He Saved The World Championship!
Interview with FM Hartmut Metz
by GM Mikhail Golubev, October 2004
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He Saved The World Championship!Interview with FM Hartmut Metzby GM Mikhail Golubev, October 2004 |
Hartmut Metz
There are heroes, and there are people who are making these heroes. Interviews with the popular, leading chess journalists are gradually becoming a speciality of our newsletter! We are very grateful to German chess observer, our reader and regular correspondent, FM Hartmut Metz, who agreed to answer our questions via email.
For which newspapers and magazines did you cover the Brissago match?
For about ten or twelve I guess. Except my own newspaper, which has to print the articles (my colleagues are always joking that BT is the only German newspaper which has a full time chess editor) I write for several big newspapers. Some has 500.000 up to 1 million readers. The most important are Financial Times Germany, Die Tageszeitung (TAZ) and Frankfurter Rundschau, which are available in the whole of Germany, and last but not least Basler Zeitung, one of the biggest newspapers in Switzerland.
How long have you been a chess journalist?
For 16 years now. I started with an article about Capablanca's 100th birthday. Astonishingly it was very successful and several chess magazines printed it. Before that I just wrote for student magazines and the magazine of my chess club Rochade Kuppenheim and the magazine of the table tennis club Muggensturm (now I am president and a top player there). Maybe I started earlier in 1987 with my weekly chess column in Badisches Tagblatt. It is the leading newspaper in Baden-Baden and surroundings. Since finishing my studies, I worked for them as an editor. At the moment I am editor-in-chief for the weekly magazine. A brighter audience I got after my story with Clemens Allwermann, the amateur, who won the open in Böblingen, cheating with Fritz.
Please tell us about your books. Are you planning to write a book on Kramnik-Leko?
No. Some people always ask me to write books - but I have other work, and I decline. In the past I made several mistakes: exactly five. All are tournament books. Writing comments (especially stories, which I prefer) about tournaments is what I feel I am able to do, if some Grandmasters annotate the games. Together with Helmut Pfleger, who is the most popular GM in Germany because of his TV chess shows, I started with a book about the world chess championships in 1993. Then I wrote about Munich 1993 (winner Shirov), Horgen 1994 (winner Kasparov), Frankfurt Chess Classic 1999 and last but not least 2000, which is my best book, I think. In Frankfurt-2000 for the first time all top ten players competed at the same place. I like the book because of its high print standard (e.g. all 200 pictures are in colour) and Vishy Anand, Artur Jusupov and a friend of mine Harald Fietz made it exceptional, as most reviewers say. [Ed. Here is the link to the book's web page.]
Which games of the Brissago match have you attended?
Game 7 unfortunately. I drove for about 9 hours from Baden-Baden to Brissago, which is located in the south of Switzerland (very close to the Italian boarder), and back - just to see less than 3 hours chess. More entertaining was the end of the match, when I came back. The last three games especially were thrilling and helped a little bit to forget the awful number of short draws.
World Chess Championship in Brissago
How was the match was covered in the German language media?
In my opinion it was covered very extensively (for chess)! We can not compare it with soccer, which dominates in Germany totally. But most newspapers published the results regularly (some together with the games) and printed from time to time the big articles. The sponsors announced that 156 journalists were in Brissago and 8 TV stations, for example European Broadcasting Union (EBU). And Pfleger made some shows too. So for chess it was pretty good.
Will Dannemann sponsor chess in future, what is your impression? Were the sponsors satisfied with the match?
Indeed they were. On the one hand Hans Leusen, manager of Dannemann Brazil, said that the company has to analyse the coverage first and will announce after that if they go on sponsoring. On the other hand everything I heard in Brissago makes me believe that Dannemann will sponsor chess in future too. Let me point out some reasons: Hans Leusen mentioned that every sponsoring they do continually for years. Christian Burger, owner of the company, likes chess very much and I think they can not get a better advertisement for their money. The World championship did not cost more than 2,5 million Euro, I guess. Everybody mentioned the Centro Dannemann, in which the match took place, and between the players you always can see the Dannemann sign at the wall behind. The advertisement in TV, newspapers and internet is worth more than 10 or 20 million Euro, I am sure. Perhaps it had a value of more than 50 million Euro. So why should they stop sponsoring chess?
Did you manage to interview the players, and other persons, involved in the match?
