Enormous self-belief, intuition, the ability to take a risk at a critical moment and go in for a very dangerous play with counter-chances for the opponent - it is precisely these qualities that distinguish great players.

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.

Next to the intellectual stimulation of chess, the educational value is of great importance. Chess teaches logic, imagination, self-discipline, and determination.

[Vladimir] Putin's Russia is only indirectly concerned with the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a means of maintaining its sphere of influence. I doubt that Russia will meddle. Moreover, I'm quite sure that Ilham Aliyev won't decide to carry out any serious action - it's not in his interest. He's learned his lesson very well - threaten to take action but never act on such words.

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.

The best chess masters of every epoch have been closely linked with the values of the society in which they lived and worked. All the changes of a cultural, political, and psychological background are reflected in the style and ideas of their play.

In Syria, Vladimir pUTIN sees the chance to make millions of refugees and weaponise them. The US has to take a lead in defending the values of the free world.