People who want to improve should take their defeats as lessons, and endeavor to learn what to avoid in the future. You must also have the courage of your convictions. If you think your move is good, make it.
To improve at chess you should in the first instance study the endgame.
You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.
Most players ... do not like losing, and consider defeat as something shameful. This is a wrong attitude. Those who wish to perfect themselves must regard their losses as lessons and learn from them what sorts of things to avoid in the future.
In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else; for, whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame.
Chess is more than a game or a mental training. It is a distinct attainment. I have always regarded the playing of chess and the accomplishment of a good game as an art, and something to be admired no less than an artist's canvas or the product of a sculptor's chisel. Chess is a mental diversion rather than a game. It is both artistic and scientific.
The weaker the player the more terrible the Knight is to him, but as a player increases in strength the value of the Bishop becomes more evident to him, and of course there is, or should be, a corresponding decease in his estimation of the value of the Knight as compared to the bishop.
A good player is always lucky.
Chess is a very logical game and it is the man who can reason most logically and profoundly in it that ought to win.
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.
None of the great players has been so incomprehensible to the majority of amateurs and even masters, as Emanuel Lasker.
The winning of a pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game.
Ninety percent of the book variations have no great value, because either they contain mistakes or they are based on fallacious assumptions; just forget about the openings and spend all that time on the endings.
The great World Champions Morphy, Steinitz, and Lasker were past masters in the art of Pawn play; they had no superiors in their handling of endgames. The present World Champion has not the strength of the other three as an endgame player, and is therefore inferior to them.
An hour's history of two minds is well told in a game of chess.
In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else.
Endings of one rook and pawns are about the most common sort of endings arising on the chess board. Yet though they do occur so often, few have mastered them thoroughly. They are often of a very difficult nature, and sometimes while apparently very simple they are in reality extremely intricate.
During the course of many years I have observed that a great number of doctors, lawyers, and important businessmen make a habit of visiting a chess club during the late afternoon or evening to relax and find relief from the preoccupations of their work.
Chess books should be used as we use glasses: to assist the sight, although some players make use of them as if they thought they conferred sight
The best way to learn endings, as well as openings, is from the games of the masters.
Alekhine evidently possesses the most remarkable chess memory that has ever existed. It is said that he remembers by heart all the games played by the leading masters during the last 15-20 years.
As one by one I mowed them down, my superiority soon became apparent
The king, which during the opening and middlegame stage is often a burden because it has to be defended, becomes in the endgame a very important and aggressive piece, and the beginner should realize this, and utilize his king as much as possible.
Although the Knight is generally considered to be on a par with the Bishop in strength, the latter piece is somehat stronger in the majority of cases in which they are opposed to each other.
A passed pawn increase in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes.
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