Best 681 quotes in «chess quotes» category

I do not know how old I was when I learned to play chess. I could not have been older than eight, because I still have a chessboard on whose side my father inscribed, with a soldering iron, “Saša Hemon 1972.” I loved the board more than chess—it was one of the first things I owned. Its materiality was enchanting to me: the smell of burnt wood that lingered long after my father had branded it; the rattle of the thickly varnished pieces inside, the smacking sound they made when I put them down, the board’s hollow wooden echo. I can even recall the taste—the queen’s tip was pleasantly suckable; the pawns’ round heads, not unlike nipples, were sweet. The board is still at our place in Sarajevo, and, even if I haven’t played a game on it in decades, it is still my most cherished possession, providing incontrovertible evidence that there once lived a boy who used to be me.

I don't simply create probabilities, I guide them.

If Chess is the switch,” Loretta said, “how does he turn the Fog off?” Bea bit her lower lip. “I don’t know—ask Chess.” “How would I know?” I said. “You try being a switch.

If God wanted humans to play chess, he would have made us black or white.

If I had wanted to be a pawn in a game, I would have taken up chess...

If I am a pawn in someone else's chess game, you better believe I am going to demand an explanation before being shoved at some rook. I'll play my part, damn it, but I want the courtesy of being asked for my consent!

I have just spent the better part of a week sorting out the miasma of lunatic alibis known as your correspondence in an effort to adjust matters, that our game may be finished simply once and for all.

Imagine God and Man set down together to play that game of chess that we call life. The one player is a master, the other a bungling amateur, so the outcome of the game cannot be in question. The amateur has free will, he does what he pleases, for it was he who chose to set up his will against that of the master in the first place; he throws the whole board into confusion time and again and by his foolishness delays the orderly ending of it all for countless generations, but every stupid move of his is dealt with by a masterly counterstroke, and slowly but inexorably the game sweeps on to the master's victory. But, mind you, the game could not move on at all without the full complement of pieces; Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights, Pawns; the master does not lose sight of a single one of them.

I learned about opening moves and why it's important to control the center early on; the shortest distance between two points is straight down the middle.

I’m not into danger, either.” “Aw, Chess. You so into it you ain’t climb out with a rope. Why else you do your job, live down here, buy from Bump?” “It’s just—I mean—I just do, is all.” Her cheeks burned. She shouldn’t have let him come in here. She should have just sent him home and let him wash his stupid shirt himself. “No shame in it. Some of us needs an edge on things make us feel right, else we ain’t like feeling at all, aye?

I’m not forcing you to do anything. You need to make your own damn decisions . And I'm not playing this game where we ignore reality and pretend to have a normal conversation for a few hours. You need to face reality and stop turning life into a movie. I'm not a puppet in your show. This is real life and you're always trying to ignore it for some cheap fantasy version where no problems exist. That's not noble of you, okay? You're not strong. You're a weak person like the rest of us. You've just learned to excel at avoiding issues. But there are issues . Life has so many freaking issues and if you can't force your own self to face life and make decisions without someone telling you what the hell to do, you're just going to end up another chess piece moved around by others.

I'm playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, that's why I always lose

In life, as in chess, it is always better to analyze one's motives and intentions.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

In chess puzzles and tactics you see moves which in game is difficult to see mainly because of time and more often from the fast moves...

In a game of chess, it is expedient to sacrifice your queen to capture your opponent's king.

In chess, without the king, the other pieces would all be "dead", so their existance is supported by the king, but they need to serve the king with their capacity for action in order to have a good game.

I never have heard somebody talking about games which are educationable or with logic like chess for example. Nobody watch it from the people which watch football and are good at math. Why they don't do it??

I put my hand on a bishop, my would be assassin, and thought of my father's heights when he won, how he galloped around. The depths of his despair at losing, I expected, would be equal to the peaks. He'd mope about, his face fallen and miserable, his posture stooped as if his back ached. I took my hand from the piece and leaned back in deliberation.

I prefer to make my annotations 'hot on the heels', as it were, when the fortunes of battle, the worries, hopes and disappointments are still sufficiently fresh in my mind. Much as I would like to, I cannot say this about these few games which will be given below. In fact, if the annotator should begin to use phrases of the type: 'in reply to...I had worked out the following variation...', the reader will rightly say 'Grandmaster, you are showing off', since the 'oldest' of these games is now more than 25 years old, and even the 'newest' more than 20. Therefore, I would ask you not to regard the following 'stylised' annotations too severely.

I pull on her tether all the time but it won’t sink in. I have a feeling I’m using too much magic. I can’t hold so many under my control and pull them in deep. Dean is the only one I have fully immersed. I am the puppet master. I am the only player on the board. Pacey doesn’t even know that the game has begun."-Lilith

I used to attack because it was the only thing I knew. Now I attack because I know it works.

