Best 681 quotes in «chess quotes» category

Seize the outpost K5 with your knight, and you can go to sleep. Checkmate will come by itself.

Seville never had a rich chess tradition. Valencia is entirely different, it is enough to say that one of the city squares is named after me.

Shall we ever live to see the following wise prohibition - the audience is forbidden to smoke and the masters are forbidden to 'smoke out' the audience by playing exchanging variations?

Short of actual blunders, lack of faith in one's position is the chief cause of defeat. To be sure, it is easy to recommend faith and not so easy to practise it.

Show me three variations in the leading handbook on the openings, and I will show you two of those three that are defective.

Since your mental state can have such dramatic effects on your body, obviously your physical condition can affect your mental well-being. It follows that regular physical conditioning should be part of your overall chess training.

Sir, the slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is insufferable.

Skeletons of mice are often to be found in coconuts, for it is easier to get in, slim and greedy, than to get out, appeased but fat.

Snooker is just chess with balls.

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.

Some studies make such a deep impression on you that they stay etched in your memory forever.

Spassky will not be psyched out by Fischer

Strategically important points should be overprotected. If the pieces are so engaged, they get their regard in the fact that they will then find themselves well posted in every respect.

Tartakower once wrote that after planting a Knight in the center you can go to sleep. This is not to be taken literally, of course, but it contains more than a germ of truth.

Tal's combinations often exert a sort of paralysing influence on the opponent's play. It would seem that the element of surprise plays a big part in this.

Tarrasch's 'dogmas' are not eternal truisms, but merely instructional material presented in an accessible and witty form, those necessary rudiments from which one can begin to grasp the secrets of chess.

tennis is a 100-mph chess match.

Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family. (in a letter to his wife)

Tennis is physical chess.

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

That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.

The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.

The beauty of a game of chess is usually assessed according to the sacrifices it contains.

The best initial move for white is 1. P-K4.

The best reason to abolish it, in my opinion, is that everyone should deal with his time in the best way; there is no good reason why you should get half a minute extra with each move, except that it's a bit easier for the arbiter.

The best tournament that I have ever played in was in 1950. It was great - a waiter came to you during the game, and you could order anything you wanted to drink (even some vodka, if you liked). Pity, there are no longer tournaments organized in this manner.

The attack is that process by means of which you remove obstructions.

Tactics involve calculations that can tax the human brain, but when you boil them down, they are actually the simplest part of chess and are almost trivial compared to strategy.

The best way to learn endings, as well as openings, is from the games of the masters.

The boy (then a 12 year old boy named Anatoly Karpov)doesn't have a clue about Chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession

The business of the endgame is maneuvring to control critical squares, advancing or blockading passed pawns, preparing a breakthrough by the king, or exploiting the subtle superiority of one piece over another.

The 'chess machine', by which admiring title he had been known, revealed the great drawback of a machine: it had not sufficient flexibility to adapt itself to altered circumstances.

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.

The consumer game is tougher than pro football and more conniving than chess. One side [industry] invents the rules and the other side [consumers] is left to guess what they are.

The endgame is an arena in which miraculous escapes are not uncommon.

The essential disadvantage of the isolated pawn ... lies not in the pawn itself, but in the square in front of the pawn.

The fact that a knight is temporarily on the edge of the board is of no great significance.

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

The future belongs to he who has the bishops.

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

The higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess.

The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility - those are the reasons that chess matches are won or lost.

The first essential for an attack is the will to attack.

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

...the initial position is decisive Zugzwang.

The idea comes before the logical argument.

The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There's never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I'll buy some of the feminism.

The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It's not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it's deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.

The laws of chess are as beautiful as those governing the universe - and as deadly.

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