Conversations with Jan Timman

From Inside Chess Magazine, November 15, 1993, Volume 6, Issue 22: Award-winning interviewer Cathy Forbes talked to bon vivant Jan Timman on the eve of his match with Karpov. Parental guidance advised.

Conversations with Jan Timman
by WIM Cathy Forbes

Timman concurs with my characterization of him as an incorrigible bon vivant. He is the archetypal aging playboy and a self-confessed connoisseur of wine, brandy, literature and anything else characterizing the good life. His status as long-time Dutch No. One, his editorship of the influential and respected periodical New in Chess – not to mention his challenge for the FIDE Men’s World Championship – make him a major player. He is also, with his ready wit, erudition and occasionally brutal cynicism, entertaining company.

Raymond Keene once remarked of Timman, “I’m amazed his head hasn’t exploded with drink and drugs,” but Timman reacts indignantly to the suggestion that he was a dropout hippie in his youth. “I was not a hippie, I was a beatnik. I was an outcast, in fact.”

In his youth, Timman was a ladykiller who left scores of victims in his wake. One of them, a Dutch writer named Laurie Langenbach, was so keen on him that she wrote a novel, Secret Love, of which he was the thinly disguised hero. Of this classic, Timman remarks: “The behavior of my character in the book is quite deplorable, but she didn’t make any of it up. I met her mostly at the chess cafe late at night, when I was not sober at all. She was a very intense person. I liked her. I was not in love with her – in fact, I tried to fix her up with my older brother – but one way or another our conversations did not leave her untouched. The funny thing was that after the book was published, I never saw her again.” Timman explained the origin of the author’s unrequited passion, “I think it was my beautiful blue eyes.”

Jan has been married since 1978 to Ilse Dorf, a psychologist and voodoo expert from the Dutch colony of Surinam. He says her beauty reminded him of the singer Miriam Makeba. They met at an arts club in Amsterdam and he pursued her determinedly. “She is a good woman and I am an awful bastard,” he says. Mrs. Timman is not a chess player. Jan remarked: “She does not play chess at all. She is not interested in chess, she is interested in ME!”

Jan has an infectious sense of humor and a very jolly laugh. His habit of appending the word “ja” to every sentence has an idiosyncratically amusing effect.

During the Linares tournament earlier this year, I had many opportunities to talk to the always communicative and sociable Jan. On free days he sallied forth with uncombed hair and utterly undisguised by dark glasses in the direction of the arcades to play Tetris.

“I am going to feed my addiction,” explained the 41-year-old father of two.

Jan is full of fascinating – if frequently unrepeatable – anecdotes, punctuated with bouts of more somber philosophy. The price of absorbing all this, together with the equally free-flowing wine, is usually a hangover. It is a cross one learns to bear.

CF: Tell me some anecdotes about your chess career.

JT: Well, these are always very complicated. They take a lot of hours. I have to get into a good mood, and then the anecdote becomes better, because it doesn’t have to be true necessarily, you know. (Laughter). But okay, let’s make a start.

Both my parents were mathematicians. My father died in 1975; my mother is still alive. I am the third of four children. I learned to play chess when I was eight years old. At first I was a very keen draughts player, but then my older brother more or less forced me to play chess. He just wanted to beat me. I had these old notebooks where I made my notes about chess. I started to play in the junior section of the chess club in Delft, where I grew up, and I think I scored 17.5/18 at age eight. Then at nine I joined the senior players and actually this is probably how I got bronchitis, sitting in those smoky rooms until late in the evening – not very healthy. Then when I was 12, in 1964, I came fourth in the Dutch Junior (under-20) Championship. When I was 14 I became champion. In ’67 in Jerusalem I came third in the World Junior.

My parents hated the idea of my being a professional chess player, especially my father. He was very strongly opposed. He thought it was a very tough life. He thought I should go to university, do some serious study. He always cared very much that his children should get a good position, not waste their talents. Of course, he had noticed that I was quite lazy (laughs).