It's hard to run from checkmate, checkmate is like the dead... but it's possible to block it. Unfortunately dead you can't block it, but checkmate can be blocked, in such way so the player can't make it.

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed is as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he has hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.

It was going to be our job to annoy someone?” “I know—it’s a dream come true!

I want to be an aggressive player;One who always find joy in every move.

Love is like a game of chess. You're white. He's black. You wait for him to make a move, while staring into his handsome, melting-you-on-the-inside eyes, then realize what a dummy he is to not tell you straight out to go first. The beginning is the crush stage. You begin to realize how much you want to defeat him, or make him fall in love with you. By the time you get to the heat of the game, you both moved and are hopefully dating. If you haven't forfeit then because you don't want to be cheated on, you make another move- head on shoulder, hand holding, etc. Black makes another move-he gives you his jacket on a freezing night. By the endgame, he either realizes how stupid he was to play with you and forfeits, or he realizes how smart you are and lets you defeat him (and love you). By the time you win, you're married to him. A happily ever after game of chess.

I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess.

Life isn't always like Chess. But sometimes it is. In a really difficult game, queen leaves board at the end. The difference is, you call it sacrifice in Chess.

Life is not the game of Chess - "Check - Mate, game over", and play again. Life gives you ample time to improve, learn and correct your mistakes and enjoy, THAN "Check - Mate, game over".

Nothing was done to us - we were simply placed in a complete void, and everyone knows that nothing on earth exerts such pressure on the human soul as a void.

Magic = Chess, Chess is with strategy, doing moves which people think that they are random, but they aren't random. They are part of the strategy. The same is in the magic. However, the magic, have the ability to distraction!

Never play chess with God, He checkmates His opponents even before the game begins.

Love was full of secrets. Love masked so many evils. Love controlled people, it lied to them, it made them believe things that weren’t true and it hid the truth from them. People said love was blind, but what they meant was that love blinded them. It made them more vulnerable than anything else could. And it felt so fucking good.

Now you’re listening to Swedish ?” I asked her. “He thinks I’m the Compass because every time I see ticktocks, I happen to be there!

Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without errors, or as they say 'flawless game' is colorless.

Once the game is over,’ ” he says, “ ‘the king and the pawn go back in the same box.’ ” “In life and death we are equal.

Off.. offf leave the game in my hands if I am going to lose I wanna lose without special help, what you are saying is crap... castle, castle, castle in chess is important... fuck off that guy won without even castling.

Our parting was like a stalemate…. Neither of us won. Yet both of us lost. And worse still … that unshakable feeling that nothing was ever really finished.

Only Uncle Pascha ignored her. He was contemplating his chessboard. She doubted that he'd move his piece today. It had been his turn for only six months. Once, he had gone three years between moves. He preferred a leisurely game.

Pawns are such fascinating pieces, too...So small, almost insignificant, and yet--they can depose kings. Don't you find that interesting?

Screams and laughter simultaneously rent the air. Women were being physically harassed by the soldiers who had just killed their husbands, fathers and brothers. After the battle, men would win but the women always lost.

People are like chess pieces!

Playing chess with my father is torture. I have to sit very upright on the edge of my chair and respect the rules of impassivity while I consider my next move. I can feel myself dissolving under his stare. When I move a pawn he asks sarcastically, 'Have you really thought about what you're doing?' I panic and want to move the pawn back. He doesn't allow it: 'You've touched the piece, now you have to follow through. Think before you act. Think.

Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.

Remember the white knight." Though it seemed so long ago, he well remembered their conversation about the chess problem. The white knight had made a move, changed his mind, and started over. "And do you believe this was a good move?" Mr. Benedict had asked. "No, sir," Reynie had answered. "Why, then, do you think he made it?" And Reynie had replied, "Perhaps because he doubted himself.

She’d been feeling pleased with a couple of moves, had thought she was gaining the upper hand. But she’d been overconfident. She’d failed to notice his stealthy approach until he turned the tables on her with a move she hadn’t expected and now she was fighting for her life.

She’d fucked him over hardcore. She’d betrayed him and she’d lied to him, and she knew that as far as he was concerned she’d led him on and used him as well, had consorted with people who wanted to see him dead and given them information to help them make him so. Most of all, she’d hurt him. And if the pain in her chest was anything close to what he’d felt, she was more than willing to admit he deserved to get his own back. Was willing to do more than admit it; was willing to take it, in the hopes he’d eventually decide she’d been punished enough and they could maybe move on.

She has gathered that the man in the grey suit whom her father called Alexander also has a student, and there will be some sort of game. "Like chess?" she asks once. "No," her father says. "Not like chess.

Some guys live in worlds where pawns stay pawns. I'm one move from king.