If critics and competitors can't match your results, they will often denigrate the way you achieve them. Fast, intuitive types are called lazy. Dedicated burners of the midnight oil are called obsessed. And while it's obviously not a bad idea to hear and consider the opinions of others, you should be suspicious when these criticisms emerge right on the heels of success.

You know, if I'm in a bad mood, I always look at the chessboard, just to find something that can cheer me up.

I see my own style as being a symbiosis of the styles of Alekhine, Tal and Fischer.

The biggest problem I see among people who want to excel in chess – and in business and in life in general – is not trusting their instincts enough.

I would like to travel to my country again, to a country without a dictatorship, to a post-Putin Russia.

It's interesting that the greatest minds of computer science, the founding fathers, like Alan Turing and Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, they all looked at chess as the ultimate test. So they thought, "Oh, if a machine can play chess, and beat strong players, set aside a world champion, that would be the sign of a dawn of the AI era." With all due respect, they were wrong.

When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don't worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen's side