Quotes About Chess

My parents were very supportive of my chess. When I got home after a game of chess, having missed school or something, they always made me feel very welcome; I didn't feel guilty at all about pursuing chess with such fervour. They never, for instance, perceived sports as a rival to academics.

Chess - it's a nonmainstream game. And the irony is that when you look at Hollywood, it kept using chess as the symbol of intelligence for its heroes, for its top characters, all the time. So it's from "Casablanca" to "Harry Potter." You always have chess as a very important element to demonstrate intelligence, while in normal life people think it's just a weird intelligence - like AI.

The Indians and Chinese have become brilliant chess professionals. They get on a plane and play all over the world. This has led to dramatic pressure on incomes. Nowadays, the best chess player in Argentina can no longer make a living playing chess.

Sultan Khan had become champion of India at Indian chess and he learned the rules of our form of chess at a later date. The fact that even under such conditions he succeeded in becoming champion reveals a genius for chess which is nothing short of extraordinary.

Chess is a very positive way to exercise your mind. It makes you look at the whole picture...what are your options and what is the best thing to do? In football, you are mostly reacting from a defensive point of view...but you always want to be counterattacking...a similarity with chess strategy. Chess and offensive football are quite similar; you sacrifice something now to get something back later.

Playing rapid chess, one can lose the habit of concentrating for several hours in serious chess. That is why, if a player has big aims, he should limit his rapidplay in favour of serious chess.

It's a very special generation, because during our careers the computer entered chess. So we know how to play without computers, which is also important. We can analyse without computers. I am not saying that younger players cannot do this, but we are more in the habit of doing this. That's important to improve your chess understanding.

The middlegame I repeat is chess itself, chess with all its possibilities, its attacks, defences, sacrifices, etc.

For me, chess is not a profession, it is a way of life, a passion. People may feel that I have conquered the peak and will not have to struggle. Financially, perhaps that is true; but as far as chess goes, I'm still learning a lot!

The first chess book that I read was Dufresne's self-tutor, published with Lasker's Common Sense in Chess as an appendix.

When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties - before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since.

Chess holds deep wisdoms of the people. It is truly an image of life, the reflection of human fate that has shown us the earthly way of suffering in darkness and permanent shortage of time. Like in chess, we encounter all kinds of traps, mistakes, settlements, sacrifices, kings, and queens, doubled pawns, and extraordinary moves while we are on the board ourselves.

I think most people are fascinated by chess for that reason. It's just these mystical shapes. It's almost like Harry Potteresque, like wizard's chess in a way. The pieces come alive and you're the sorcerer. You're the magician and you get to do what you want with them and hopefully you don't screw it up.

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.

If trading is like chess, then macro is like three-dimensional chess.

It's interesting that the greatest minds of computer science, the founding fathers, like Alan Turing and Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, they all looked at chess as the ultimate test. So they thought, "Oh, if a machine can play chess, and beat strong players, set aside a world champion, that would be the sign of a dawn of the AI era." With all due respect, they were wrong.

His teaching became a turning point in chess history: it was from Steinitz that the era of modern chess began. The contribution of the first world champion to its development is comparable with the great scientific discoveries of the 19th century.

Chess hasn't really influenced my literature. It's true, there's a character in Pigeon Post, an old chess player; but it's more of a wink, a self-portrait and not much more.

Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.

Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, 'Chess is life.' I would say, 'Pi is life.'

Chess is life and every game is like a new life.

Every time I win a tournament I have to think that there is something wrong with modern chess.

There is no one 'best set-up', there are many - you can get to mate in endless ways. And - don't forget! - in chess, like in literature, "the other" (the reader, the adversary, the partner, etc.) has to be a collaborator, has to work with you to get to the final goal. We depend on them! But they also depend on us.

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.

Chess is a matter of delicate judgement, knowing when to punch and how to duck.

Many men, many styles; what is chess style but the intangible expression of the will to win.

A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

It is rightly said that the most difficult thing in chess is winning a won position

It is a delight to watch a young and gifted chess player. To him have come no sinister experiences; to him continual carping care is foreign. Therefore he loves the attack and the bold sacrifice; for theirin lies the shortest way to his ultimate objective.

Analysis, if it is really carried out with a complete concentration of his powers, forms and completes a chess player.

There are fixed rules in chess, and no one knows how the game will end.

Which do I prefer? Sex or chess? It depends on the position.

Tis action moves the world....[in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it.

I stole a piece of the chess set on the first film. I took a piece of the treasure out of Bellatrix's vault on this film. And I've taken my wand and I've got my cloak.

You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go.

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of each of us would some day depend upon our winning or losing a game of chess. Do you not think that we should all consider it to be our primary duty to learn at least the names of the pieces and how to position them on the chessboard?

Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time.

Expect change. Analyze the landscape. Take the opportunities. Stop being the chess piece; become the player. It's your move.

We should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Music, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions.

The way he plays Chess demonstrates a man's whole nature

I'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.

Amberley excelled at chess - a mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.

A strong memory, concentration, imagination, and a strong will is required to become a great Chess player

In my experience, when I went to school, and especially in after-school, and during breaks, a lot of people wanted to sit down and play chess up till a certain age when it was not supposed to be cool anymore and people wanted to do other things.

When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don't worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen's side

When you ride your bike, you're working your legs, but your mind is on a treadmill. When you play chess, your mind is clicking along, but your body is stagnating. Climbing brings it together in a beautiful, magical way. The adrenaline is flowing, and it's flowing all the time.

Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.