Chess is a game of fantasy and intuition

Vladimir Hakobyan – “Chess is a game of fantasy and intuition”

Lilit Nurijanyan
December 15, 2008

Ten year-old Vladimir received many congratulations in school on November 26th. He was proud of his father who had just become an Olympiad champion for the second time. On the evening of November 26th Vladimir along with his brothers, 4 year-old Edward and one and a half year-old Sergei, and mother went to the airport to greet their champion father.

At the age of five Vladimir Hakobyan started to play checkers and even though his dad thought he played well, he didn’t consider it a serious game and that the boy needed to play chess.

“I really didn’t like chess that much because naturally it’s a more complex game. But I learnt how to play and they immediately took me to the best chess school in Baku.” There they examined Vladimir and were dumbstruck by his phenomenal memory. His first coach, Aleksandr Aslanov Vova, told his father that he hadn’t yet seen a boy of his age comprehend everything and reproduce it. This is how Vladimir’s chess career got its start. Right from the start Vladimir started to rack up victories, one after the other. At the age of eight he became a class one player and at eleven a candidate for master sportsman.

When Vladimir was fourteen the Armenian Chess Federation invited him to Armenia where he continued his winning ways by turning a master of the sport at the age of fifteen. Before arriving in Armenia, Vladimir became the under-sixteen world champ at the age of fourteen in Argentina. In Puerto Rico in 1989 he won the title of under-18 world chess champion and in 1999 he won the world chess champ title. By participating in over thirty international tournaments Vladimir easily conquered the highest titles in the game.

All his teammates on the Armenian national chess squad stress Vladimir’s phenomenal memory. It turns out that his grandfather possessed such a memory as well. “I can reproduce all the moves I made in the tournament I played in when I was eight. Everything registers deeply in me. This is why such card games such as ’blot’ and ‘durak’ lose their interest and meaning for me. I simply memorize them. This is why the game appeals to me, the moves are never repeated and the situations are always different. There is always room to create. Chess is a game of fantasy and intuition,” states Vladimir.

Vladimir speaks of his dazzling mental capacities with much modesty and stresses that as a chess player he doesn’t teach chess to any of his three sons since he knows what tremendous efforts it takes to reach the heights in the game. “If they become chess players it will only be one the first level. Today, I am not ranked as one of the top ten players in the world and being in the second group of top ten isn’t much comfort.”

Here is the full story.