Parody Interview in Honor of the Late Anthony Miles (He Would Have Been 59 on April 23)

What follows is a parody interview published eight years ago by ChessCafe.com, as an April Fool's joke and as an honor to the late Tony Miles. The interviewee is the fictional character Tony Meters. In the interview, Tony Meters bashes a fictional character named Eric Swiller, a parody of Eric Schiller. ChessCafe.com received many nasty letters about that. The result of this fallout and much other work from the early part of my chess writing career can be found in Engaging Pieces: Interviews and Prose for the Chess Fan.

A Conversation with Anthony Meters, America's Fastest Improving IM
by Howard Goldowsky

If you’ve been reading Frederic Heffner’s online chess-news magazine, NotChasteBase.com, you’ve probably heard, by now, about the unprecedented tournament success of one Connecticut Yankee, Anthony Meters. Just fourteen months ago, Meters was a class-C player, and today he is an IM-elect. The rapidly improving 47-year-old family man and father of three, recently completed his third IM norm – the oldest American to do so in sixteen years – and will receive the title at the upcoming FIDE congress in Turino, Italy. Meters, in fact, has raised his rating faster than any other titled
chess player in history, including the venerable Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess player of all time. Kasparov, coincidentally, was interviewed in these same esteemed Skittles Room pages just last week. So, to continue ChessCafe's tradition of excellence in interviewing, we bring you a conversation with America’s most recent IM to be. In April, ChessCafe cornered Meters at the Foxwood’s Open, where we were delighted to learn about his spouse’s reading habits, his thoughts on chess promotion, his soft spot for Jan Shady, and a whole lot more. You will not believe what this guy has to say.

Read on…

So, Anthony, what is it about Chess Wife that your spouse likes so
much?

Well, usually most articles in Chess Wife are geared towards the wife – you know, stuff about where to go shopping during tournaments, tips on burning chess books, that sort of thing. There was even a 4-page pictorial a few months ago, featuring the most eligible chess playing bachelors. Each of them posed in the buff, save a chessboard rolled around their limp bishop, if you know what I mean. Recently, however, Chess Wife has made an attempt to broaden its horizons, publishing articles with the husband in mind. For instance, a recent article by Sin Taylor documented his whoring and drinking while living it up in Budapest during a First Saturday of the Month
tournament there. Now, that’s what I would call a man’s article. It even had some good games, too, you know. I think the magazine is trying to reach out to a broader, less gender-biased demographic, and they’re doing a stellar job.

What other chess publications do you read?

One of the reasons I read chess publications is to put a finger on the pulse of the chess community. Let me explain: Susan Bipolar, for instance, has literally gone mentally ill trying to promote our game. She’s in the news, brainwashing the media about her accomplishments, every other day, it seems. And will you not throw up if you see another picture of her and a bunch of 10-year-old girls, holding trophies, smiling in a hotel lobby somewhere? Do you think these girls like chess more than, say, NFL football? No, of course not. They’re just in it for the free computers and the free nail polish. One more thing: This needs to be said for her benefit – Susan never steals content from other websites, and she never uses
ghostwritten material from Paulways Wrong, her lover (I mean, friend) and PR man – this just needs to be said for the record.
Also, I read the wonderful international magazine edited by Dirk Jan ten Grammargone, So Few In Chess. The name of this magazine, as you know, is a remnant from the old days when chess was just not as popular as it is now. DJtG has perfect command of English punctuation – absolutely perfect! He places commas exactly where they belong, and he uses parenthesis and brackets with the utmost skill. How many chess journalists can do that? Every American classroom should teach punctuation using So Few In Chess as a guide. If we do this, we can make chess as popular as poker.

What are some other areas where we can improve the popularity of chess?

I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s start with the USCF. They need to raise their somewhat low membership dues from $49 per year to, say, $100 per year, so that they can make Chess Wife a color magazine. Regarding that pictorial I mentioned before, my wife would have killed to see the bulging muscles and tight buns of Hideous Nadalooker in full-chromatic splendor. Another problem with the USCF is their slow turnaround with OTB ratings. I mean, online, I get my games rated instantly. But the USCF forces me to wait, in some cases, almost two full days for my rating to update – can you
imagine that, two full days! What are these people at the USCF thinking? And what are these people who publish chess books thinking? Take Gamble Publications, for instance. Their name describes them perfectly because you risk losing, what, over $30 now every time you buy one of their books? Not only does their books’ punctuation suck, but their books’ titles are boring,
and the plagiarism they pass for content is about as useful as an ice scraper in Hawaii. In general, the only solution I can think of to improve the quality of chess books – and this is obvious – is to raise their prices.

So, let’s talk more about you, Anthony. Tell me something about your rapid rating increase.

