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.

Right now I'm really happy with how things are going with my chess career, so I'm not thinking of doing anything else.

Once you're a chess player, you spend a lot of time thinking about the game and you can't get it completely out of your head.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

Maybe if I didn't have the talent in chess I'd find the talent in something else. The only thing I know is that I have talent in chess, and I'm satisfied with that.

All I expect are wins and to get pleasure from the game. And if someone thinks something about me, if someone's dissatisfied with something... that's not my headache. I hope someday I'll become World Champion - and I'll make all these people happy. But even if for some reason that doesn't happen it won't stop me getting pleasure from chess. I'm sure of that.

Contrary to many young Colleagues, I do believe that it makes sense to study the Classics.