The road to becoming a grandmaster began when I was a small boy. I was born in 1959 in Berdichev (Ukraine). Since 1960 my family was located in Kaliningrad (West of Russia). Kaliningrad became part of the Soviet Union after World War II. (it was German city Kenigsberg before it).

I started to play chess when I was 6 years old, learning the moves from my father. It immediately became a passion. There were a few kids in our house, who were 2-4 years older than me and who could play chess. We spent hours and hours fighting and I lost a lot of games before getting better. During summer I carried a chessboard every time I went to a park and asked everybody to play with me. As many other Soviet chess players did, I went to Pioneer's House (at age of 8). One of the myths which is very popular in the US is that chess is a part of the school curriculum and so forth. Our chess club in Pioneer's house had about 20-30 kids of different ages and levels and was headed by a great woman who's name was Ninel Grichenko. She was not a strong player (maybe medium A class player due to American standards), but she was very good with kids. She never gave us any kind of formal chess instruction and most of the time we just played tournament games against each other. But there was a difference with average school chess clubs in US. We met 3 times a week, each session for 3 hours (Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 3 till 6 PM. I remember it like it was yesterday).

We didn't have a rating system back then. So, norms requirements were as follows: if you score 75% of all possible points in the tournament where everybody is a beginner you get a forth category. If you score 75% in the tournament where everybody has forth category you get third category, etc. And there were tables which showed how many points did you need for the norm in mixed tournaments. My improvement was pretty stable, though not as fast as I wanted. In my first year I got 4th category, next year 3rd. But then funny (or sad) stories started to happen. It turned out that the last round of the tournament where I had a chance to make a 2nd category norm was held on October, 10, day before my tenth birthday. There is no need to describe how badly I wanted to win this game. My opponent didn't have a good tournament and I was sure that it won't be very difficult to make it. The beginning, indeed, seemed very encouraging:

Gregory Kaidanov - Sergey Martinenko
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Bc5? 3.Nxe5 Bxf2+??
My opponent just blundered a pawn and now he decided to win it back.
4.Kxf2
Now Sergey was ready to play 4...Qf6+ and to pick up a knight on e5, but he noticed 5.Nf3 and changed his plans.
4...Qh4+ 5.Kg1 Qxe4
A terrible play of my friend convinced me that such a desirable goal is close and without too much thinking I played 6.Qh5??
Now I am threatening to take on f7 and of course he'll miss it. But right after I played my move, I found out that I had one little problem. I even tried to take the move back, but it was too late. 6...Qd4 mate ...and a rain of tears followed.

A very similar story happened a year later, when I tried to get a first category. I needed 1.5 points from the last 2 games. The last round game was against one of my friends, whom I used to beat almost every time we played. However, the game before last had a tragic scenario. I got a winning position right after the opening. My opponent offered me a draw after every 3-4 moves. Eventually we went to the pawn endgame, where I had an extra pawn. Usually it means an easy win, but this particular one was miraculously lost for me. Again I came back home in tears and said that never again I will play a chess game...Fortunately next day was Monday and I was 15 minutes early, waiting for our coach to come and open doors of Pioneer's House Chess Club.