Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of Chess, always relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which people are always having to solve in everyday life.

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

Chess is mental torture.

Everyone is concerned about his niche, his name, and wants to adapt the concept to so-called national characteristics. But at the end of the day, it's all the same.

The growth of violent extremism is partly a consequence of how the developed world has become complacent and defensive about its own greatness and ambition.

A very strong player can manage and can just know how to manage a thousand positions. I get it; it's a very arbitrary number. So then you have the world champion who could do more. But, again, any increase in numbers creates, sort of, a new level of playing. And then you go to the very top, and the difference is so minimal, but it does exist. So even a few players who never became world champion, like Vassily Ivanchuk, for instance, I think they belong to the same category.

Perfectly correct chess exists only in theory.