It's easy for me to get along with chess players. Even though we are all very different, we have chess in common.

You have to choose the move that feels right sometimes; that's what intuition is.

I don't really watch too many movies. I don't have the patience usually to watch one, one and a half or two hours in a row.

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 honestly don't read that much. Obviously I read chess books - in terms of favorites, Kasparov's 'My Great Predecessors' is pretty good.

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.

I don't consider myself a particularly young chess player. I have been playing in the best tournaments in the world since I was 16 years old. In other sports, if you have been playing for seven years, you are not a young prodigy any more. You're one of the pros.