The best Spanish chess player of all time continues to compete on the board. His life story is influenced by the Tao and the constant desire to excel
Paco Vallejo is a chess genius. He has been number one among Spanish chess players for years. The thirty-two in the world. Vallejo is to rojigualdo game science what Pau Gasol is to basketball: the best national player of all time. In the 16th century, Ruy López de Segura, a Zafrense priest who served as a royal advisor to Felipe II’s court, was considered the first unofficial world champion in history. But it cannot be compared. By this time, the noble game had begun to lay the first pebbles of the grand cathedral of opening theory. There were no treatises on strategy and pawn structure, for example, was not an element of study for chess players of the time. The games that have come down to us from that time show a direct style in which black and white look for the attack of the enemy king from the very first moves. It is true that there are real works of art, but they are usually so beautiful because they are preceded by mistakes that would be unthinkable today, even less so in elite chess. Therefore, if Ruy López de Segura, with his dignified but fragile old acquaintance, played a thousand games in a row against Paco Vallejo today, he would not be able to win a single battle. Unless we let the priest catch up with the help of modern computers. Then I would discover another game. And Paco would certainly shake his hand.
Vallejo was born in Mahón, Menorca, a few weeks after the 1982 World Cup. His father, Ángel Vallejo, was a soldier. His mother, Feli, is an assistant at a hospital on the island. The Vallejo family, on the paternal branch, had military and musical roots. The grandfather, Francisco Vallejo Herena, was born in Malaga. He played the trombone in the Chaparro Orchestra, a group that animated city parties in the fifties and sixties. He was also a euphonium player in the Malaga Municipal Music Band. A cousin of his, Paco Vallejo Amaro, used to come to see him play the wind instruments and after getting so close he eventually joined the band. The nephew, Vallejo Amaro, is Paco Vallejo’s uncle and over the years became the director of the Municipal Band. He held the baton in December 2018, after giving an emotional Christmas concert at the Church of the Martyrs in the city of Malaga. “My uncle has always been a phenomenon, every time I go south I try to visit him,” confesses Paco.
A visit Paco used to receive since he was little, when he traveled to Malaga for holidays. “We visited my uncles at their home in Cerrado de Calderón,” he recalls. “One of my first images from those trips is of my grandfather playing chess with my father. I was there and watched in silence. But apparently my grandfather was going to put a piece in one of those games and then I stopped him: «No, grandfather, not that one, you lose the horse. This other one is better.” I would have been four or five years old, I don’t remember well, but it’s a story I’ve been told many times ».
This scene reminds me of other similar scenes that have featured some of the big names in game science. This is the case of Arturo Pomar, who at the age of only five taught his father and grandfather the best plans on the board. Paul Morphy, perhaps the greatest natural talent in chess history, also experienced something similar. His father and uncle kept the pieces after a game. Morphy was six years old. He had watched the duel in silence, as Paco Vallejo would do a century and a half later. This time Paul interjected: “Uncle Ernest, you could have won.” And when the harnesses were put back on the wood, the little boy showed them how to checkmate. Pomar and Morphy’s childhood stories are fascinating. They can only be explained by genius. The same thing happens with Paco Vallejo. Paco was a child prodigy – he still is, at the age of forty – touched by the grace of the goddess Caissa.
His black and white adventure started at the chess school of Villacarlos, near the port of Mahón. His skill was so unusual that successes were not long in coming. In 1991, Paco was named second in the world in the under-10 category in Warsaw in 1991. Two years later he repeated the sub-championship in the sub-12 category, this time in Bratislava. Around the same time, Vallejo defeated FIDE master Daniel Pizá in a tournament in the Catalan municipality of El Vendrell. Daniel coordinated the chess school of the Marcote de Mondariz School, in Vigo, a school that worked with the institutional approval of the world champion Gari Kasparov, who was even present at the inauguration of the center, together with the president of the Xunta de Galicia, Manuel Fraga Iribarne. Daniel was so impressed with Paco’s playing power that he spoke to the school principal, Fernando Marcote, a pioneer in introducing chess as an educational tool. “I met an incredibly talented boy,” Daniel commented. “And he has no sponsor.” Fernando Marcote picked up the phone and called Paco’s father. That phone call accelerated everything in Vallejo’s life.
Fernando Marcote reached an agreement with Paco’s family, so the boy packed his bags and headed for Mondariz. “The school, being private, thought it would be interesting to have a chess student who had been second in the world twice, they wanted to project a good image,” Vallejo says. And he adds: “My father and my brothers got along well, but my mother was more affected by the divorce, like all mothers, I suppose. Deep down she understood that this was best for my future, although with this kind of logic you never know if you’re right. One makes decisions and knows after life. What was certain was that I wanted to play chess and get as high as possible. And Menorca was small ». Paco was eleven years old and in his hairless chest he felt a disturbing fainting, a hunch.
