One week in the life of a chess professional

Friday, 25 January 2002

Got up at 7-40. Checked e-mail and then had breakfast with the whole family. After that, when my kids went to school and my wife left for work, I sat with my computer, planning to tidy up my files. I have way too many messages in my inbox and sometimes it drives me crazy. It’s time to deal with some of them! Postman came — another book order, this time a person in Limerick wants a volume on opening theory. No problem! Maybe the shop will take off after all?

At about 10-00 a friend of mine called. He needs help with off-loading a truck with pizza dough. I like physical work and he sounds desperate, so I go to help. By the time I get to his storage, he has done most of the work, but still I get some exercise. On the way home I visit that Russian shop in town, so a few more bottles of Russian beer appear in my fridge — very useful after hard work! :-)

At 15-30 our friends came to visit. I met him on a plane from Moscow to Dublin where I could not believe that Conor was not Russian — so good was his language! I introduced myself and after that we met occasionally, but lost contact a few years ago. Recently we met again in the city centre, so we decided to get together. They stayed till 18-00 or so, it was a nice occasion.

At 18-20 I went to collect my daughter Anastasia from her friend’s house and bring her to a swimming pool. He does swimming once a week for the second year now. Ivan did swimming for a few years too. When I was a kid, I did that from the age of 6 till I was 10. I am pretty good at it and still swim occasionally.

After the swimming pool we went straight into the city centre to collect my wife after the language courses. She runs them with her friend. Hopefully this business will take off, but it’s a tough one. BTW, if somebody knows about an easy business, you can find my e-mail on this Web site — I’d love to hear from you! :-)

Got home about 20-40 and started to work on Chess Today. It is my turn to do the issue today and on Saturday and Sunday. GM Ruslan Scherbakov and IM Vladimir Barsky produce most of the issues and do a great job. The paper (www.chesstoday.net) has a very good team — Ralph Marconi (Canada) and Graham Brown (England) are our editors, while Vladimir, Ruslan, myself and GM Mikhail Golubev write for the paper. It works like a clock and in more than a year we did not miss a single issue! All the paper needs is more subscribers, so if anyone can give me a great marketing tip, we will entertain that person on Chess Today’s corporate yacht in the Caribbean! :-)

Today it takes me longer to make an issue — somehow I feel brain-dead... :-( I finish around 2-00. It seems that I can’t e-mail Ralph from my IOL account, so I send him the stuff from my hotmail. It’s still before 21-00 in Canada, so hopefully he will be OK. I cannot sleep, so I spend about an hour reading. I wish I had a ‘normal’ job...