Vladimir Putin is the bigger danger than Donald Trump because Trump can be dealt with within American democracy. There is an independent judiciary. He cannot overrule American courts. He will have to play by some rules. He will do damage certainly, but to do real damage I think he is too weak. Putin is aggressive wherever he can be. In Europe, in Germany, Putin will not stop.

Ultimately, what separates a winner from a loser at the grandmaster level is the willingness to do the unthinkable. A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough. Given the opportunity, I must have the guts to explode the game, to upend my opponent's thinking and, in so doing, unnerve him. So it is in business: One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

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

Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of Jonathan Schaeffer at the University of Alberta and his unbeatable program Chinook.

Putin is like Al Capone.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

[Vladimir] Putin intended to provide for a broad safety corridor [for the Olympic Games]. That's why Abkhazia was a more important and desired goal of Russian aggression against Georgia than South Ossetia, which merely served as a pretext. Concerns mainly centered on the Crimea.