It was not about losing my mental power; it's about not feeling good about my contribution to the game.

There are exceptions of course, like for instance the Baltic States, which are members of the European Union, together with Ukraine and Moldova, as well. In those countries, the governments have been reformed as a result of elections.

By the time a player becomes a Grandmaster, almost all of his training time is dedicated to work on this first phase. The opening is the only phase that holds out the potential for true creativity and doing something entirely new.

Russia is a mafia state today, and Putin is its top godfather.

Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms.

The Soviet Union tried to sell a set of ideas, very left wing, and focus on so-called peace. Vladimir Putin doesn't care who helps him to push his agenda. He is equally comfortable with the politics of Nigel Farage and Corbyn in Britain, Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France. Whether far left or nationalist, he doesn't care, as long as they support chaos and destruction and the undermining of existing institutions.

I'm not saying that George W. Bush did everything right. But even if you take a skeptical view of his Iraq war, [Barack] Obama made the more serious error of withdrawing his troops from Iraq early.