Well, you know, I’ve been following a training program invented by this fellow, Cant Make de la Masta. A few years back, he wrote a series of articles titled “900 Points in 400 Days.” I read them, and this is exactly how I got so good, so fast. Basically, I just read these articles and the rating points came – like magic – and it’s my understanding that I’m actually not the only person to improve using these methods.

If his methods are so powerful, where are all the other new adult IMs?

Truthfully, I don’t know. If you read his book, you’ll see alleged
testimonials from people who improved just like I did. But, do you now what? All of these testimonials are lies. It’s a marketing ploy. He has this training program called the Satan Circles, where, on the last day of the program, you need to practice making both live animal sacrifices as well as sacrifices with chess pieces on a board. You need to sit for, like, ten straight hours, solving chess problems and slicing, at an average of one neck every 30 seconds, the heads off various rodents and squirrels. It’s quite a tedious and emotionally painful process, and it’s quite hard to find the time commitment to do this. Frankly, you know, I don’t believe many people completed the program. But I did.

Interesting.

Well, you know, Caissa’s a woman and she has her needs. But just
remember: If you appease her with the right sacrifices, she will reward you in the end…

OK. Let’s move on. Have any other chess books influenced you in a special way?

As a matter of fact, yes. Eric Swiller has been a big influence on me.
Rudolph Spielmann’s wonderful book, The Art of Sacrifice in Chess, was rewritten by Swiller and titled, Attack Like A World Champion With Rudolph Spielmann. Spielmann’s original book is a decent treatise on attack and how to grab the initiative. Swiller, in his element, however, totally out-writes Spielmann, (I mean, isn’t the title just great?), and explains ideas way better than even the old master ever could. Swiller has provided me with all kinds of great ideas about chess, and I don’t even know where to begin to praise
him.

So, by reading de la Masta and Swiller, you’ve become a great player. There were rumors that you bribed FIDE with $3,000 for your third norm. Is this true?

Well, actually, it was $5,000.

It is true then? You bribed FIDE with $5,000?

Let’s take things a step at a time here. I only had the money because Swiller gave it to me first. He gave it to me to promote his books, of course. But I agreed, you see, because, like I said before, I think his writing is fantastic. As for the money I gave FIDE, this is what they told me to do. I didn’t think of it as a bribe. I mean, in the past, they’ve asked for $1,000,000 for the right to run for FIDE dictator (you know, the FIDE president). A mere $5,000 seems reasonable for an IM norm, no? What bribes? Nobody is talking
bribes here.

What sort of rituals or habits do you have before you play?

I don’t have many superstitions or rituals, really. My main concern during a tournament is to keep from getting distracted, and this means both during games and between games. The babes are the distraction. I remember once, when I was 16 or 17, I was playing in the National HS Championships down in Dallas, Texas. There was a girl there – her name was Mia, Mia Crumbling, or something like that
– and she was from Sweden. She had the long, straight, blond hair and blue eyes that you think about when you think about 16-year-old Swedish girls. I don’t know why she was there. I think she was visiting her family or something, and her visit just happened to coincide with the tournament. This girl was a serious player. She was rated over 2200 while, you know, my friends and I were class-E hacks. She destroyed all of us, and it was embarrassing. Every day she just wore jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, but it didn't matter. At this tournament I finished with zero wins and six losses, because I was fantasizing about this Crumbling girl when I should have been
concentrating. This is something that I will never forget, and the lesson I learned from all this is: If you need to think about the pretty girl at the tournament, then make sure you conjure her image with bad teeth and a fat ass. Or just make her image look like the great female Georgian chess player, Maya Chubbydance. Either way is basically the same thing. With these guidelines, I’ve never slipped at concentrating during a tournament ever since. With this said, I provide my apologies to that self-proclaimed chess-bitch, Jan Shady. Sometimes, Ms. Shady, you’ve just got to tell it like it is. For us
middle-aged male chess players, nothing promotes the little pawn to a big piece, if you know what I mean, faster than the thought of a young chessbabe sporting a high ELO and a high skirt. We could even love you, too, Jan, if you only got rid of that ridiculous pink wig.

Do you currently train with other strong players?

I can’t, especially not with any of these Ru, Russ, (well, you know, foreign) GMs. They’re all thieves and cheaters. As soon as you ask them for openings advice, the next thing you know they’re making requests for you to throw a game. (Did you not see De Guzzleman – Kreepman, American Open 2005? I mean, how else could Kreepman qualify for the US Championships?) I’m not that desperate. Like I said before, Eric Swiller keeps my coffers full. Did I mention before that all of his books are runaway bestsellers? It’s the truth. Let me just make sure that that’s on the record.

Thank you, Anthony, for your time, and your interesting opinions.

Ah, no sweat – this was great. Now that I’ve got two capital letters in front of my name, people all of a sudden care about what I (or is it the letters?) have to say.