Chess Quotes - Page 23

• If once a man delays castling and his king remains in the center, files will open up against him, bishops sweep the board, rooks will dominate the seventh rank, and pawns turn into queens.

  Irving Chernev

  Queens, Kings, Men

  Irving Chernev (2014). “The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played: 62 masterly games of chess strategy”, p.110, Pavilion Books

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• The masters and grandmasters can be divided into three groups - the inveterate time trouble merchants, those who sometimes get into trouble, and those for whom the phenomenon is a very rare occurence.

  Alexander Kotov

  Time, Groups, Three

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• Chess cannot be taught. Chess can only be learned.

  Mikhail Botvinnik

  Taught

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• Chess and me, it's hard to take them apart. It's like my alter ego.

  Bobby Fischer

  Ego, Alter Ego, Hard

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• I consider myself to be a genius who happens to play chess.

  Bobby Fischer

  Play, Genius, Happens

  "Bobby Fischer: from prodigy to pariah" by Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. May 14, 2011.

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• Chess, which exists predominantly in two dimensions, is one of the world's most difficult games. Three-dimensional chess is an invitation to insanity. But human relationships, even of the simplest order, are like a kind of four-dimensional chess, a game whose pieces and positions change subtly and inexorably between moves, whose players stare dumbly while their powerful positions deteriorate into hopeless predicaments and while improbable combinations suddenly become inevitable. To make matters worse, some games are open to any number of players, and all sides are expected to win.

  Robert Grudin

  Powerful, Moving, Winning

  Robert Grudin (1997). “Time and the Art of Living”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Ashot Nadanian

  Beautiful, Sports, Art

  S'pore Chess News, September 07, 2010.

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• Chess is 99 percent calculation.

  Andrew Soltis

  Percent, Calculations

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• I have always thought it a matter of honour for every chess player to deserve the smile of fortune.

  Mikhail Tal

  Player, Matter, Fortune

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• Chess is eminently and emphatically the philospher's game.

  Paul Morphy

  Games

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• 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.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Mistake, Moving, Player

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• Chess players, people who travel all over the world, should be trusted or else not sent anywhere at all. Why are these four people (Antoshion and three other official 'minders') sent along to supervise us? With their meagre experience, all that thay did was interfere, more than ever before. And when they were needed, they weren't to be found.

  Viktor Korchnoi

  Player, People, Three

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• Life is like a game of chess...there are many moves possible, but each move determines your next move...where you wind up is the sum total of all your past moves...but first you have to make some kind of move.

  Mort Walker

  Life, Moving, Past

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• Chess is something more than a game. It is an intellectual diversion which has certain artistic qualities and many scientific elements.

  Jose Raul Capablanca

  Games, Intellectual, Quality

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• 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.

  Jose Raul Capablanca

  Champion, India, Genius

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• Do not permit yourself to fall in love with the end-game play to the exclusion of entire games. It is well to have the whole story of how it happened; the complete play, not the denouement only. Do not embrace the rag-time and vaudeville of chess.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Falling In Love, Games, Play

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• The fact that a player is very short of time is to my mind, as little to be considered as an excuse as, for instance, the statement of the law-breaker that he was drunk at the time he committed the crime.

  Alexander Alekhine

  Time, Player, Law

  Chess Life, Volume 16-18, p. 113, 1961.

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• Play on both sides of the board is my favourite strategy.

  Alexander Alekhine

  Play, Boards, Sides

  Alexander Alekhine (1955). “My best games of chess, 1924-1937”

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• Under no circumstances should you play fast if you have a winning position. Forget the clock, use all your time and make good moves.

  Pal Benko

  Time, Moving, Winning

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• 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.

  Mark Dvoretsky

  Player, Emotional, Giving

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• In analysing complicated variations one must examine each branch of the tree once and once only.

  Alexander Kotov

  Tree, Analysis, Variation

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• Analysis is a glittering opportunity for training: it is just here that capacity for work, perseverence and stamina are cultivated, and these qualities are, in truth, as necessary to a chess player as a marathon runner.

  Lev Polugaevsky

  Opportunity, Player, Training

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• Like the alchemist of old, for ever searching for the philosopher's stone, the analyst to-day never stops looking for stronger moves to prevent the defender from establishing equality.

  Savielly Tartakower

  Moving, Alchemist, Stronger

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• I believe in magic ... There is magic in the creative faculty such as great poets and philosophers conspicuously possess, and equally in the creative chessmaster.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Beauty, Believe, Creative

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• The range of circumstances in which it is possible to presuppose the presence of a combination is very limited. The presence of such circumstances is the reason for the genesis of the idea in the master's brain.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Ideas, Brain, Reason

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