The #1 Question

Image credit: Canales 7.

In a new book about Victor Winz -- chess player, scion of a prominent zionist family, gambler, wanderer -- the main question of all those addicted to the game is stated by the author, Jodi Bonells:

El narrador, profesor universitario de literaturas hispánicas y novelista, apasionado del ajedrez y, de un tiempo a esta parte, a correr maratones, intenta reconstruir la incierta historia de este judío alemán, también ajedrecista, al que conoció en Niza en los años setenta, estableciendo con él, sobre todo a partir de su muerte, una extraña relación maestro-discípulo. El ajedrez se convierte así en el hilo conductor de sus propias trayectorias, marcadas por una única, insistente y paradójica pregunta: ¿cómo aprender a no jugar al ajedrez?

English translation (google translate's and my very broken Spanish -- might have some mistakes, but not on the main point...):

The narrator, a university professor of Hispanic literature and novelist, lover of chess and, for a time now, running marathons, uncertainly attempts to reconstruct the history of this German Jew, also a chess player, whom he met in Nice in the seventies, establishing with him, especially after his death, a strange master-disciple relationship. Chess thus becomes the common thread of their own paths, marked by a single, insistent and paradoxical question: how to learn not to play chess?

Good question!