Quotes About Chess

Chess programs don't play chess the way humans play chess. We don't really know how humans play chess, but one of the things we do is spot some opportunity on the chess board toward a move to capture the opponent's queen.

I was very competitive growing up. I can't even play chess anymore because I used to play tournament chess in school. There's too much sense memory of sitting in front of a chess board and getting super intense about it. It's ruined the game for me.

The concept of 'talent' is formed under completely abstract criteria, having nothing in common with reality. But the reality is such that I don't understand chess as a whole. But then again no one understands chess in its entirety. Perhaps talent is something else, in chess it is conditionality.

Capablanca was snatched too early from the chess world. With his death we have lost a great chess genius, the like of whom we will never see again.

In chess the most unbelievable thing for me is that it's a game for everybody: rich, poor, girl, boy, old, young. It's a fantastic game which can unite people and generations! It's a language which you'll find people "speak" in every country. If you reach a certain level you find a very rich world! Art, sport, logic, psychology, a battlefield, imagination, creativity not only in practical games but don't forget either how amazing a feeling it is to compose a study, for example (unfortunately that's not appreciated these days but it's a fantastic part of chess!).

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.

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.

I got the chess bug when I was finishing high school, we were doing chess tournaments at my house. I never got to a very high level.

Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.

Chess as a sport requires a lot of mental stamina, and this is what that makes it different from a physical sport. Chess players have a unique ability of taking in a lot of information and remembering relevant bits. So, memory and mental stamina are the key attributes.

Chess you don't learn, chess you understand.

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.

Chess is my life, but my life is not chess.

I have a quite feeling of pity for all those who don't know chess; almost like I am sorry for those who never learned to love. Chess, like love and music, has the ability of making people happy.

If you're playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-minute chess games. But that's kind of like the cheap chess version.

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it... He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that...in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.

Chess mastery essentially consists of analyzing Chess positions accurately

In Chess, at least, the brave inherit the earth

Everything is in a state of flux, and this includes the world of Chess

Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money

Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life for.

The battle for the ultimate truth will never be won. And that's why chess is so fascinating.

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

Whoever called snooker "chess with balls" was rude, but right.

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

I love chess, but it's the height of decadence.

Being the undisputed world champion is a relief. We instituted a unified chess title, I am the absolute world champion.

During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey.

Boxing and chess are similar. It’s about the choice of means. Sometimes I need a pawn, a bishop or a knight to defeat my opponent. It’s about finding the best way. A good boxer has to be variable. He doesn’t just need to know how to punch. He must also know how to protect himself, how to defend, how to avoid the opponent’s punches. Only a complete fighter can become champion.

The stomach is an essential part of the Chess master

The game of chess is a metaphor for life... it teaches you strategy and it teaches you the value of knowing where you are, where you want to get to and what obstacles are in the way that you need to navigate in order to get there.

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

In chess one cannot control everything. Sometimes a game takes an unexpected turn, in which beauty begins to emerge. Both players are always instrumental in this.

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

Fencing isn't really fighting. It's more like chess with the risk of puncture wounds

Golf is the loneliest of games, not excluding postal chess.

When I was young, my favorite picture book was 'Fletcher and Zenobia,' written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It's long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children's book for the times.

Who's straight? I'm not. I am bent gouged pinched and tugged at, and squeezed into this funny shape. Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move, and now the flukey play is cramped and slow, a dream of constraint and cross-purpose, with each move forced, all pieces pinned and skewered and zugzwanged... But here and there we see these figures who appear to run on the true lines, and they are terrible examples. They're rich, usually.

No Chess Grandmaster is normal; they only differ in the extent of their madness

The legend of the best player of chess has been destroyed.

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

As a kid, chess was the first thing I studied in a structured way that helped me gain the discipline to study medicine and become successful doctor.

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

The placing of the centre pawns determines the "topography" of a game of chess.

Every film, obviously, everyone starts out aiming at making it good, and in the end, filmmaking is really fragile. Making a film is like building a house of cards on the deck of a speeding boat, or playing chess on train tracks. Every opportunity feels like that; it's the one artistic field that's unlike most of the others.

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.

Capablanca possessed an amazing ability to quickly see into a position and intuitively grasp its main features. His style, one of the purest, most crystal-clear in the entire history of chess, astonishes one with his logic.

To play a match for the World Championship is the cherished dream of every chess player.