One of the things that first attracted me to chess is that it brings you into contact with intelligent, civilized people - men of the stature of Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, who was my part-time coach.

There are certainly loads of players that I admire; I try to learn from all of the great masters both of the past and contemporary as well.

I started by just sitting by the chessboard exploring things. I didn't even have books at first, and I just played by myself. I learnt a lot from that, and I feel that it is a big reason why I now have a good intuitive understanding of chess.

What I admired most about him [Bobby Fischer] was his ability to make what was in fact so difficult look easy to us. I try to emulate him.

It's nice to be financially secure. Apart from that, I really don't care too much about money.

I can’t count the times I have lagged seemingly hopelessly far behind, and nobody except myself thinks I can win. But I have pulled myself in from desperate [situations]. When you are behind there are two strategies - counter-attack or all men to the defences. I’m good at finding the right balance between those.

You can feel the same thing in football or soccer - that for the best teams in Spain and England, for instance, the public... they're not really going to cheer at all when they play against bad teams unless they do something spectacular. Even if they're winning by a few goals they'll probably just say, "nah." That's normal and they're not excited about it.