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.

Haste is never more dangerous than when you feel that victory is in your grasp.

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

All chess players know what a combination is. Whether one makes it oneself, or is its victim, or reads of it, it stands out from the rest of the game and stirs one's admiration.

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.

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

The study of combinations should enrich the analytical spirit of studious amateurs. Thereafter the most gifted among them will be able to catch some sparks of the genius of masters, and in addition some rays of the glory that is the masters.