When I finished high school it was 1970, and this was the time of all sorts of movements, especially in Europe and Amsterdam. We had all sorts of interesting things going on – beatniks, hippies, all sorts of idols like Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones … and nobody really cared very much about what the future might bring.

I didn’t carry a sleeping bag with me, that just wouldn’t do. Instead I had this very old fur coat, torn on all sides. I used this fur coat as a sleeping bag, just to lie down somewhere on the ground.

CF: (surprised) During a tournament?

JT: No. Then I would stay in a hotel. (laughs). But between tournaments I used it for sleeping purposes.

CF: (wanting to be sure) You’d sleep on the ground.

JT: Of course, ja.

CF: Not in a hotel.

JT: Of course not. Why in a hotel? It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford it, I used to win prizes, for example, in Stockholm in ’71 I won 6,000 Swedish kroner, which was quite a lot of money. In a way it was a comfortable life, but, of course, I had to support all sorts of other outcasts. There was Hans Bohm, for instance. He had some income from gambling, he was an excellent gambler, but he tended not to be very good at chess.

We would travel – to Yugoslavia, Ljubljana, for example – find the best blitz players in town, earn some money hustling at blitz so that we could buy some slivovitsa [plum brandy].

After I finished high school, I planned to go to university to do mathematics, to pacify my father, but there was a huge queue to get in there, so I got some temporary piece of paper to delay my military service, but I never actually did any studying. Eventually the police started looking for me to get me to do my military service. They finally found and arrested me in 1975, after they discovered I was this chess player making some good results, but not so good in studies. I had just become Dutch champion for the second time, and these civilian police, which we called style police, because they were in civilian clothes, collared me at the prize giving ceremony and took me to this military prison camp. Unsurprisingly, the headline in all the main newspapers the following Monday morning was “Dutch Chess Champion Arrested.”

They locked me up with some criminals, it was really amazing. I’m not sure I fit in too well. One guy was a drug dealer, the other guy had actually murdered someone –nice company. And in the prison they had these really noisy little birds, awful little birds who get up, you know, very early. They make a lot of noise, to make sure you wake up at 6 a.m.

I told them, “You can lock me up in jail, but I will not serve in the military.”… [The captain] was quite a sensible man – he wanted to get rid of me. He said, “We don’t want your sort in the army.” He moved me to the soldiers’ room, which was a slight improvement, and helped me write a request to the minister. There were some conditions; I was not allowed to talk to journalists, and the deal was that I would not refuse military service, and then the worst they would ask me was to work in the library or something. They decided that I was serving society in some sort of way, by playing chess. This did a lot of good for other chess players. When they were called up they could just say, “I am also a chess player.” (Laughs).

CF: Did you actually get a university degree, in the end?

JT: No, of course not. Once I visited a lecture, but then I thought – oh, well! That was it. (Laughs).

CF: Did you take a lot of drugs in those years?

JT: Oh, this is a good question. This I forgot. (Laughter) I mean, I was quite moderate, if you compare me with some of my friends who are not alive any more.

CF: But did you smoke a lot of dope? I mean, if President Clinton can say he does…

JT: Clinton said that?

CF: He said he smoked, but he didn’t inhale.

JT: Oh … that’s very stupid. (Laughter). I’m not sure. In Holland, of course, we are very liberal… And I have another problem. When my children get to read this, I will not be setting a good example… but actually I had a very good nose. I could distinguish the countries where the hash would come from – Lebanese, Nepalese, Moroccan, Turkish.

CF: You were a connoisseur.

JT: Yes, of course. I actually like the smell of hash, that’s what I like most. But it’s not good for your memory, of course. I once played a game when I had smoked something, against Hans Ree in 1973. I won the game. I did some experiments, analysing after smoking some hash, and I would get some tremendous ideas, but I wouldn’t remember them afterwards. And sex, of course, is much more enjoyable after smoking hash.

CF: Do you find the FIDE no-smoking rule a bit of a pain?

JT: (puffing away) I never smoke during a game. Chess is a narrow way. I leave all pleasure. It is a time without pleasure, yes.

