November 2002
2002 Grand Prix Siblings
Arun and Adam Basulevic
At NSCF tournaments you can spot a number of siblings playing chess.
They are often among the top achievers.
Notable examples are 2001 and 2002 Grand Prix finalists Austin and Courtney Kaplan,
and the White Plains High School duo of Jennifer and Michael Casinelli.
The latest to distinguish themselves are
Arun and Adam Basuljevic.
Arun is the 2002 Grand Prix K/1 Champion, and Adam placed fifth in the 2002 Primary section.
Adam's USCF rating places him among the top players in the nation under the age of 9.
After one of their tournament successes this year,
NSCF web editor Ed Eusebi managed to capture the dynamic duo in a room along with their mother Aileen
long enough to extract the following interview.
Ed: What do you guys want to be? Have you thought about what you want to do when you grow up? Do you want to be chess players?
Arun: I want to be a chess player and a soccer player.
Adam: And I want to be a meteorologist and I want to be a chess player, if I can. Even my baby brother Alan knows how to play chess a little bit.
Ed: Oh, there's going to be three of you. All with names that start with A.
Your Mom's going to have to play so you have a team. You can call it the 'A' team.
Aileen: Mom just doesn't have time to concentrate on the game.
Arun: She knows how to play. She used to play with her brother.
Ed: Maybe, you three can get together with your dad and have a team.
Aileen: Right.
Arun: My dad wants to do that. But he doesn't know if he can do it.
Ed: Can you guys beat your dad at this point?
Adam: Yeah. We mostly beat him, but sometimes we lose against him because we make mistakes.
Aileen: Because you don't want him to feel bad. That's the real reason.
Adam: And some times we make mistakes.
Ed: I played against a team in the U.S. Amateur Team Championships on which the children
were the top two boards and the parents were the other two boards.
Aileen: Oh really. I can see that happening. It's true.
Ed: So, meteorology ... Did you want to be an astronomer, a researcher, a weatherman?
Adam: A weatherman.
Arun: Yeah, he's a map man.
Ed: Well, you have the gift of gab so you'd probably be good up there on the TV screen.
Aileen: That's for sure. He's never at a loss for words, right Adam?
Adam: Nope, I'm never lost. I'm always blabbing off my big mouth.
Ed: So for you, Arun, it's chess and soccer?
Arun: I'm going to play soccer and I'm going to be a coach. My dad used to play soccer when he was fourteen. That's why I want to play. He taught me how to play.
Ed: Soccer is moving the ball around a lot. Bobby Fischer once said that chess is like
basketball, because you have to move the ball around a lot. Soccer's like that too.
You have to keep looking around for an opening.
When you finally find an opening, you take your shot.
Arun: Is he an International Grandmaster?
Adam: He once was.
Ed: He was best in the world once. He's still a Grandmaster. You keep your title for life.
Aileen: Would you like to be that some day?
Arun: I want to be like Capablanca.
Ed: He was unbeatable. He was a practically unbeatable World Champion.
Aileen: He was practically unbeatable? You want to be like that?
Adam: I want to be like Emanuel Lasker.
Arun: Uh-huh.
Ed: Do you know about Capablanca's chess style?
Arun: I saw him play Alekhine on the computer. And he won.
Ed: Capablanca was a positional player.
Rather than attacking and sacrificing a lot, a positional player likes to be sure that all his
pieces are in the right position. He waits for an opening and he tries to encourage errors.
Capablanca used to play the openings differently from the way the classical people played
the openings. They used to have all these rules: develop knights before bishops and don't move
pieces twice and so on and so forth. Capablanca would do that except when he saw a chance to get
an advantage in the opening. Then he might move a piece a second time - move a knight,
move a pawn, ... in order to force a weakness in his opponent's position or gain space for himself
or cramp his opponent. Keep his opponent from doing what he wants to do.
Arun: Because positionally he knows when to attack using one thing that throws a player off.
Ed: Exactly. Normally, you're not supposed to attack with one or two pieces,
you want to attack with an entire army.
