GG Belhadj

Karim Belhadj interpreted for Tunisian delegations for four decades: six languages, five continents, and by his own count eleven summits at which nothing whatever was agreed. The board went everywhere with him. Embassy gardens in Vienna, a night train to Cairo, and the café in Tunis where his father first taught him.

He talks the whole way through a match, in whichever of the six languages the other man prefers, and he is the only player in the top tier who will switch mid-game to make a guest comfortable. He treats the whole thing as an exchange to be conducted properly and concluded as friends. He has also spent forty years watching people give away their position while they explain it, and he has never felt the need to point that out.