“The Real Life of WCNers” - IM Michael Schleifer

WCN History Division presents you this year’s greatest hit: "The Real Life of WCNers", a series of biographies of our gold members writen by Luiz Franz.

Today we will show you the real life of one our beloved big bosses, IM Michael Schleifer.

Chess, nice women, fine liquors, bonsai and dancing ballet are the passions of mr. Schleifer – not necessarily in that order. But I confess: Michael really loves himself when he dances Swan Lake in that tight white clothing. He is a Canadian but – surprise! – not a bear, nor a moose, a lumberjack or a mounted police.

Schleifer is a chess player and lives from chess – but Kasparov lives better. Michael started to play chess at the age of 2, but only found out that was not backgammon when he was 17. Mr. Schleifer won his first game two years later (his 96 years old grandma was the victim) and soon after he launched 3 books that changed the Canadian chess scenery: "You don’t need a King to win", "Useless Horses" and "All squares are dark for me". By that time Canada had 14 chess players and Michael reached 42% of that huge market with his books.

He dedicated 17 years, 15 hours a day (except on Mondays, Saturdays, Wednesdays, Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays) to study chess. And developed 26 new openings and 18 new defenses. Unfortunately his theories were not very well accepted in the chess world because he used unusual moves like 7. Nj12(!!!) or 3. Bk10(?). Once he tried even a surprising 16. KxK(!?). "The world is not ready for a broader vision of chess", Michael said.

Downhearted by the criticism Schleifer decided to retire from competitive chess and refused the GM title in protest against the taste of Canadian beers. When his retirement was announced Michael created the sentence that made him famous all over the world: "Chess is 64 squares, 32 pieces and no women around".

Since then Master Schleifer has dedicated his best efforts to WCN, improving the WCN Policy, catching cheaters, laughing a lot at the patzer moves and muzzling innocent people. Intelligent, handsome, owner of a Rolex and an Atari video game, Michael is still looking for the right girl, that really understand him and be rich enough to pay for a month in Greek Islands for the couple.

And he also expects to turn into reality his secret dream – be a star in Le Cirque du Soleil. So far all he got was the role of Buster, the dummy, in The Myth Busters. "Never mind, my day will come", says Michael while moves his rook to the invisible square e11 and plans to attack from behind the opponent’s King in e8.


THE END