So, in order to do that you have to build up your game and make sure you can get everything
behind your attack.
Adam: My favorite player is Fischer. I like him because he plays different things.
He doesn't just do the same regular opening all the time.
Ed: Fischer used to really like e4. He would say e4, best by test. But as black he
played c5, the Sicilian opening. Which was very aggressive.
Adam: When he played Spassky, one time, he beat him because it was a surprise opening
and he didn't play e4 he played c4, the English opening.
Ed: You've been going over some of those games? Good.
Adam: At game 21 when he had to win one more point to win,
Spassky played real good, but then he just made one mistake and Fischer took the advantage. But then he dropped out because of political rules against him when he was supposed to
play Karpov. And then he started making up this new game - called FischerRandom.
Ed: Right. FischerRandom. Did you know that Fischer was also the one who introduced the time
delay clock to chess?
Adam: Oh, yeah. The five second delay.
Ed: What you noted about Fischer is interesting.
It was said of him he likes to follow the truth wherever it may lead him.
He could play any part of a game.
He wouldn't say I don't want to get into an endgame because I can't play the end game.
He would play the opening well; he'd play the middle game well; he'd play the end game well.
Adam: Sometimes, I'm not that good at the endgame.
Ed: Probably by the time you get into the endgame, in the K/1 and Primary Sections,
there's already a big material difference.
So you don't get to learn the endgame skills.
But say in the last round, you might find yourself in a very close endgame because you're
pitted against someone who's just as good as you are.
So the time to know the endgame is when it counts the most. Your last round game today was pretty
close, Adam, wasn't it?
Adam: He had the game won with better attacking.
I don't know why he didn't take advantage of me.
Ed: I don't know if he had it won or not.
Adam: I kept asking for a draw because I thought I was going to lose.
Ed: He had more space than you.
Adam: Yeah. He had a lot more space. But then I saw he made a blunder and then I took advantage and then he started asking me for a
draw and I said no thanks.
Ed: Though there was an earlier point at which he had his pawns in the center and got an
advantage. You let him push his pawn to d5; that's when he got the extra space.
Adam: Yeah. Then I looked at his queen and he couldn't get it over to help his king
and certain stuff like that.
Ed: And so you switched over and attacked on the kingside.
Some times you have to change your plans, you can't stick with just one plan.
So that was played very well. And Runi, I see you take a lot of your opponent's pieces,
don't you? Good timing - when they make a mistake, you take advantage of it.
Arun: Yeah.
Ed: What's your favorite kind of opening?
Arun: I don't really know. I use e4 or e5.
Adam: I don't like to tell anybody my openings.
Ed: Ah-hah. He's a real professional.
Adam: Sometimes I play the French.
Arun: Adam said Capablanca didn't really know any opening games,
he just played and won a lot.
Aileen: I think that's kind of what you do. You just - however you feel at
that particular time you just play that way. Is that how you are?
Arun: Uh-uh.
Ed: You improve by playing. That's the best way to improve.
But you also have to, at some point, have to start reading books and
understanding what your opponents are trying to do. Have you started to read yet?
Aileen: Since we're in Kindergarten, we read, but we're not up to that level of reading.
Arun: I read chess puzzles. It shows you mates.
Ed: The work book? Or ...
Adam: David Norwich wrote it.
Ed: Adam, what about you. Do you do any chess preparation?
Adam: Yeah, I read Pandolfini's Traps and Zaps book.
Ed: So, what sections are you guys playing in in the new season?
Aileen: Championship and primary, right?
Ed: So Arun, do you think you'll be the Primary Grand Prix Champion? (Ed's Note: Arun is playing in the elementary section and is among the leaders)
Arun: Yeah. I'm going to be a Grandmaster.
Ed: That's a big challenge.
Ed: Adam, you're rated over 1200, so you'll be in the Championship.
Adam: I think I can beat a lot of kids there.
Ed: Win or lose, you'll learn a lot. Anyway, I wish you luck. Time to go get today's trophies.
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