Which GM's have you met in person?

I meet with my general manager in person every day. How this thread special? Goofball.

I met Jure Škoberne in a simul a few year ago. I asked him about the game in a twitch stream of his recently and he still recalls the entire game. That's the GM memory.

I bet Alfonso Romero, whom I met, could beat the crap out of him.

I'm glad to see that this thread was revived.  

I'm pretty sure one of my ancestors met with Louis Mahe Charles de la Bourdonnais

Would that ancestor be Alexandre Deschapelles?   lol

I dunno, he was about to reveal the secret of chess when he had that stroke that left him disabled. Poor Madame de la bourdonnais.

Jon Speelman and Miguel Najdorf. Lost to both of them in simuls.

Wow.  That's going way back.  Najdorf has been dead for 20 years.  

I've met and played in tournaments against most American GMs. There are a few I know well or am friends with. I've met and played a few legendary Soviet GMs and a few of the current super-GMs. If anyone is curious about someone in particular, feel free to ask. If I don't know the person you ask about, I'll be honest and say so. Obviously there are many I haven't met.

I played him in the late 1980s, at the London HQ of the Prudential Assurance Company, where I happened to be working at the time. Najdorf worked in Argentina for the Pru - although by this time he was in his late 70s -  and he was over in London on a business trip. The captain of the office chess club heard of his visit, and successfully persuaded him to join us on our club night. He played every member of the club (about 15 of us if I remember correctly), and regaled us with stories and anecdotes from his life. Of course he beat us all, then took the time to show each of us where we'd gone wrong. But my main memory of him was as a real old-style gentleman, with an acutely sharp mind, and remarkably humble too. It was a hugely memorable and entertaining evening. It was only later that I learned of his tragic history: every single member of his family - parents, brothers, wife and daughter - had perished in the Polish Holocaust during WW2, whilst he himself was abroad at the time, representing Poland at the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires.  The pain he must have lived through is unimaginable.

Wow.  That's a great story.  

Interesting. Do most people see Najdorf as Argentinian or Polish, or both?

I must say that up to now, I had seen him as the former, but the story of jonnie303 has made me think again.

He apparently was a "character" and loved by all. 

Vishy Anand

GM MICAL KARPOV

I didn't know there was another Karpov besides Anatoly.   

Garry Kasparov 

When and where did you meet Kasparov and Anand, yanzhichen?   I'm not talking about seeing pictures of them on the internet.   You have to have actually met them in person and talked to them.   

Anand once came to my country this year 

Kasparov too