You may not really follow this. People normally go for fun, for pleasure, but chess players, through this very narrow way, try to get to God. Maybe if you become a world champion, you might see God, who knows.

CF: What did you achieve in your two years as President of GMA?

JT: Well, less than before, when I was Vice-President, when Bessel Kok was still very active in the GMA. I think together we formed quite a good team to get things done.

CF: Nigel Short was your deputy, wasn’t he?

JT: Yes, and [Bachar] Kouatly. But Kouatly offered his resignation, because he failed to get a speed chess circuit organized. This had failed before in an attempt by Kasparov and Page.

CF: What were you hoping to achieve as President? What sort of things were you working for?

JT: What I was trying to achieve was a second World Cup, and I was not the only one. Lubosh [Kavalek] tried very hard and he was very disappointed when it fell apart, which was why he offered his resignation and I was actually the last founding member left. I also was very disappointed that we could have only one World Cup tournament in Reykjavik and it was quite clear around that time that there was little hope to organize more.

CF: Did you have any other ideas about what the GMA was for?

JT: Actually, I forgot to mention quite an important aspect… the Marovic project. It was my idea to ask Marovic to organize some sort of, well, professional education system for chess players in Third World countries. To send retired Grandmasters to all sorts of areas in the world where they can help the really talented players –not necessarily the players selected by the federations, because sometimes these are just the same master delegates at the FIDE congresses (laughter). This is one reason why the GMA wants to have at least some percentage from the World Championship Match prize fund, because that way we can continue with this project.

CF: You have said that since your resignation as President of the GMA you can speak more freely about certain issues.

JT: Yes, of course. I can give my own opinions.

CF: Can you give me any examples of opinions that you can now give which you wouldn’t have given before?

JT: Well, let’s say at one time, for example, we had a certain compromised position on the Board about playing schedules for matches and tournaments. It’s not very important now exactly how this was, but, I mean, when I was speaking to [the] press, I was asked not to give my personal opinion, especially by (chuckle) … by Mr. Kasparov.

CF: So you had to speak collectively?

JT: Ja. For example, I am one of only a few top players who still likes adjourned games … The GMA had a different policy about adjourned games. Not many people share my feeling, but if you look at my match against Nigel, you can see that there was a huge interest from the public, especially in the adjourned games. People were very curious about what the outcome would be. I think it’s an aspect that’s very appealing for the public, people who don’t necessarily know much about chess. Analyzing adjourned games really intrigues people. That’s one of the reasons; of course, another is that I like analyzing adjourned games.

CF: But don’t you think that it can sometimes come down to who has the best computer program?

JT: Well, that might be true, but in many cases adjourned positions are endgame positions and this is one of the weak spots in computers. I’m not talking about programs with several million positions which are totally worked out. That is something else … I am just talking about the sort of position I had against Nigel. He did a very good job analyzing it, actually better than me – I was tired at the time – and I don’t think he used any computer. I mean, I understand that the future will be problematical, but for the time being it is still possible to have adjourned games that are not analyzed better by the computer.

CF: What are Short’s chances against Kasparov?

JT: He will have a chance if he works very hard on his opening repertoire. He is a very talented player, very resourceful, and I think he has also mastered his nerves quite well recently. Of course, it is very important to start well against Kasparov, because then Kasparov will be nervous, if he doesn’t get the dream start he is hoping to have … but Short’s problem, of course, is that he is an e4-player exclusively; once he tried d4 against Kasparov, but this was not a success. So that already makes things more difficult. I don’t know whether it’s possible to switch so quickly. Kasparov is obviously the favorite in the match, because he is a much harder worker.