At the Marcote school, Vallejo was allowed to skip Galician classes and, from time to time, the Physical Education subject. The time he got from school hours was devoted to practicing chess. And in the afternoon, four or five days a week, more chess. Some of his coaches were Daniel Pizá himself, Pablo Glavina, Zenón Franco and the great Russian master Andrei Kharlov, who years later was Gari Kasparov’s assistant in the world championship that the Ogre from Baku lost in London (2000) to Vladimir Kramnik. Daniel Pizá thinks back fondly on those years of boarding school. He remembers taking Paco to the movies in his spare time: “He loved ‘Jurassic Park’ and Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan Murder Mystery’.”
In a way, Paco’s progression was like a movie. In 1996 he obtained the title of International Master. In October 1997, when he was only fifteen years old, he defeated Deep Blue Junior, the sequel to IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer, the machine that defeated Kasparov. “That was more like a circus than anything else,” Vallejo explains. “The little machine played better than me, but for some reason I got lucky and beat it the first game. This win was publicized in the media as an achievement, but it wasn’t important to me, it wasn’t then and certainly not now. The most important thing came soon after, as soon as he left the Marcote School, when Paco was named World Youth Champion (Under 18) in Oropesa del Mar. ‘World champion’, Paco called himself. “World champion”.
But it wasn’t easy for Paco. That same year there were other world champions in other sports in Spain. And they were in absolute category. In boxing, Javier Castillejo came to the fore. Swimmer David Meca crossed the open waters of the Pacific and dominated the country’s news broadcasts. The same happened with judo, sailing, canoeing, artistic gymnastics… Let’s just say there was no money for everyone, to summarize. Even less for chess. “He would certainly have had more support in other countries,” Paco admits. “But at the same time I feel very lucky to have been born in Spain. People told me, “If you had been born in Russia, you would have moved on.” Who knows? I’m not so sure about that.”
The year was 2002 and Paco Vallejo was considered a chess superclass. He participated in the best tournaments and expectations about his progression in the international ranking put him at the top. One day at the airport of Barajas he bought the book ‘The Tao of Health, Sex and Long Life’ by Daniel Reid. That reading went all the way through him. Taoism advocates living in harmony with nature. Breathing and fasting are philosophical keys to achieving this. I read you an interesting passage from Reid’s book: «In the Taoist art of love, the emphasis is not on romantic love, but on correct technique; Therefore, it is like a football game or a sports game: the desire to win is not enough. In this way, Paco began to apply Taoism in his life, both inside and outside the administration. The great Malaga teacher Ernesto Fernández, Paco’s coach for many years, remembers well the presence of the Tao in Vallejo’s daily life: «I remember that we trained two or three weeks in a row in Paco’s country house, in Son Ferric. We looked like Buddhist monks,” he says with a smile on his face. “Actually,” Paco clarifies, “we started the week very healthy, with carrots and chewing raw garlic, but we ended up eating fuet in bites and drinking Häagen-Dazs ice cream.”
Thanks or not thanks to this philosophy, Paco Vallejo has managed to checkmate all the world champions of the modern era, with the exception of Kasparov. Sometimes the media pressure was unfair to him. “Chess is an important part of my life, but it’s not my life,” Vallejo clarifies. “Of course I would have liked to become world champion and win every game, but not at any price. Having a vital balance has always worried me more than playing chess. This is exactly what allows me to continue to enjoy this passion at my age. But if I can’t play tomorrow, I would still have a great life.”
At the end of March 2018, Paco withdrew from the European Championships in Batumi, Georgia. The Treasury claimed almost half a million euros for an unfair taxation on online betting. Vallejo bet small amounts on poker in 2011. In fact, he lost money, but the tax rules in Spain did not allow him to make up for these losses. The suspicion of the chess player’s guilt was unbearable. Players like Nakamura or Susan Polgar defended them on social networks. “That was a bitch,” Ernesto Fernández recalls. “Paco played like never before.”
After almost two years of trial, Paco Vallejo won the game against the Treasury and little by little he recovered his joy on the board. And it is that Paco, do not forget, is still touched by the grace of Caissa.
Source: La Verdad
I am David Jackson, a highly experienced professional in the news industry. I have been working as an author at Today Times Live for over 10 years, and specialize in covering the entertainment section. My expertise lies in writing engaging stories that capture readers’ attention and deliver timely information about the latest developments.
