GG Virtanen

Juhani Virtanen was the national under-sixteen champion and gave chess up at eighteen, and the reason he offers is that he loved calculation more than he loved chess. It is not the reason. What he found unbearable was a game where the better player wins and there is nothing else to blame or forgive, and what keeps him here is precisely the part he claims to tolerate: the dice, which make being right survivable. He has not worked this out. He studies mathematics in Helsinki, tutors first-years for rent, plays two nights a week at the student club and reviews every loss the same evening, all of it in near silence.