Quotes About Chess

But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He [Capablanca] wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative.

Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems.

When I am trying to understand the method of winning in the endgame with two bishops against the knight, chess is a science, when I admire a beautiful combination or study, then chess is art, and when I am complicating position in the approaching time trouble of my opponent, then chess is sport.

Chess is similar to boxing. You need to develop a strategy, and you need to think two or three steps ahead about what your opponent is doing. You have to be smart. But what’s the difference between chess and boxing? In chess, nobody is an expert, but everybody plays. In boxing everybody is an expert, but nobody fights.

Chess is a part of culture and if a culture is declining then Chess too will decline

There is no remorse like a remorse of chess. It is a curse upon man. There is no happiness in chess.

Chess is changing. I hope chess is getting more popular, more spectacular.

Chess cannot be taught. Chess can only be learned.

Chess continues to advance over time, so the players of the future will inevitably surpass me in the quality of their play, assuming the rules and regulations allow them to play serious chess. But it will likely be a long time before anyone spends 20 consecutive years as number, one as I did.

The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.

Much time and money has gone into computer chess programs, and so far, no one's figured out how to crack the game, which I think speaks to chess's complexity.

My job is to play chess, the game that I love. I achieve what I can in chess. That is what I focus on. Basically, I am always focused on playing the game, and this is important to me.

Chess has given me a lot more than I could ask for. I have been able to feel special, travel the world and do what I truly enjoy. Moreover, chess players love being their own boss and hate having to wake up early!

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

I do not play chess – I fight at chess. Therefore, I willingly combine the tactical with the strategic, the fantastic with the scientific, the combinative with the positional, and I aim to respond to the demands of each given position.

The enormous mental resilience, without which no Chess player can exist, was so much taken up by Chess that he could never free his mind of this game

The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.

I may play some exhibition games so I don't want to quit the game of chess completely. I just decided and it's a firm decision not to play competitive chess anymore.

A knowledge of tactics is the foundation of positional play. This is a rule which has stood its test in chess history and one which we cannot impress forcibly enough upon the young chess player. A beginner should avoid Queen's Gambit and French Defence and play open games instead! While he may not win as many games at first, he will in the long run be amply compensated by acquiring a thorough knowledge of the game

In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night.

When you sit down to play a game you should think only about the position, but not about the opponent. Whether chess is regarded as a science, or an art, or a sport, all the same psychology bears no relation to it and only stands in the way of real chess.

The days when it was possible to win a serious game only by merit of sporting character or depth of chess understanding have vanished forever. Chess knowledge has become dominant, bypassing all the other factors that contribute to success.

Chess960 is healthy and good for your chess. If you get into it and not just move the pieces to achieve known positions it really improves your chess vision.

Chess is a cure for headaches.

It is a game of chess with this city. We'll have to see how it is going to play out. The city goes back and forth trying to figure out what programs to cut and what they have funding for. What I would love to see is for the city to step up and run the rink 10 months out of the year so kids can play in the summer and we can have camps here in Glenwood.

When you play chess alone it's always your move.

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.

Chess truly uncovers whether or not someone has imagination and takes initiative.

I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without ant errors, or as they say 'flawless game' is colorless.

Chess is not a game, but a disease.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

Poor Capablanca! Thou wert a brilliant technician, but no philosopher. Thou wert not capable of believing that in chess, another style could be victorious than the absolutely correct one.

[Pawn Sacrifice is] about the 1972 chess championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. I play Paul Marshall.It was a great story of a very peculiar man, another genius who's troubled and lived an interesting life. I had great fun making that.

Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi have absolutely destroyed chess by their immoral, unethical, prearranged games. These guys are really the lowest dogs around, and if people knew the truth about them, they would be held in more contempt than Ben Johnson, the runner, and they're going to know the truth when I do this book!

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.

All chess masters have on occasion played a magnificent game and then lost it by a stupid mistake, perhaps in time pressure and it may perhaps seem unjust that all their beautiful ideas get no other recognition than a zero on the tournament table.

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

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

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... "Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen."

Intellectual activity is perhaps the greatest pleasure of life; chess is one of the forms of intellectual activity.

All I want to do, ever, is play chess.

In life, as in Chess, ones own Pawns block ones way. A mans very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him

You always have to be keeping track, especially in this scenario [ The Hateful Eight], of where everybody is. They're pieces on a chess board.

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.

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.

One can say that in the last decades chess has become more of a sport than of a science. I see it from an artistic point of view.

Yeah, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you know. That's what I don't like.