Questions by Tim Wall and Mark Rivlin
GM Danny Gormally is a rare and welcome maverick in England Chess. His no-nonsense approach to putting the game’s and society’s wrongs to right (https://twitter.com/elgransenor1), along with his quirky writing and commentary style (see his master class on player impersonations here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFSHCJcw7Bs provide a refreshing alternative to the rather staid image often associated with chess.
The style of his 2016 book, Insanity, Passion and Addiction: A Year Inside the Chess World, an irreverent account of life on the European circuit – is reminiscent of American beat writers Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac and was well received in the chess community. His chess career highlights include joint first place at the Politiken Cup in 1998 and winning the Hastings Challengers in 2003. In 2006 he was joint winner of the British Rapidplay and joint second in the European Individual Championships. In 2015 he tied for second place with David Howell and Nick Pert behind Jonathan Hawkins in the British Championships in Torquay. Danny also represented England in the 2005 European Team Championships and the 2006 Chess Olympiad. His highest rating to date is 2573, achieved in 2006. He now combines tournament and league chess with writing, coaching, commentary and analysis.
Please give us a short précis of your career to date, including other interests you pursue outside of chess.
I have played chess seriously for over twenty years. I will leave it to others to describe me as a professional when it’s probably more that I don’t do anything else. I also recently finished writing a chess novel which I hope to get published, and so unsurprisingly I am a keen reader and I read anything I can get my hands on.
What are your tips for the club player to improve their calculation ability?
I think the main thing is to play a lot really. There is no substitute for real game practice. But I think with all these Banter Blitz videos online on sites like YouTube, it’s a unique opportunity to see how top players calculate. We didn’t have access thirty or fifty years ago to players like Kasparov and Fischer sharing their thoughts so openly. It was more closed then, so now you have a way to see how top players operate, and how they calculate, and you should take advantage of that.
How would you compare the options for today’s club chess players – books, or watching videos and doing tactical puzzles?
Watching strong players explain their thoughts on such a large scale is perhaps unique to our era. In the past we had the The Master Game but it’s on a different level now. Chess books still have their place. Speaking honestly, I think for many years I fell out of love with chess and the process of improving and studying the game. I took being a strong chess player for granted. But of late I have reawakened my love for the game and particularly for chess books, some of which are far better than others of course, like anything else in life.
I’ve been doing some reviews for CHESS magazine, and a book I would particularly recommend is Together with Mamedyarov. David Howell’s latest video course, Winning Grandmaster Methods: How I Reached 2700, is also excellent.
As for Puzzle Rush and Puzzle Battle – https://www.chess.com/news/view/new-feature-puzzle-battle – there’s no doubt it can help your chess and in a recent online blitz tournament I managed to beat Ameet Ghasi and Julian Hodgson with tactical combinations that I would never have found if I hadn’t become addicted to Puzzle Battle!
In your candid 2016 interview with ChessBase (https://en.chessbase.com/post/an-interview-with-daniel-gormally-1-2) you say, ‘My chess is 40 percent playing, 40 percent writing and 20 percent coaching. But if I’m honest, I’d rather just play all the time, or perhaps even change my career entirely. But all I’ve ever done is chess, so what can I do? Maybe I’m stuck with it forever.’ Four years on, have those percentages and views changed?
For many years I fell out of love with the game. It’s only recently that I’ve realised once again that it’s a blessing to be good at anything, particularly a game that stimulates the imagination and creative process in the way that chess does. I’ve become slightly more excited about things, and the possibility of improving even at a later age, even if my default morose state has not been completely eroded. I think most of my issues relate to money. If I had more money, then I’d probably look on chess more favourably. But it’s easy to blame chess for problems that are mostly self-inflicted. And it’s also true that when I see friends and colleagues doing much better in a financial sense as chess professionals, then that is likely to spark some kind of jealousy. But the onus is on the individual to turn that jealousy into constructive motivation.
Your 2016 book, Insanity, Passion and Addiction: A Year Inside the Chess World, was admired for its brutal honesty and self-deprecation. Do you have plans for more of this kind of writing or are you focusing on chess improvement books?
I hope to get the recently completed chess novel published at some point, and I’m also working on self-improvement courses. The way I want to approach such material is to try and present a thinking- outside-the-box-angle. It’s very easy to write a very clichéd, boring chess book/course and I’ve done enough of those in the past. As a writer, it’s more challenging and exciting to approach chess from slightly more obscure angles.
