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Joel Lautier
August 10, 2016
Joel Lautier (b. 1973) was born in Scarborough, Ont., of a French father and a Japanese mother. A grandmaster, he retired from chess ten years ago. He is a former president of the Association of Chess Professionals and is currently the CEO of RGG Capital, a company that specializes in Mergers and Acquisitions.
He has a plus score against Garry Kasparov – two wins against one from their ten encounters. He was one of the people instrumental in Kramnik winning the World Championships in 2000 against Kasparov by preparing the Berlin Wall.
He is smart and articulate and gives a good interview.
At the Candidates in Moscow, ChessBase feature writer, Sagar Shah introduced himself to Lautier and asked for an interview. The first part has just been published at the ChessBase site:
http://en.chessbase.com/post/a-schoo...-and-a-ceo-1-2
We have the happy union here of a first-class interviewer interviewing a first-class interviewee. Make a cup of coffee, relax in a comfortable armchair and enjoy the article.
__________
I have excerpted three paragraphs to give you an idea of the material:
Sagar Shah: Joel, let’s start from the beginning. Tell us about your initial years in chess?
Joel Lautier: I started playing chess when I was three and a half years old. My father was the one who introduced me to the game. My mother taught me the moves but my father made me understand how to play. He was a pretty decent player – rated around 2200, which was a fairly rare thing in France at that time. France was not a particularly strong country chess wise. We didn’t have any grandmasters, not counting Spassky, only a couple of International Masters. I was playing chess at home in the initial years, not realizing the advantage that I had over other kids – I had a strong player in the house to practice with. I progressed quite quickly. My father gave me interesting puzzles and quizzes and kept me interested in the game.
......
I gradually managed to get a hold of good books on the endgame. The one by Smyslov and Levenfish on rook endgames is brilliant. Back then there was only one publishing house that was churning out the best chess books in English and that was Batsford. So whenever I had some money I would go and buy a chess book. My father was also assembling a pretty reasonable collection of books, including Russian chess books, and that was what got me really intrigued about the Russian language.
SS: And your connection with the Russian language didn’t end there, right?
JL: Not at all! All these books by famous Soviet players were lying in my father’s library but I couldn’t understand the language. I could play through the moves and variations, but what about the commentary? It was quite frustrating. At the age of 12 I decided that I should learn Russian! I organized a small class of Russian students in my school and asked my parents to speak with the head of the school. The Russian teacher had left the job and we needed six students to get her back. I managed to convince five other classmates who had absolutely no idea what they were doing in the Russian class! (laughs) So we got the Russian teacher back and I started learning Russian. After the first year half of the class dropped out and after the second year I was the only one left. But the school didn’t mind it anymore and I had private lessons in Russian for nearly three years! I was able to learn only the basics. Without practice you cannot really master a complicated language like Russian. From the age of 19 I started travelling to Russia, which was no longer the Soviet Union, because the borders had opened up. By that time I was above 2600 in rating and number one in France. The only person in France with whom it would have made sense to talk about chess was Boris Spassky, but he was already half retired. I had the experience of working with some Russian coaches. For example, Polugaevsky was a wonderful coach I must say. I also worked intermittently with Viktor Kortchnoi for several years in the early nineties, which also shaped my play and significantly deepened my understanding of several key openings in my repertoire. From 1992 onwards I started travelling to Russia on a regular basis. This is when I really picked up the language and made friends like Kramnik, Bareev, etc.
August 10, 2016
Joel Lautier (b. 1973) was born in Scarborough, Ont., of a French father and a Japanese mother. A grandmaster, he retired from chess ten years ago. He is a former president of the Association of Chess Professionals and is currently the CEO of RGG Capital, a company that specializes in Mergers and Acquisitions.
He has a plus score against Garry Kasparov – two wins against one from their ten encounters. He was one of the people instrumental in Kramnik winning the World Championships in 2000 against Kasparov by preparing the Berlin Wall.
He is smart and articulate and gives a good interview.
At the Candidates in Moscow, ChessBase feature writer, Sagar Shah introduced himself to Lautier and asked for an interview. The first part has just been published at the ChessBase site:
http://en.chessbase.com/post/a-schoo...-and-a-ceo-1-2
We have the happy union here of a first-class interviewer interviewing a first-class interviewee. Make a cup of coffee, relax in a comfortable armchair and enjoy the article.
__________
I have excerpted three paragraphs to give you an idea of the material:
Sagar Shah: Joel, let’s start from the beginning. Tell us about your initial years in chess?
Joel Lautier: I started playing chess when I was three and a half years old. My father was the one who introduced me to the game. My mother taught me the moves but my father made me understand how to play. He was a pretty decent player – rated around 2200, which was a fairly rare thing in France at that time. France was not a particularly strong country chess wise. We didn’t have any grandmasters, not counting Spassky, only a couple of International Masters. I was playing chess at home in the initial years, not realizing the advantage that I had over other kids – I had a strong player in the house to practice with. I progressed quite quickly. My father gave me interesting puzzles and quizzes and kept me interested in the game.
......
I gradually managed to get a hold of good books on the endgame. The one by Smyslov and Levenfish on rook endgames is brilliant. Back then there was only one publishing house that was churning out the best chess books in English and that was Batsford. So whenever I had some money I would go and buy a chess book. My father was also assembling a pretty reasonable collection of books, including Russian chess books, and that was what got me really intrigued about the Russian language.
SS: And your connection with the Russian language didn’t end there, right?
JL: Not at all! All these books by famous Soviet players were lying in my father’s library but I couldn’t understand the language. I could play through the moves and variations, but what about the commentary? It was quite frustrating. At the age of 12 I decided that I should learn Russian! I organized a small class of Russian students in my school and asked my parents to speak with the head of the school. The Russian teacher had left the job and we needed six students to get her back. I managed to convince five other classmates who had absolutely no idea what they were doing in the Russian class! (laughs) So we got the Russian teacher back and I started learning Russian. After the first year half of the class dropped out and after the second year I was the only one left. But the school didn’t mind it anymore and I had private lessons in Russian for nearly three years! I was able to learn only the basics. Without practice you cannot really master a complicated language like Russian. From the age of 19 I started travelling to Russia, which was no longer the Soviet Union, because the borders had opened up. By that time I was above 2600 in rating and number one in France. The only person in France with whom it would have made sense to talk about chess was Boris Spassky, but he was already half retired. I had the experience of working with some Russian coaches. For example, Polugaevsky was a wonderful coach I must say. I also worked intermittently with Viktor Kortchnoi for several years in the early nineties, which also shaped my play and significantly deepened my understanding of several key openings in my repertoire. From 1992 onwards I started travelling to Russia on a regular basis. This is when I really picked up the language and made friends like Kramnik, Bareev, etc.
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