The International Arbiter Jürgen Müller, who is judging at the Students-Grandmaster’s Cup of RSSU in Memoriam of Alexander Pochinok, gave a short interview to the correspondent of the Moscow Open official web site.
- Mr. Müller, you are here, at Moscow Open, for the third time. So what do you think of this event? What makes you keep coming here?
- I come here because from those two visits I’ve had such great impressions of this tournament that I keep coming. Last year I couldn’t come because of some health problems and I was very proud when Mr. Kostiev had asked me if I could come this year.
I also really like Russian chess instruction, the Russian school of chess, and I want to get my chess education here and transfer it to Germany - how tournaments are organized, how chess is studied in Russia. By the way, Russian chess player Alexey Erofeev has been working in my Chess club in Germany for a year already.
- Please tell me about your Chess club and your chess activity in Germany.
- My Chess club is located in Bad Königsofen, which is a small village with about 5000 inhabitants. Our women’s team is the German national champion. Girls from Russia – Valentina Gunina, Olga Girya, Anastasia Savina, Irina Zakurdjaeva and Julia Gromova – are playing for our team.
As for my activity… Mark Twain said: "A person with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds." So I have an idea to create a Chess center with tournament hall, rooms and so on. And I’d like to invite professional Russian chess coaches and invest, for the time being, 5 million euros.
- Is there already some ground for your idea?
- There’s an old school, and it’s been closed for few years. I want to buy this building and transform it to a Chess center where we can organize not only tournaments, but also arbiters’ seminars, chess instruction – everything about chess and maybe some other sports like bridge.
- As I was told, you have cooperated with Anatoly Karpov.
- Yes, it’s true. In July Anatoly Evgenievich and I opened a Chess school in my hometown. Anatoly Karpov visited my town, my house and signed his name in the Golden Book of Bad Königsofen. We had a large event at the Central Market Place gathering a crowd of 3,000 – live chess with human chess pieces. So it was the first step in the direction towards the Chess center.
- That’s great! And now the traditional question: what’s your impression of Moscow?
- Moscow... It’s a town fun and terrible, both at the same time (laughing). A person becomes fascinated by it. It’s my seventh time in Moscow and I do like it.
- Thank you and good luck!
- Thank you!
Interview by Eteri Kublashvili