 when I played chess the first time. This was 1973 in the autumn. I was 10 years old. I have a brother who started to play in the club half year earlier, and I did everything my brother did. But when he went to the chess club, I said no. But half a year later, this first day of the season in September, I followed him to the club, and it was there when I played chess the first time. I didn't know how to move the pieces. I didn't know anything. But from the first moment, it was like magic for me. It was a little bit like the feeling you have when you start reading. A new word was discovered for me, and I loved it from the very first time. The first tournament I won was a tournament held inside the club, and it was when I was, probably I was, between 11 and 12. And because the first year was just about learning, learning the pieces, how to speak together, it did to each other. And then when I was, yeah, after a year, I started to win some small tournaments in the club. When I was 12, I was even winning some tournaments outside the club too. I knew that chess would be my life. When I was 13, we had just played the Swedish school championship, and it was during a weekend, and I won my class for girls and boys, age 13, 14. And it was a big surprise, I was an underdog. But I remember when I got the prize, we got the chess clock, and when I went to the podium to take my prize, I said to myself, this is something I will do my whole life in one way or another. If chess does involve sacrifices for me, in the beginning I don't think so because chess very quickly became very important to me. It was really my life. I really loved it so much. And of course, I met Juan Beón, so I moved to Spain, and I could make a living together with him, traveling around. But of course, chess takes a lot of time, so this is what we were doing. I didn't have so much time for other things. And of course, when you decide to play chess, at that time, this is 30 years back now, it was not so easy. It was not easy to make a living. And I remember also when I got my daughter, then I couldn't play during the pregnancy, I had problems, so I was without playing chess for 10 months, which was a very long time. And what I didn't have to do, I had to stop playing when she was only three months. And our daughter always went with us. And this is of course very, very special. And a little bit, not so easy for a girl to be brought up like that. So, but I think in general, I have been so lucky, I have been doing something, I love so much. So there have been some sacrifices, but I'm very, very happy that I could be able to play chess so long time. The status of chess in my home country, it's, yeah, it's a little bit complicated because Sweden used to be very important chess nations. We had the Olympiad back in 1935. It was 3,000 people coming and watching. Sweden organized the free of the first four in the semnal qualification for the word chess championship. We had Mr. Rogard, who was the feeder president for almost 20 years. So for a long time, chess was very important, but you can say that the last 30, 40 years, it has become less important. And we have a problem that chess is not the sport in Sweden. It's not culture. It stands alone. So it makes us more difficult. And so I would also say that chess doesn't get the same publicity, the same recognition as other sports and it makes it more difficult. So in general, if you look at the chess place we have at Sweden, there are some few who try to make a living from chess, but in general it's very, very difficult. So I would say that if you go down to Spain, you go down to France, Germany, in all these countries, Holland, it's chess has a better status than it has in Sweden. So I do hope that chess will become an Olympic sport. That would be an enormous difference to Sweden. And I also believe that chess now is becoming an esport, that that will benefit Sweden a lot. And that more people will know about chess and that it will become a bigger sport, both as a esport, but also the classical way. When I heard about the format for the Battle of the Sexes, I was very excited. I was very curious and I was very, very pleased to see that. And I think it's just a very lovely idea to have two teams. We have a lady team, we have a men team and the two teams are matched according to rating. It's not the big difference between the two teams, but also according to age. So in all way trying to make two teams as similar as possible and then to see which team will prevail, will win. And now I think it's just fantastic. And also there is history of course behind this because during the Gibraltar Chess Festival, there always have been a lot of social activities which is so fantastic, so beautiful. And the highlight of the social activities was the Battle of the Sexes every Saturday. And then it was played with six players, six lady players, six men players. It was played on a big board. You had to run to press the clock and it was just a big show. And now we're going to play this for real. So I think it's just very, very nice, very, very beautiful. And I'm very much looking forward to play this match. When I play in a team competition, yes, I feel more pressure because I don't only play for myself. So you have more responsibility. You are playing for the whole team, yes. So it's more responsibility, but it's also more happiness when things go the way of the team when we are successful. If we have any strategy in the lady team, I think maybe we should keep it secret. We shouldn't tell anything to our opponents. But in general, I think the main thing is to be