Alexander Jalo

I was passionate about chess as well as about mathematics and later programming in my youth, but soon realized that, with my character, I would likely drift too deeply into my own inner world with any of them. Writing became a way to vent my creativity, while the different fields of research represented and still represent my intellectual hobbies. These areas include history, economics, international politics, mathematics, quantum physics, human physiology, and chess opening theory. After 25 years in business life, I decided to fulfil my dream: to become an author and use all my findings in order to paint a holistic view of the current world order.

Alongside all the intellectual hobbies, sports took on a significant role in my life. I started lifting weights regularly when I was 13. After trying different events in track and field, I ended up in American football. I was even chosen for the Finnish National team, but I didn’t get a chance to play even a single game due to a career-ending knee injury. I could, however, run straight and so I competed briefly at sprints before turning to coaching. For a period at the end of the 1980s, I worked for the Finnish American Football Association as a coaching manager before finishing my career in competitive sports as the head coach for the local team of my present home town. Since then I have continued lifting weights and regularly enjoying recreational sports, primarily in the form of bicycling and cross-country skiing.

My strangest hobby is to develop a specific chess opening called the Anglo Scandinavian Opening. I actually don’t play chess other than for fun and, even that, not very often. I played it very enthusiastically when I was young, but other than winning my high school championship, I never competed and never even joined any club. On the other hand, all the experts considered my opening unplayable or a lost game from the start, and the computers evaluated it as poor as well. It was all about my intuition and following my passion. Twenty years after starting on my quest, I found myself writing a novel in which chess, in general, and the Anglo Scandinavian Opening, in particular, play a central role. This novel, Moves, is the second part of my current trilogy. The reader doesn’t need to understand anything about chess, not even the rules. For a chess player, however, it is a gem. As with the Sindarin language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for his books, the veracity and reality of the opening is pivotal. In the summer of 2015, the opening proved itself by being accepted as an article (The Bremer Counter Attack) in the Chessbase.com on 4/1/2015. Later that same year, there was an opening survey about it in the New in Chess Year Book 116.

I’m writing a blog,

http://spreadingmyfinns.blogspot.fi/

The first article was released in March 2016 and there will be new articles every month about a wide variety of subjects related to my books. Please check it out; you won’t be sorry, but you may be surprised.