Best 681 quotes in «chess quotes» category

Once I asked Teichman what he thought of Bird's chess: "Same as his health," he replied, "always alternating between being dangerously ill and dangerously well.

Once we have chosen the right formation in the centre we have created opportunities for our pieces and laid the foundation of subsequent victory.

One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one could live in it.

One charming characteristic of many flank attacks I could mention is that they do not very often lead to simplification: if the attack is parried, there usually are still opportunities left for initiating action in another sector.

One can say that in the last decades chess has become more of a sport than of a science. I see it from an artistic point of view.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

One of these modest little moves may be more embarrassing to your opponent than the biggest threat

Only a good bishop can be sacrificed, a bad bishop can only be lost.

Only play into a variation in which your opponent is strong if you have your own personal novelty ready!

Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack

On the whole, the life of a chess professional is not as easy as it appears at first sight. One needs to devote some ten hours a day to chess and to everything connected with it - physical and psycholgical preparation.

Our efforts in chess attain only a hundredth of one percent of their rightful result... Our education, in all domains of endeavour, is frightfully wasteful of time and values.

Patience is the most valuable trait of the endgame player.

People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.

Pawns are born free, yet they are everywhere in chains

Pawn endings are to Chess what putting is to golf

Playing black, I put great stake in the Ruy Lopez: I liked it, feel it, and understand it; in matches with Hjartarson and Timman it served me well. - on preparing for World Championship versus Garry Kasparov

Playing for complications is an extreme measure that a player should adopt only when he cannot find a clear and logical plan.

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

Playing without a concurrent critical review of one's skills will simply get you nowhere.

Politics in Iran is not played like American football. It's played like chess. There are multiple moves. You're jumping ahead. And a lot of it is very subtle, and it catches you by surprise later on. So I don't want to go overboard on this.

Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact.

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.

Psychology is the most important factor in chess.

Ridicule can do much, for instance embitter the existence of young talents.

Repeating moves in an ending can be very useful. Apart from the obvious gain of time on the clock one notices that the side with the advantage gains psychological benefit.

Right now I'm really happy with how things are going with my chess career, so I'm not thinking of doing anything else.

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.

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

Robert Fischer is a law unto himself

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

tennis is a 100-mph chess match.

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.

Tennis is physical chess.

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