Quotes About Chess

A sport, a struggle for results and a fight for prizes. I think that the discussion about "chess is science or chess is art" is already inappropriate. The purpose of modern chess is to reach a result.

A form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys - if not the greatest one - of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must be intellectually productive, and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.

Bobby Fischer was hugely important for the American chess community because it put chess on the map - he made it possible for other chess players to make a living.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The correct way to play chess is to develop each and every piece (chess is a team game!), get your King safely castled, and only then begin more aggressive maneuvers.

Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.

[Vladimir] Putin is more of a poker player. In poker, unlike chess, you can effectively compensate for a very weak hand by bluffing. There are fixed rules in chess, and no one knows how the game will end. Things are currently the other way around in Putin's realm. But it won't stay that way forever.

For me, Chess is life and every game is like a new life. Every chess player gets to live many lives in one lifetime.

When I was a kid, I really liked playing chess, which is pretty geeky; I just enjoyed it - thinking, exercising my mind. And I found computers to be like an eight-hour day chess game.

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.

Chess is like body-building. If you train every day, you stay in top shape. It is the same with your brain - chess is a matter of daily training.

Bobby Fischer's current state of mind is indeed a tragedy. One of the worlds greatest Chess players - the pride and sorrow of American Chess

You bring to chess facets of your personality and what you are. I have interests other than chess, like music and world and current affairs. I also have many friends around the world with whom I like to keep in touch.

A game of chess holds many secrets. Fortunately! That is why we cannot clearly state whether chess is science, art, or a sport.

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

Football is like chess, only without the dice.

Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders.

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

Charles Babbage proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of every sort of move. Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing game, the more experienced it would become by the accumulation of experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents the acquirement of experience by our nervous organization.

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

All chess masters can play one game blindfolded.

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

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.

I played tournament chess from fifth grade up into high school.

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

Chess is not a game, but a disease.

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

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.

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.

[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.

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

Real chessplayers think about chess more or less 24 hours a day. It is a passion and a fate that one has to live with - and it lasts a lifetime.

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

We are in truth but pieces on this chess board of life, which in the end we leave, only to drop one by one into the grave of nothingness.

Intuition in chess can be defined as the first move that comes to mind when you see a position.

Emotional instability can be one of the factors giving rise to a failure by chess players in important duels. Under the influence of surging emotions (and not necessarily negative ones) we sometimes lose concentration and stop objectively evaluating the events that are taking place on the board.

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

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.

My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

I give 98 percent of my mental energy to Chess Others give only 2 percent

Being in the military just lets you know how helpless you are. You could train forever but you're still at the mercy of someone in the Pentagon, or somebody in the rear moving you around like a chess piece.

Have you ever seen a demonstrable example of equality in your entire life? Can it be glimpsed in any dog show or classroom? In any ping pong game or chess match? Of course not. It is a philosophical abstraction, something nowhere to be found in nature.

The first great chess players, including the world champion, got by perfectly well without constant coaches.

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

Until computers and robots make quantum advances, they basically remain adding machines: capable only of doing things in which all the variables are controlled and predictable. Robots are bad at pattern recognition and certainly at common sense. That's why computers can beat humans in chess but can't have even a basic conversation with a six-year-old.