Aftersun

Interviewed by Anastasiya Karlovich, Grandmaster and Chairman of FIDE Trainers’ Commission Adrian Bohdanovych Mikhalchishin spoke at length about Mariya Muzychuk and her chances in the upcoming Women’s World Chess Championship match with 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) from China. Here are some related passages:

You are a countrymen with current Women’s World Champion Mariya Muzychuk and her sister Anna and you know both sisters very well. How can you evaluate Mariya’s success in Sochi? Could you expect such a great result? Of course, nobody expected it! The sisters’ trainer, famous GM Alexander Beliavsky told me, that before the Championship he could not train Mariya, as she was terribly sick. Mariya was not the main target for Alexander as he was training Anna mainly and Mariya was like an additional person during their trainings! But it was something like Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God”! So now the Women’s World Championship Match will take place in Lviv. How important is it for Ukraine? I think it is extremely important event in the current political situation. There are first signs which shows that chess is becoming more popular in Lviv. From September 2015 the chess lessons will start in every school! We hope that chess players will get back their chess club, which was closed 10 years ago. Nowadays we have more than 20 Grandmasters in Lviv, but there is no place to hold training sessions! FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov supports this process very much. Do you have any estimation about the possible outcome of the Women’s World Championship Match? How can you describe both players and their advantages and disadvantages? Mariya is called Miss Tactics, like young Mikhail Tal, and Hóu Yìfán is incredibly mature chess player. I would say that she is like young Boris Spassky, an incredibly universal player. So everybody has to try to take her opponent to her own territory. They are both very young and can improve considerably. Mariya’s trainer Alexander Beliavsky told her: “You’ll be the real World Champion just when you’ll win the match!”. For Mariya this period of preparation for the match is crucial – she can become the great player, but she needs really to work hard, especially to study a lot of classics. Her situation reminds me the period when Tal won the match against Botvinnik at the age of 23. He was describing his feelings and said: “My head is full of sun”. The same applies to Mariya at the moment – she is on heaven. So, she must go down and start to work hard. Otherwise it can be over like it happened to Tal in his second match against Botvinnik. What kind of scenario of the Match will be interesting for you? Of course, it would be interesting to see how Hóu Yìfán will play in case if she is losing the match. She was always starting with the upper hand. Considering the fact that both of them will have good trainers, it will be interesting to see some novelties in the openings.

• Anastasiya Karlovich, Interview with the Chairman of FIDE Trainers’ Commission Adrian Mikhalchishin, Fédération Internationale des Échecs, August 5, 2015

Grandmaster Adrian Bohdanovych Mikhalchishin analysing with Grandmaster Anna Muzychuk in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 8, 2013. Photo: ChessBase GmbH.