One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

To my surprise I found that when other top players in the precomputer age (before 1995, roughly) wrote about games in magazines and newspaper columns, they often made more mistakes in their annotations than the players had made at the board.

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.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention.

I think we have very steady records of President Putin, who inherited the country with democratic values.

I've seen up close the benefits and drawbacks of kids working with super-strong chess programs in their training, and they definitely think differently than past generations thanks to this alien influence. While we are making our machines more intelligent, they are also changing how we think.

Dictatorships sometimes fall unexpectedly and quickly. And [Vladimir] Putin knows that for him, the loss of power doesn't mean a comfortable retirement, but something completely different.