Not winning a tournament is not an option for me, unless it's no longer theoretically possible - then of course winning becomes impossible. But up to that point, not winning is just not an option.

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.

I spend hours playing chess because I find it so much fun. The day it stops being fun is the day I give up.

I was lucky enough to attend schools where they were understanding about when I needed to go abroad to play chess. Of course, socially it is important to go to school and interact with people your own age.

There wasn't any particular player I modeled my game after. I tried to learn from everyone and create my own style. I studied past players... Truth be told I never had a favorite player. It's just not my nature to go around idolizing people. I just go try to learn.

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.

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