Of course as a journalist you have to speak with an awful lot of people, who are involved. Most interesting for CT readers seems to be the opinions of Artur Jusupov, and Evgeny Bareev, one of Kramnik's seconds. Both understand well that Leko wanted to stop pressure after a great defence in game 12. Instead of agreeing a draw, he should play on and try to win it. A 7:5 lead would be decisive without any doubt. Jusupov thought that Leko lost the match because of the short draws. So Kramnik had more time to recover, which was not necessary for a sportsman like the challenger. Leko failed to put instant pressure on Kramnik, who had problems with flu too. Joel Lautier has announced that ACP will forbid draw offers before move 40 in their tournaments! Very good - but the rule came too late for Leko.
Is the press capable of making chess attractive for a wide audience?
It is. Most chess writers have always made the same mistake: they write too much about the moves. The wider audience (in the West, at least) do not understand much about chess except how to move the pieces. So it is pointless to mention variations, openings or much about the game except the result and some explanations how the game went in general. It is necessary to write entertaining and funny stories around it. E.g. when we invited the president of the Estonian Chess Federation Carmen Kass to Mainz it was a tremendous success. A lot of publications just wrote about the supermodel and all the TV and radio stations wanted to speak with her. They took pictures when Kass played blitz vs. Anand and Stefanova. Without that only the chess magazines would be interested in the match Anand - Shirov, even if they are both great players! Unfortunately in all the countries only such sports where you have national heroes are at the top. Germany has Michael Schumacher in Formula-1 and, therefore, Formula-1 gets big TV coverage. But even as a small sport you can achieve some goals with the press. As Markus Angst, editor-in-chief of the chess magazine in Switzerland, will publish in his next editorial, I somehow saved the world championship with my articles. Two years ago I wrote stories about Sergey Karjakin as the youngest GM ever and about Alexandra Kosteniuk, whom I called 'the Anna Kornikova of chess'. Christian Burger, the owner of Dannemann, read these articles in Financial Times Germany and decided to organise a match between Karjakin and Kosteniuk! He told me that he did it because of my articles. Of course it is pleasant to hear that you achieve something with your writing, but I forgot it until Carsten Hensel called me once. The manager of Kramnik and Leko asked me if I knew more about Dannemann. I proposed to call Mr. Burger, to ask him about his further goals. Then Kramnik played in Centro Dannemann vs. the German team in February 2004. The rest of the story you know. So you see it is not hopeless for chess! A lot of companies like advertise with our sport, because you need logic and strategy - the companies want to show both to their clients. If they will realise the advantages of our sport, it would be possible to attract more sponsors.
Please, tell us about your opinion on the organisation of the Chess Olympiad 2008.
It would be great if FIDE gives the event to Dresden. But to be honest: I have mixed feelings. I am not sure if they can raise the budget of more than 6 million Euro as they announced and I have the feeling that several people, who are involved, like to earn a lot of money with this Olympiad. Above all I did not like to hear in Brissago from a well informed German chess-player some stories about the Olympiad and about Alfred Schlya, who is the president of the German Chess Federation and the most incompetent guy in chess among those whom I know (even if we include Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in this rating!). Allegedly Schlya told several people at an event that Dresden will get the Olympiad for sure, because they bribed e.g. the Indian federation. And, believe it or not - the Indian federation signed a contract with several arrangements with the German federation these days.
That sounds ridiculous.
It is. But life is full of surprises. Let me tell you a last funny story. Before the World Championship I made an interview with Leko. My first question was about his vegetarian food. The lack of vitamin B12 causes sometimes problems with the nerves and some other stuff. Leko answered, that he has good news for his supporters. He has stopped being a total vegetarian and now eats fish sometimes. After the match I realised that the opening ECO code of the last game was: B12!
This interview appeared in Chess Today, the daily chess news magazine by e-mail. Here are some games by Hartmut Metz:
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Martin,A (2425) - Metz,H (2275) [A11]
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Lukacs,P (2490) - Metz,H (2315) [D36]
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Metz,H (2315) - Enders,P (2480) [B95]
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Kallai,G (2490) - Metz,H (2320) [D17]
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Metz,H (2275) - Prusikhin,M (2440) [B41]
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Metz,H (2325) - Ast,B (1937) [C30]
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Metz,H - Nadj,C [B07]
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