happy, to play and to enjoy and just try to take away the pressure because if you feel too much pressure, you just stop playing chess. And the main thing here is that we're going to play a friendly match. It's going to be so exciting. And I just really want everyone to feel at home and just to enjoy chess. I think that's really the main thing. I'm very honored that I have been selected as a captain and I'm very excited of course, though, but I feel a little bit of responsibility being a captain as this is something I never have been, I think, in my whole life. So this is a first time experience for me. And but yeah, but I'm very, I'm very happy that they asked me and I'm very proud of the team. I'm going to play together with, I think we have a very exciting team with 10 players from 10 different countries. That's very nice. And it's led by two women world ex-champion. And we have also the winner of the Grand Prix last year here. What I think we can learn from a match between a lady and a men team with similarities, with strength, with age. You know, I think this is just a first try because I have played match matches when we play ladies against men players. I played the match late against the veteran, but then the players were not picked out according to age. The veterans were natural, so much older now. They were also normally so much stronger according to ratings, but it happens also that the ladies won. It was the men won natural more times than the ladies. So I think this will just be a first try, but it's like with everything, you need statistics. This will be the first unique match and I just hope there will be more to come to follow. And so whatever happens, I think we will, yeah, we will look at it, but I think it's more that this is a very nice way of promoting the ladies chess. This is really what I think we can learn from it, that this is a very nice way of promoting chess for ladies. Yes, one of many ways to do that. If the gender of my open play, any part when I sit down and play my game, not now and no longer, because I have been playing chess for almost 50 years, a very long time, but I was brought up in Sweden where we almost didn't have any girls tournament, any women championships. We always played together. So I was brought up to play with the boys all the time. And when I was kid, it was difficult for me when I had to play against a girl. And it was not because it was a girl or a woman, but it was because I felt so much more pressure that I had to win against her, even if this woman or this girl had the same rating as a boy. So I always felt more stressed when I was kid playing against a girl or as a woman. But then when I was later on, especially the last 20 years, I played in a lot of women events. I played a woman world championship several times, the Grand Prix, the European Ladies Championship. I played here in Gibraltar, where I also played against lots of ladies and other tournaments. And so for me now, it doesn't make any difference if I play against a woman or a man. What makes different is the player, who it is. Of course, I think as long as there's so few women playing chess, in general, it's about 10% overall. That's a very small part. If you go to my country, we are 2.9% of all the active chess players is very, very low. And so as long as this person, the part of lady players is so low, you need to make, you need to give the ladies double chances. So that's why I think it's very important to still have tournaments where the ladies are very many together. One way is to do what they have been doing here in Gibraltar. This is a fantastic way to invite also the ladies players to come and play, even if lots of ladies don't have the same high rating as the best male players coming here. So what has been done here has been very generously for the ladies, very important. I think also we need to have tournaments where the ladies are in majority or at least like here we are 50%. This is just fantastic. And that makes it very difficult. If you don't have ladies tournament, you can make it like here, but this is why it is to have tournaments for ladies. Then you get lots of them. And I can also say that in my country we have actually one girl tournament a year. And this girl tournament can have over 100 players. It's only once a year, it's a weekend. It's up to 20 years old, different classes. But when you have the same, it's a school girl tournament. When you have the same school tournament with the boys, the maximum who are playing are 40 players. So you see that when you have a tournament with very, very many girls, you get so much extra. So this is what you have to do. And you have to, I think also in the different leagues, it's very good, the rules you have that you play. At least there have to be one lady in the teams or like in foreign cell, you have to have a man and a woman the same for the juniors. And when you have the now the Olympiad online, they have two boards for the open class, they have two lady boards, they have a junior boy and a junior girl. So all the time you are giving spots for the ladies. But I think it's not only about the tournaments. It's also about the arbiters, the organizers, the people working in the federations. We have to get women in the whole world so that the chess world will not be only for one sex. It will be normal like the societies we have both women and men. So there are lots of things to do, but it's going on the right way, it's improving. So I'm very happy for that. Who is going to win this tournament? I am captain for the latest team, so I'm sure we're going to win the tournament.