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>> In the nerdy world of Canadian chess, Alexandre LeSiège is the king of cool by PHILIP PREVILLE Alexandre LeSiège is the consummate competitor. "When I lose," he says, "I get mad and become a lot stronger. I take that energy into my next match and I want to rip my opponent's eyes out, rip his head off. "You must show no pity towards your adversary. You have to have a total warrior spirit when you're playing chess." Chess? Excuse me? Chess usually conjures up far more docile images in the mind: well-heeled nobility in the parlour room, perhaps, or old guys in a park. But according to this Quebec grandmaster, chess is a far more physical game than most people realize. "Nothing is more exhausting than a chess match," LeSiège insists. "It drains me more than a workout at the gym or two hours of tennis under the hot sun. It's an endurance game and you have to be in top shape. There are no 300-pound chess champions in the world." LeSiège also has a wealth of talent to go along with his drive. At age 22, he is currently ranked second in Canada, behind longtime Canadian chess superstar (if there is such a thing as a "Canadian chess superstar") Kevin Spragett. But LeSiège has beaten Spragett more than once, including that one delicious occasion five years ago when he surprised everyone and won the Canadian championship at the age of 17. And he's determined to beat him again this summer at the nationals, which would secure his place at the world championships in late 1998.
Chess clubs, on the other hand, are filled with four-eyed nerdy men who bone up on their quantum physics in their spare time and who are prone to nervous tics. Imagine a room filled with hyper-intelligent leg-bouncers, nose-pickers, scalp-scratchers, throat-clearers, nail-biters and teeth-grinders, all staring intently at the chess board, looking like their heads are going to explode just like in the opening scene from Scanners. This became an issue with LeSiège's mother when he joined his first club, Montreal's Spécialistes des échecs, at the age of nine. "I would go to the club after school and play for two or three hours, four or five times a week, and my mom would pick me up after work. At the beginning she didn't like the fact that I was playing chess, because I was surrounded by nervous adults. Some guys even let out little uncontrollable squeals when they make a good move," he says, emitting a mouselike squeak. "But I was always a calm kid, and she saw I wasn't affected by it." LeSiège says he's still renowned for keeping his cool, and believes that kind of mental presence is the best asset a chess player can have. "I once played against Alexei Shirov, who's seeded fourth in the world, and it was amazing. This guy had a bubble of energy around him, and it surrounds you and suffocates you. He's so self-confident, you can just tell he knows he's better than you, he knows he's more experienced, and he knows he's going to beat you bad. I mean, he's confined to that chess board just like everyone else--he can't move the pieces any differently than any other player. But I was totally destabilized, and I made an error I would otherwise never have made. He provoked it with that tension." Those kinds of mind games are enough to put the nervous-ticky guys into straitjackets, but LeSiège says that's just part of how you win at the upper echelons. The upper echelons are where he wants to be. LeSiège is currently ranked 150th in the world, but says that's only because he doesn't compete regularly at European tournaments. "I've often beaten guys ranked in the 30s and 40s," he says, "but I just lost my passion for the game for a while. There's always pressure to compete when you're good, but I figured I'd rather be a happy grandmaster than someone who plays because they have to." Still, no matter how well-adjusted you may be, the weird, wired world of chess can still be a downer for your social life. "There are almost no women in chess," LeSiège says. "It's a bit of a drag. There are no chess groupies, either." Thankfully, LeSiège has a life outside of chess, and does manage to meet girls. He says it helps his game. "Just before this one tournament a couple of years ago, I spent an entire week wrapped up in a really intense relationship with the woman I had recently met. And when I got to the tournament I was totally relaxed and focused and I blew everyone out of the water. It was the best tournament I ever played."
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Sportsman of the year
LeSiège doesn't appear at all like the kind of person you'd expect to be a chess grandmaster. For one thing, he's remarkably well-adjusted. He grew up in the suburbs of Montreal, he likes to work out, he recently got over his video-game addiction, he plays guitar in a garage band. He wasn't really a child prodigy; he first learned to play chess at the age of five, but only because it was something he and his mother enjoyed doing.