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GM Fedoseev vs. GM Indjic

European Chess Union

Interview with GM Aleksandar Indjic - European Champion 2024

Chess PersonalitiesOver the boardTournament
Get to know the European Champion who won with an undefeated score of 9 out of 11 points!

Interview questions by David Moreno Rivilla

1) Dear Aleksandar,
massive congratulations for winning the European Chess Championship in Petrovac, Montenegro ! You triumphed with an undefeated score of 9 out of 11 points. At which point during the tournament did you realize: “I can win this thing?”
One of the crucial games was my victory with the black pieces vs 1st seed Vladimir Fedoseev. After that win, I realized this could be mine for the taking.

2) How did you prepare for the Tournament? You were seeded 33rd, so I really want to know how you approach these games, what your mindset is like.
Nothing unusual other than me preparing a bit more then I do in other events. Trying to figure out opponent’s style, coming up with some concrete ideas...

3) Do you have any rituals or habits that you follow in order to get ready for a game?
Not really, here I only did some last minute repetition of the analysis because I tend to forget them ocassionally.


Aleksandar in action - Photo: European Chess Union

4) You are 29 years old now. At what age did you start playing chess? What do you remember about that time?
I learned the rules of chess around the age of 4. I come from a chess family, my father Dusan is an IM and my older brother Stefan is CM. I don’t remember anything from that period but around the age of 6-7 I picked some interest in chess because I wanted to spend more time with them I guess.

5) You have been a GM since 2013. You are a 4-time Serbian champion, and now a European Champion. What are your next career goals?
I would like to continue improving my place on the rating list and to enter top 50 in the near future. Other than that I want to continue winning strong open tournaments.

6) What is your biggest strength and weakness in chess?
I consider my strategic understanding and feeling for initiative to be my strengths, while forgetting some of the prep and shallowness in calculation to be my weaknesses.

7) How do you cope with defeats in chess?
Usually I try to eat some comfort food, focus on something else... but in recent times I figured that Magnus was right when he said: “I try to cope with the defeats by not losing”. So I guess there is something to that approach as well :)

8) Is chess a popular sport in Serbia? And what are the perspectives for aspiring young players in your country?
Chess has a long tradition in Serbia but I can’t say it is popular. Two main sports are soccer and basketball. In general I guess perspectives for young players are good everywhere because there are lots of great information and possibilities to improve available to everyone (from opening courses to free videos...)


The cruicial win against GM Vladimir Fedoseev with the black pieces

9) What’s the most unusual thing you have ever experienced during a chess event?
Once, one of the players who was playing near me had a seizure. It put things in perspective about the importance of what we do. I try to remember that when I start to whine about bad results, etc

10) Which chess players, past or present, do you admire the most?
I enjoyed learning from dozens of players but don’t really think in those categories anymore. What is my focus in recent times is creating on the board what I like to watch. Even though I don’t have any jazz knowledge once I stumbled on one quote made by jazz musician that went something along the lines of: “It takes a lot of time to start sounding like yourself”. That is what interests me in chess. The way I see it I am not quite there yet but in the vicinity.

11) Is there a famous chess game that has inspired you while growing up?
I really can’t mention one as many games and players made huge impression as I was growing up. It is more true to say that I am fan of chess as a whole.

12) What are your interests outside of the chess world?
I have some typical hobbies such as: watching movies, tv shows, reading, playing sports occasionally, going out with friends...

Replay the games of Aleksandar at the European Chess Championship 2024


You can replay all games of Aleksandar in the Lichess Broadcast of the European Chess Championship 2024

13) Which kind of advice would you give our readers if they wanted to make serious improvements in following areas?

Opening: Find some books or opening courses for your repertoire, play that opening online or otb and analyse the games afterwards. Also, experiment with your opening choices, In today’s times you can cover more ground then before and be more unpredictable which will make it harder for your opponents to prepare.

Middlegame: Some books that cover majority of pawn structures books on strategic tools (bishop pair, exchange sacrifice, correct exchanges, etc.)

Endgame: When I was young I enjoyed the book “Endgame strategy” by Shereshevsky and I would combine that with some of the works of Carsten Mueller. The idea being to combine concrete endgame knowledge with practical guidelines. Also in general, to me it looks like that we don’t spend nearly enough time on figuring out what we really want in life, chess, etc. Usually our desires our surface level depth and to me it seems that for that reason we have a lot of inner friction.


Note that this article was first published originally in German in the January 2025 issue of the German chess magazine Rochade Europa).