I don't think it was the first time.

I also don't know if she played focused at all.

I don't think a mother can play against her daughter, nor that she be happy to win and not her daughter.

P.

At the age of ten, you won the world championship at the express request of the president of your country.

Q.

The president of Georgia at the time was Eduard Shevardnadze, a very famous politician.

I played in sub 10, and I had a Chinese rival.

She had three points out of three, and so did she.

Then the Chinese had just appeared on the horizon.

They were very, very good.

And I was very scared in that game.

So they bring me the phone and say: "Here, you have a call."

And I answer: "What's wrong, who is it?".

A man tells me that we are doing very well and he asks me how we are doing.

His voice sounded familiar to me, but I didn't know who he was.

I tell him that we're fine, and he tells me: "You know you're doing very well, do what you do best."

Then I asked who he was and was told that it was President Shevarnadze.

P.

When you told me that chess was the king sport, I did not imagine that to the point that the president of the country was pending the world championship sub-10.

R.

When we won, he received us at his residence.

We always had a lot of attention from the presidents and ministers, I remember many receptions.

Q.

Do people follow the games on television?

A.

Yes, yes!

That's how my mother got hooked.

There are also programs dedicated to chess.

In fact, my mother learned, by herself, by watching a television program.

I was ten years old when, before a decisive game, President Shevardnadze called me: "Do your best."

Chess is the predominant sport in Georgia

Q.

I have read that you really like the unique styles that Capablanca and Karpov had.

How would you define your style?

R.

I would say versatile.

P.

Does it adapt to the rival?

R.

Yes, I prepare a lot depending on the opponent I play against.

Q.

How many hours can you spend studying your games?

R.

They are not the games.

I don't know if I've ever said this before, but now I'm telling you.

It's not the games: I study the entire opponent.

There are many rivals that I have always known because they are the 'black beasts', that type of people with whom you always come across and fight until the end.

I study them obsessively.

And against those I've never played... I look for everything from them, not just games: photos, videos.

I try to find out what kind of person he is: what scares him, what does he feel, what is he afraid of, what does he like.

Because a way of playing defines the person and also his character.

You may know what he is like.

But the gestures, how are they controlled?

There are very expressive players and there are players who do not notice anything.

There is everything.

Q.

Two people sitting across from each other.

Psychologically it is an exhausting game.

A.

A lot.

Q.

There is some poker players

A.

Exactly.

P.

You have the play in your head, you know how you are going to kill the rival.

But you can't make anybody suspicious, you can't look at certain places.

R.

_

What you have to guess about the opponent are the gestures he makes on purpose and the ones that really come naturally to him.

It is very interesting.

This takes up a lot of my time.

Q.

Do you have a particular favorite opening?

R.

_

I have always liked challenges.

There are openings that don't go well for me, but I'm giving it a go.

They don't just come out and although I spend a lot of time on it, there's no way.

I like the process of taking an opening, if you can put it that way.

There are people who say: "Why don't you do something more in keeping with your style? Why are you asking for trouble?"

But what I like the most is the search, the process and the path.

I have a little more fun.

And there are openings that, no matter how good they are, I neither like them nor am I comfortable with them.

A good chess player or a good chess player should know how to walk where it is most uncomfortable for him.

Q.

To learn.

R.

It is what I like the most.

Where I have had better results has not been with my favorite opening.

But, even so, I have played it because it was necessary to win and it was necessary to score.

The opening that would define me the most, where I have had good results and with which I have also been given a lot of blows, is the Sicilian.

I have grown fond of him, but it has taken me many years.

Q.

How long did you train as a child?

A.

Ten hours a day.

Q.

What did those trainings consist of?

R.

Analyze repertoire.

Having a very flexible repertoire, analyzing unknown issues and issues that were known, but with which we did not agree.

Find holes in a position and stuff.

We were not training something that we could already do on our own.

For example, playing a game that appears in a magazine or a book.

We could do that at home.

When there was a World Cup, a European, a qualifier or some very important game, the training was something very specific.

And that was what it consisted of: analyzing.

If I have read something I read it again to check that I have read it before;

if I have looked at the clock, I look at it again to see if I have looked at it correctly.

It's a problem: if you don't trust yourself, you don't trust anything.

P.

Is vanity needed to risk life on a board?

A.

It depends.

You don't have to be self-centered either.

But it is necessary to disconnect from the world completely.

Q.

Bobby Fischer was asked as a child who was the strongest player in the world.

He made such a shocked face that the reporter told him, "Well, apart from you, of course."

R.

In each player there must be the desire to be the best at some point.

But knowing that it will not be like that.

Because in chess you cannot be the best.

The best for whom?

"The best is the one who has won everything."

If you are not the one who has won it all, then you are not the best and he is done.

For practical purposes, it is.

Chess is a constant overcoming.

You can be happy when you improve yourself every day and not when you won a certain tournament.

In other words, it doesn't last very long.

You won a World Cup and the next day you have to prepare for another.

So much ego is not necessary.

What you do need is to have that hunger to improve yourself, day after day.

Q.

Does chess have much impact on your life?

I am not referring to the game, but to a certain sense of conduct outside the board.

A.

Totally.

In every area of ​​my life I am calculating the same.

Obviously not with chess formulas but, for example, I don't like wasting time and I always like to be very well informed about everything that surrounds me.

I see that also, in daily life, I use many things that I use in the game, like discipline.

There are many styles of play.

And there are also very good players who are very undisciplined.

But I personally consider myself a very disciplined player, because that way I feel safer.

But there are players who can not sleep and go perfectly to play.

In the end, you have to find the discipline, even if it is your own discipline, yours, very

P.

Kasparov wrote an essay,

In it he spoke of various phobias that legends of that sport were contracting over time.

For example, Akiba Rubinstein.

He began to be the victim of a pathological shyness and after making a move he would run to hide in a corner of the room to wait for the opponent's reply.

R.

Each one has their own [laughs].

There will still be people who deny it.

But I do have several hobbies.

Q.

For example?

R.

The

, that is, check something twice.

Everyone who knows me laughs because I have a habit of not trusting anything.

Sometimes it's very funny.

If I have read something I read it again to check that I have read it before;

if I have looked at the clock, I look at it again to see if I have looked at it correctly.

I've caught myself many times in those things, and it's a problem: if you don't trust yourself, you don't trust anything.

Q.

Which piece do you like to move the most?

Do you have a favourite?

R.

My favorite is the horse, but I have been changing.

At first she was the strongest.

Then you say: no, the diagonals, or I thought the tower.

Right now it's the horse.

P.

It is your best assassin.

R.

I am discovering things about him that I did not pay much attention to before.

Interesting maneuvers, but not the ones that everyone knows.

Something deeper, I suppose.

P.

What has happened to you in Spain to stay here first and nationalize later?

R.

Let's leave it in one sentence: it was love at first sight.

That's it.

I will not specify.

P.

It will not specify if landscape, food or human being, for example.

A.

Exactly.

It was a group: Spain for me was a crush, it was love at first sight.

Let's leave it there [laughs].

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