Quotes About Chess

I love chess, and I didn't invent Fischerandom chess to destroy chess. I invented Fischerandom chess to keep chess going. Because I consider the old chess is dying, it really is dead. A lot of people have come up with other rules of chess-type games, with 10x8 boards, new pieces, and all kinds of things. I'm really not interested in that. I want to keep the old chess flavor. I want to keep the old chess game. But just making a change so the starting positions are mixed, so it's not degenerated down to memorisation and prearrangement like it is today.

Fischer was a good kid but very unsophisticated about anything but chess. It was all chess for him, every waking moment. We'd go down to the Four Continents bookstore and he'd buy any Russian chess material he could get his hands on. He'd learned enough Russian to get the gist of prose and he just absorbed the chess part.

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 is life in miniature. Chess is struggle, chess is battles

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.

Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just "trusting in God" to give me the moves.

Combinations have always been the most intriguing aspect of Chess. The masters look for them, the public applauds them, the critics praise them. It is because combinations are possible that Chess is more than a lifeless mathematical exercise. They are the poetry of the game; they are to Chess what melody is to music. They represent the triumph of mind over matter

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

One interesting indication of Capablanca's greatness is that to non-chess players his name was better known than the names of all other chess masters together! This was due partly to his engaging personality and distinguished appearance: he was one of those exceptional people who at once stand out in a crowd.

My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, for all the science and sport involved in it.

Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have very strong nervous system and then you must be well prepared, you must be able to work a lot.

By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.

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.

My life is split in three parts; I don't know the percentage. One could be called "chess" - the Kasparov Chess Foundation, promoting the game, training young players, playing on the internet, sometimes exhibitions. The second area would be "writing" - books, articles, Twitter, Facebook. And then "political activity" - fighting for human rights and democracy, so TV, interviews, speeches.

When I was about six, I saw my elder siblings play chess and pestered my mother into teaching me. Very soon, I was beating everyone at home, and they thought it would be good to join a club. So my sister would take me to the Tal chess club on Thursdays and weekends.

I would prefer chess to become part of the Olympic Games. This would also lead to chess become more accepted as a sport in general.

Chess is a game that benefits people of all ages, especially kids, in any area of life, business, problem solving, and social skills. Chess has the unique ability to combine focus, concentration, imagination, coordination, teamwork, and leadership all at the same time.

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.

The chess master says nothing, other than moving the silient chess piece.

Next to the intellectual stimulation of chess, the educational value is of great importance. Chess teaches logic, imagination, self-discipline, and determination.

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

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

Chess you don't learn, chess you understand.

Of chess it has often been said that life is not long enough for it - but that is the fault of life, not 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.

Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours on chess without making any progress. Without going into any further calculations, I can assert with a high degree of certainty that nowadays we achieve only a fraction of what we are capable of achieving.

I'm not sure I would call it agony but there is a kind of cyclic frustration. You get one story right and then here comes another one. When does that end? What I'm trying to do is get it to end right now, by recognizing that that cycle is writing. That is: trying to understand the frustrations and setbacks (and agony) as part of a bigger chess game you are playing with art itself.

Football is like chess, only without the dice.

How good is Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel anyway? ... to me, Daniel's brilliance has nothing to do with the big numbers he puts up more or less every week. Howie Long once gave a great explanation of what it was like to get beat by quarterback legend Joe Montana. He said it was like getting knocked out in a pillow fight. You never felt the blow. And you were all kinds of mad afterward. That's as good as any description of Daniel. ... So what does Daniel do? Something right. On every play. In chess, grandmasters will tell you that it's the most innocuous-looking moves that are deadliest.

It is impossible to win gracefully at chess.

Marriage is like a chess match is initiated and the board expands over time until it takes up all of a life.

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

Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events.

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

All conceptions in the game of chess have a geometrical basis.

If you want to build a high performance organization, you've got to play chess, not checkers.

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.

Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move(...)

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble

The ideal in chess can only be a collective image, but in my opinion it is Capablanca who most closely approaches this.

The game of chess is the most fascinating and intellectual pastime which the wisdom of antiquity has bequeathed to us.

Chess is a contributor to net human unhappiness, since the pleasure of victory is greatly exceeded by the pain of defeat.

Chess is like a language, the top players are very fluent at it. Talent can be developed scientifically but you have to find first what you are good at.

Fischer prefers to enter Chess history alone

Chess is a game of bad moves.

Chess is not for the timid.

A chess player never has a heart attack in a good position.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that the people who really enjoy chess are the dubs and the duffers, experts who have resigned their ambitions, those who play only for pastime, and, of course, the great fraternity of the kibbitzers.