Most important, Kasparov has much the better chess upbringing. He didn’t waste so many years like we did. I mean, these guys in these Pioneers’ Palaces … not guys like Kramnik, because they are like we are, just good guys, you know, smoke a lot, drink a lot… but these other guys, this serious generation – Kasparov is the last of them – they were selected when they were eleven: Spassky, Karpov, Kasparov. They didn’t play so often, be cause they should not fail, like Nigel at the Phillips and Drew in 1980 and 1982. We are not so serious in our approach, but they are killers, they are created as killers, and that’s what we miss. Of course, Nigel has a very good killing mentality and Lubosh Kavalek can help him with that, because he is also a very cool person. If Nigel is optimally prepared, I would give him a 40 percent chance, but this is very conditional, conditional on him creating surprises for Kasparov.

One interesting thing about Nigel, which you can see with many prodigies, is that in a way he is still a kid. He is very boyish. Actually, I am more or less the same, although I was not a prodigy – I am still a boy. But Nigel, for example, very often says what he thinks – especially to the press, and this can harm him. I have learned not to say exactly what I think, on the record …

CF: What is your impression of Nigel as a person? He seems to have got more serious as he has got older. He used, for example, to wear T-Shirts, flares and long hair and as he’s become more ambitious, he’s smartened up his act, hasn’t he?

JT: Are you sure that this is true? I’m not so sure. He still is not very serious. I mean, he might be well behaved, his accent might have changed, he might wear suits, but this doesn’t say so much about his personality. But, of course, you can make a comparison with Bobby Fischer, who wore sweaters for a long time and then suddenly started to realize that he should become a respected member of society, so he bought all these suits. He looked very decent after that, and then he became World Champion.(Laughs).

CF: Has Nigel ever struck you as a potential World Champion?

JT: No.

CF: Because?

JT: He had an extreme quantity of good luck in the cycle, so that can continue, even in the match with Kasparov. But my intuition tells me … Nigel would not be a great Champion. But, on the other hand, Euwe was Champion and he wasn’t very impressive, so from that point of view he could become a World Champion (Laughs).

CF: What do you think of Nigel’s dabbling in politics?

JT: Oh no, this is ridiculous. The same with Kasparov. I don’t understand this. I mean, we are just chess players. We are, let’s say, half intellectuals or something like that, but if you’re a politician, this is ridiculous – just degrading yourself.

CF: So you think Nigel should stick to chess?

JT: No, not necessarily. You might have a keen interest in literature, for example, become a chess writer or some thing like that, which is something I did myself.

I even wrote some articles which were not related to chess. I also once gave a lecture about my favorite book. I worked quite hard on that. Actually, it was not really my favorite book, but I had to make a choice. Not something too deep, like Kafka – so many people have written about Kafka, so I did not think my contribution would be very significant, so I chose a book by Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast, which is an awful book, but it’s also a very interesting book. And I was actually studying a lot of literature about Indian tribes in Honduras and well, I think it was an interesting sort of lecture. They told me they had never had a lecturer like me before (Laughs).

My favorite chess books? Well, my favorite games collections are Bobby Fischer’s My 60 Memorable Games and Kasparov’s The Test of Time. These are outstanding books. My own books? Well, let me stress that they are all outstanding books. The second edition of my book The Art of Chess Analysis is, well, one of the classics. Chess Work I and II, these are also very good books. And there is The Small Path, which would translate better into English as The Narrow Way, about my experiences in the World Championship cycle from 1972 up to my loss against Yusupov. Of course, if I become World Champion, I shall have to update this.

CF: You have made quite a big contribution to chess literature.

JT: Yes, but I unfortunately am not a very good businessman. Only Dutch readers so far can enjoy, let’s say, this legacy (Laughs).

CF: Tell me about your match with Nigel. You said that he was lucky against you.

JT: Did I say that?

CF: Yes, you said it at dinner, several times.

JT: Oh, ja, during dinner, but, of course, that was off the record. (Laughs).

CF: But if it was your objective opinion that at certain moments he was lucky…

JT: Ja, of course, you need to be lucky to win a match, if there is not so much difference in strength. You need to be lucky at crucial moments, this is quite clear. What I probably meant to say was that such a match sometimes depends on the fact that someone slept very badly before a crucial game.

CF: Or that someone has food poisoning?

JT: Er, yes. That can also be grounds for some extremely bad luck on one side.

