There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar.

Energy is connected to physical fitness. One of the reasons I stayed at the top so long is that I was tremendously fit. At 36, I was fitter than most opponents ten years younger.

We have again a strange gap. We have the big scientific discoveries around the second, third century BC. Then we have an invention of the so-called Arab system, the positional system of counting with zero dated to the eighth or ninth century.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

Many so-called pragmatists want nothing to do with space exploration or other kinds of ambitious endeavours that don't have a clear payoff. This mentality is hugely damaging to our success as a civilization. Our desire to understand the universe is kindled by curiosity and wonder, and this has fuelled countless scientific breakthroughs.

It's true that in chess as in politics, fund-raising and glad-handing matter.

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life.