2014-02-1

GM Semcesen

I continue with the somewhat schizofrenic behaviour of interviewing myself:

You won the ChessCafe Book of the Year 2013!
If that was a congratulation – thanks! It was of course happy news, but the real test of the book comes some months from now when the readers evaluate their effort. So far many have told me that they follow the advice.

When is your next book coming?
The second edition of Pump Up is already printed, since the first sold out, but there are no changes expect for a nice award on the front cover. And the apple, of course.
I thought I would never write another chess book, not only since it was a lot of work, but also because I said everything I wanted to say.
Now I have another idea of a book that doesn't exist but as I would like to read. Actually I tried to write something in the same direction to Pump Up, but after some 50 pages I decided that it was completely unreadable and threw everything. I may give it a new try, but not this year.

What are your chess plans in general?
It would be nice to attend the Olympiad in Tromsø in August. I will not qualify as a player, but hopefully I can find another role.
Last weekend I played a small tournament, where I thought I had the same conditions as before the Nordic Championship. I think I played decent, but the result was bad. I have no explanation yet, but I guess where they can be found...

I have a final question...
No, we skip that one. But I want to add that Daniel Semcesen finally made it to 2500 and became Grandmaster. Congratulations! GM Semcesen – doesn't it look very pretty?

So next blog post is an interview with him about his training methods?
That sounds like a good idea. You better do that!