The BCC did repay me

hat wasn't actually going, or at least not for two or three days, which would have

been a bit tricky with the first round starting the next day. We were all rushing

around. Dave Norwood was the captain and he went off to British Airways and

tried to persuade them to give us free tickets. In the end we managed to find some

seats on a Croatian airline and 1 put all the tickets on my visa card, as no one else

had a high enough limit. The BCC did repay me; I have to say that, to be fair to

them.

Although it started off pretty badly, it all went well from then and we were lead‑

ing going into the last round and managed to win on tie-break against the Russians.

There was also another thing that happened. At this time Tara was at home and she

was basically filling in the pond in the garden. And on the day that we were actually

winning the gold medal on tie-break she found the Koi carp that 1 now have over

there, Alamo.

(Mickey points to his bilge fish lank, and the massive Kol Alamo, which always has a calming

and somewhat hypnotic Oa on dinner guests).

So 1 think that it was finding the fish that enabled England to win the European

Team Championship.

One of my most recent money-making ideas is chess Trivial Pursuit. Would

this appeal to you or do you like to completely separate chess and personal

time?

I'm not too big on thinking about chess when I'm not playing or working on it, but

it does sound like it might be fun. I don't think that I'd play too often but I might

try it a couple of times.

Do you seek to find beauty or simply victory?

I'm not interested in beauty too much when I'm playing; I'm just looking to win the

game.

What do you consider to be your best game?

There aren't too many games that I consider to be great from start to finish; it's

difficult to say. I quite like my game against Ivanchuk, quite a few years ago now,

just because at some stage he ends up in zugzwang with quite a lot of pieces on the

board. It's quite pretty. I would hope to play a better one, but wouldn't we all.

Michael annotated this game himself in Chess in the Fast Lane. I have included

some of his original annotations, which are marked MA and written in italics.

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