CF: Didn’t you say that if you hadn’t suffered from food poisoning in the third game, after winning with Black in the second game – that if it wasn’t for this piece of bad luck, you would have beaten him very badly?

JT: That’s how I felt at the time. On the other hand, Nigel can claim that he was very nervous during the first two games, and that that was HIS bad luck (Laughs).

CF: Do you think Nigel has become more sadistic, more homicidal as a chess player?

JT: “Maybe. Maybe I should become more like that, but I am a bit old for it. (Laughs)… I try to concentrate, but when you think for fifty minutes over a position and then blunder, then something is wrong. I do not know why I blunder. Chess life can be a nightmare sometimes. I had a dream the night before I played Kasparov (in Linares). It reminded me of the film Apocalypse Now.”

He rambles on about trying to arrange a match with Kasparov to be played on the Jewish Sabbath, being shut in a dark room during the match with Short in San Lorenzo, and Artur Yusupov going for a swim with Campomanes.

“There is no news of Kasparov. He is quite wary. I don’t see him anymore. My final thought in the dream was, ‘You are a bastard.'”

CF: Kasparov is a bete noire for you, isn’t he?

JT: (laughing) “He’s a scapegoat guy. He’s a devil. Number thirteen. He is an awfully good chess player. No, no – no jealousy, I am a good sportive person. Whenever I lose, he (the opponent) is good. Better not to see the person very well, not to see him at all, because this person, these people are so DIRTY. They’re just COMMIES.”

Jan recalls an encounter with Boris Spassky in which Spassky said that he intended to resign, but for some obscure reason having to do with adjournment scheduling, wanted to play on for a while.

“I was quite upset, I must say, because I am just not used to this sort of thing, and I continued to play – badly, of course, because I didn’t have any concentration left, and I almost messed it up. Then we adjourned, at nine o’clock, and Spassky told me something very interesting. He told me: ‘I’m sorry. I told you before that I was going to resign, but I didn’t realize at the time that the position was not so hopeless as I thought… It was a ridiculous situation. We were adjourned, what could I say? He tried to resign on a couple of occasions later on, but I didn’t want to accept. He had resigned already. How could I accept another resignation? (Laughs). I still do not know what to think of this. It’s not funny, it’s sad. That was actually the worst experience I had, because I respect Spassky a lot. He’s a great champion. What can I say? We are still good friends.”

We move on to discuss relative degrees of moral depravation.

JT: I’m much worse than you. I’m arrogant. I consider myself a vastly superior human being to most other people. I consider ninety-five percent of people to be just total creeps and awful…

CF: (surprised) In chess?

JT: No, in the world. Did I say ninety-five percent? I should have said ninety-nine.

CF: People in general? Total creeps and awful?

JT: Yes. Not worth even any consideration at all. Greedy, you know. Just take whatever they can get. Like your compatriot, Nigel Short. I’m quite pessimistic from this point of view.

CF: Do you feel lonely in the world without your father?

JT: Well, I had [Jan Hein] Donner. Donner was my second father. After Donner, yeah, probably there was no father figure after that. I meet him in my dreams, sometimes. I write down my dreams in my special dream book and no one is allowed to read it, except for my wife.

CF: Are you more sentimental and nostalgic now that you are older?

JT: No, I was more sentimental when I was younger. I’m much tougher now.

Jan is outwardly cheerful, but I sometimes thought I detected a hint of sadness. I asked him if he was sad about anything.

JT: No, I’m not sad… it’s hard to judge … I was sad last year because it was a very bad year. The war in Yugoslavia, and all sorts of things that went wrong … but I cannot tell you what I really think. You will think I’m crazy.

If Jan is sad about anything, it’s the state of the world, his conviction that it won’t last much longer, and frustration at being unable to do anything about it. He noted the mischievously destructive tendencies of mankind, cited the splitting of the atom as one of humanity’s darkest hours, and admitted that chess and other relaxations served admirably as distractions from this depressing state of affairs.

I don’t think he’s crazy.