Best 681 quotes in «chess quotes» category

Patience is the most valuable trait of the endgame player.

Pawn endings are to Chess what putting is to golf

Pawns are born free, yet they are everywhere in chains

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

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

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 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

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.

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.

Psychology is the most important factor in chess.

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

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

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.

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

Robert Fischer is a law unto himself

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Snooker is just chess with balls.

Spassky will not be psyched out by Fischer

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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 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 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 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.