It is unjust, and sometimes very untrue, though it is a common theory, to hold that it is sacrifices which make the beauty of a combination, and that the combination is prettier by the magnitude of the sacrifices.

Avoidance of mistakes is the beginning, as it is the end, of mastery in chess.

To find the best moves great Masters, with years of experience, engage in laborious research, and the moves thus found are blindly repeated by amateurs without any attempt to fathom their real meaning and how and why they stand in their context.

It has been stated that a characteristic mark of a combination is surprise; surprise for the defender, not for the assailant, since otherwise the combination will probably be unsound.

... though combinations are without number, the number of ideas are limited.

Chess is a game of understanding and not of memory.

The middlegame I repeat is chess itself, chess with all its possibilities, its attacks, defences, sacrifices, etc.