You Can Ask a GM One Question...What is It?

Mine would be "What is the best way to read a chess book, what is the most efficient way to read one, and how to strike the balance between them?"

Granted that's a question in multiple parts...

...and then the GM answers : "no idea"

Probably.  The best answer I've ever gotten to that question was from FM Alex Betaneli!

Older GM's usually have better answers to this question than younger ones do.  Sign of the times I guess.

I would ask "Please tell me in at least 10000 pages how you becamse a GM, with everything that you ever learned and all your games included".

May I ask 100,000 questions or I will kill you.

GM would probably allow himself to be killed...

Do you feel lucky... well... do ya punk?

Really hard for me to come up with ONE question. Although I do think it would be interesting to perhaps play them OTB and ask maybe 100 questions about chess, life, and the times. There is one thing though, my ambition has always been to study chess and be good at it. My dream is hopefully one day I can play a GM OTB, and see just how much I learned over the years of my own study. It's not impossible to play a GM, honestly not really worried about winning in that type of situation. I would just be really interested to see how well I do. Anyway, I'll keep wishing...

Oh, I did think of something actually.

I wanted to ask Carlsen what he thinks of the public's opinion of his play.

In a recent post game conversation, Grischuk said he doesn't agree with the public's view of Carlsen. He doesn't think Carlsen's play is endgame focused. There have been other GMs (I forgot their names) say that Carlsen does do a lot of opening prep and chooses his lines carefully for each opponent.

So when I ask Carlsen, I'd bring up the Karpov response when they asked then world champ Karpov what made him better. Karpov said the world champion just does everything a little better. Tactics, opening, endgame, calculation, etc.

So I'd ask Carlsen if that's a reasonable way to look at it, and if not, then how he would characterize his own style or strengths relative to his peers and how it helps him stay on top.