Should players use computer engines for post-game analysis as part of their training routine?
I was thinking about this the other day, when I asked on a forum if people could send me some games for a course I was writing. When I got some positive replies, what took me back was how obsessed they were with computer evaluations. One player apologised to me about the long annotations and said he doubted that I would be interested in his own analysis, only what Houdini/Komodo was saying.
I said that wasn’t true at all because I was interested in how a player of his level thought, how they approached a position, and how they came about decisions. I was not interested in the computer evaluations at all. Computers have their place, but people have become too obsessed with them. I can’t stress enough the importance of turning them off from time to time and forcing your brain to come to terms with the position. If you keep turning the computer on every time you are stuck, then you’ll become lazy in your analysis, as I know from personal experience.
You’re known for being quite vocal about the issue of cheating in OTB chess. How do you think the chess world can adapt to the growth of online chess, while improving its anti-cheating measures?
I was shocked by the case of [Igor] Rausis, and how he got away with it for so long. It was kind of obvious to me that he was dodgy as his games were too clean. Even when a strong player beats someone with a lower rating, there is normally some kind of struggle, which wasn’t the case with him. And if an experienced Grandmaster can cheat, anyone can. I don’t trust anyone online. The other day I played a friendly match that was set up by a friend of mine – the idea was that I was going to be taking on some juniors, who would decide on the right move through consultation. And even there they cheated! Two of their accounts were later banned. You have to hope that cheaters are in the minority, but the evidence that I’ve accumulated online indicates that there is still far too much of this going on. And I’m not sure how you can stamp it out completely.
Which chess players have most influenced you?
I think this answer mainly depends on your age. I’ve always been fairly good at tactics, and I think that is partly because I was a fan of [Vishy] Anand back in the 1990s.
Your chess commentary and analysis is presented in a way that is user friendly for club players to follow (this video is a typical example – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K36XS9cDaSc) How difficult is it to ‘downsize’ to lower levels of understanding and would you like to do more of the commentary work?
It is difficult at the beginning. It’s easy to disregard other players altogether and get caught up in your own bubble, spitting out variations in machine-gun style. And I’m not even sure that’s a bad thing, because as I said earlier Banter Blitz gives you that sort of platform to show other players how GMs really think.
What advice would you give young players thinking of making chess a potential main source of income?
Get another job! More seriously though – or perhaps not – then you need to have a great deal of passion for the game and be prepared for the kind of lifestyle that comes with it. It’s not a life that comes with its own self-imposed regime and that’s something I’ve struggled with, to impose that discipline myself. If they can deal with it, then why not? I think chess is growing all the time because it’s ideally set up to succeed on the Internet, and the potential scalability is enormous. But the loneliness of being a chess player is also a factor. If you work in a normal job, then you’re more likely to socialise with people on a more regular basis, and the advantages of that should not be underestimated.
How do you cope with the stresses of tournament play? Are there any tips you can recommend to club players who experience similar problems?
Stay away from alcohol! I think a lot of people play tournaments because of the social side, but if you want to win them then you need to be disciplined. You don’t see Luke McShane or Michael Adams going out on the town during the middle of the British [Championships]. I would certainly try and incorporate an exercise regime as well, which should be stuck to during the tournament. You need to relieve some tension. I remember a tournament in Wales a few years ago, and I didn’t do any real exercise during the event, and the amount of physical tension that built up over the course of the event was enormous. Even though I was doing well, when it came to the critical rounds of the tournament I couldn’t really handle the tension and fell apart.
Who are the most promising young players in England today? Do you see any of the current juniors becoming GMs, or even making it to the SuperGM elite?
We haven’t really had any super grandmasters come through for some time, and I think there are a few reasons for this. Firstly, the junior coaching in this country isn’t always as well organised as in some other places, and there’s no encouragement for players to go and work together like they do in India, for example. It’s also the case in the west you can get a much easier life if you don’t follow chess as a career. Players like Alireza Firouzja from traditionally poorer countries like Iran are forging ahead because they are hungrier for success. But there’s nothing to stop a junior player who wants it enough putting in the hours to become a seriously good player. If you are young and hungry enough, nothing can stop you. I think this is the best generation of junior players we’ve had in years, with the likes of Shreyas Royal and Hichen Yan who represents Netherlands but is based in England.