Baguio

A few years ago I lost track of one of my most valuable treasures. A chess book. It turns out that my father was a close friend of Rentero, the great alma mater of the Linares Tournament (and the resurgence of chess in Spain).

One of the years he invited my father to go to Linares to deliver one of the prizes and to play a simultaneous with Korchnoi. My father, who knew of my big respect for the great Viktor, bought the Toran ́s book about the final of Baguio against Karpov, where he rallied from 5-2 to 5-5 after 30 games, and lost the last one when the Russians, who could not allow an ex-Soviet to defeat their champion, returned to using the "parapsychologist".

A truly cruel defeat.

So I received from my father a book of prodigy and science fiction that he gave me with the signature of the best senior player in history, to whom he had the pleasure of giving an award, I do not remember which. I think that the author, a brilliant Spanish chess player, was also more of Korchnoi, and he did not think it was good that the Russians did what they did, but the pressures are the pressures and you have to seem impartial.

Many years later, for work reasons, I had to spend the night in Seville, in a Dos Hermanas hotel. The day before I traveled, I discovered that the International Tournament was being held in that same hotel, and that one of the players was Anatoly Karpov, so I took this book with me to try to end the circle.

The day was very hard, too many meetings, so I arrived at the hotel after nine thirty at night. I ran to the room because I didn ́t want to be out of dinner time. I put things down and then pressed the elevator button to get down.

The door opened and a beautiful young blonde appeared. Next to her, the Chess World Champion from 1975 to 1985. He must have realized that I had frozen, because he smiled and waved his hand for me to come in. In the end the 3 of us went to the restaurant, so in one corner they sat and in the other me, the only 3 diners. I had no problem going for the book and asking him to sign it.

Oh! He smiled in surprise when he saw that the book already had Korchnoi's signature. He signed, and he returned it to me as a treasure, which is what it was until I lost track of it a few years ago.

It's what it takes to reach 60: the backpack you carry around the world is getting smaller and smaller.