He wasn't that easy to get in touch with, but after speaking with a very nice man at the ICCF I was able to send a message to him in our behalf. I was delighted to receive a reply back, and found that he was keenly interested in the idea of a correspondence exhibition game.

In all of our dealings with him he showed nothing but class. During the pre-game negotiations, it seemed to me that his main concern was the quality of the chess to be played, more than any other detail, including the money. He was perfectly happy to take either the white or black pieces, but when it came to the subject of time control, he had a lot to say. He advocated a 3 day period for each half-move, longer than we've allowed in any previous Chessgames Challenge, and explained that even that would be a strenuously quick pace. He consented to the time control because he knew that for an exhibition game the normal ICCF pace would be untenable.

His humility was positively astonishing. I explained that we were planning to bill him as a giant of the chess world, a name to list among the OTB champions like Kramnik and Anand. He didn't particularly like that. He knew that for marketing purposes it's the inevitable thing to do, but I got the impression that he was somewhat embarrassed being labeled a World Champion.