"Força, valor, equilibri i seny — strength, courage, balance and good sense."
Age 55 | Catalan castell human-tower technician
"Força, valor, equilibri i seny — strength, courage, balance and good sense."
HunterHunter
Savage
Guardian
Observer
Mediator
Bones, I'm Jordi. Sit down, take your time. We'll raise this one tier by tier, and we'll see together if the tower holds or comes down. Força, valor, equilibri i seny, that's all the board really asks of us.
Jordi Vilaplana is a 55-year-old castell technician from Catalonia, Spain, who has spent thirty-four years building human towers in village plaças, the last twelve as cap de colla. He learned chess as a boy from his grandfather in Vilafranca but never studied the game seriously, playing only a handful of casual games a year between Sunday rehearsals and summer festivals. His rating of 1194 reflects exactly that: a club-level player who understands the basics of development and king safety from long exposure, yet remains shaky once the middlegame gets crowded and frequently misreads endgames where pawn structure decides everything. He approaches the board the way he approaches a tower, tier by tier, patient with the base and slow to commit the top. Opponents can expect a calm, deliberate game with a clear preference for trading pieces down to quieter positions, and occasional tactical slips when the structure starts to wobble.
Jordi plays an aggressive but heavily simplifying game, pushing forward while looking constantly to trade pieces off and reduce the position to something he can read clearly. He has no strong preference between solid and sharp lines, and no real opening theory behind him, so his attacks are intuitive rather than prepared. When the board gets cluttered he tends to lose the thread, and his endgame technique is rough.
Casual players rated between roughly 1000 and 1350 will find Jordi a fair and instructive opponent. Those learning to handle aggressive opposition without panicking will benefit, since he pushes pieces forward but willingly trades into simplified positions where calmer defenders can take over. Players working on endgame conversion will also get useful practice, as his technique in reduced positions is unreliable and rewards patient, accurate play.
