Vjekoslav (“Vjeko”) Nemec is a Croatian candidate master, and the main proprietor of the chess website chessentials.com. When I put out the call on Twitter for an author to write about the Grand Prix for our June issue, Vjeko put himself forward, and after a bit of investigation, I was happy to hand him the project.

Vjeko’s story in chess begins, as so many of ours do, in games with family members. But soon he really caught the bug, and after some trials and tribulations, he played in his first tournaments in college. After graduating with a master’s degree in electrical engineering, he took his place in the field, but chess remained an itch that he could never quite scratch. So he began writing about the game, on his own website and on Quora.com, and kept playing.

In 2020 he took a job with Chessable as a content editor – a job that many might see as a dream job! – but this year, in 2022, he left their employ to strike out on his own as an independent content creator. His Chess Life cover story is part of that work, and – speaking as his editor – I think it bodes well for his future in our game.