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Chess Quotations
Points to Ponder
It is a representative contest, a bloodless combat, an
image, not only of actual military operations, but of that greater warfare
to which every son of the earth, from the cradle to the grave, is
continually waging, the battle of life. Its virtues are as innumerable as
the sands of the African Sahara. It heals the mind in sickness and exercises
it in health. It is rest to the overworked intellect, and relaxation to the
fatigued body. It lessens the grief of the mourner, and heightens the
enjoyment of the happy. It teaches the angry man to restrain his passions,
the light-minded to become grave, the cautious to be bold, and the
venturesome to be prudent. It affords a keen delight to youth, a sober
pleasure to manhood, and a perpetual solace to old age. It induces the poor
to forget their poverty, and the rich to be careless of their wealth. It
admonishes Kings to love and respect their people, and instructs subjects to
obey and reverence their rulers. It shows how the humblest citizens, by the
practice of virtue and the efforts of labor, may rise to the loftiest
stations, and how the haughtiest lords, by the love of vice and the
commission of errors, may fall from their elevated estate. It is an
amusement and an art, a sport and a science. The erudite and untaught, the
high and the low, the powerful and the weak, acknowledge its charms and
confirm its enticements. We learn to be like it in the years of our youth,
but as increased familiarity has developed its beauties, and unfolded its
lessons, our enthusiasm has grown stronger, and our fondness more confirmed.
Indian philosopher
Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to
keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain
ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the
greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly
for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the
better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems.
Benjamin Franklin
For those given to reflection, chess offers a mirror to self-understanding.
Can you follow through when you have made a plan? How do you hold up under
pressure? Are you impatient? Are you mentally lazy? Can you manage time? Do
you play to win or to draw? Does fear of making mistakes prevent you trying
something creative? Do you attend to details? Are you a gracious winner, or
a sore loser? Michael Gelb
I think it is important to translate the lessons on the chessboard into real
life. Danny King
As well as teaching you about your own strengths and weaknesses, chess can
develop you ability to understand others. To succeed at chess, you must
learn to think like your opponent, even if your opponents style of thinking
is very different from your own. Michael Gelb
The way he plays chess demonstrates a man's whole nature. Stanley Ellin
The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility - those are the
reasons that chess matches are won or lost.
Viktor Korchnoi
Weaknesses of character are normally shown in a game of chess. Garry
Kasparov
Chess returns man to the noblest ideals of contest. The Times, November
2000
The game of chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable
qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to
become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of chess.
Benjamin Franklin
The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every on of us and, more or
less, of those who are connected with us, do depend on our knowing the rules
of a game infinitely more complicated than chess. The chessboard is the
world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game
are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden
from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But we
also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the
smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest
stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the
strong show delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated without
hate, but without remorse. Thomas Henry Huxley
Life is like a game of chess, in which there are an infinite number of
complex moves possible. The choice is open, but the move made contains
within it all future moves. One is free to choose, but what follows is the
result of one's choice. From the consequences of one's action there is never
any escape. Shelley Smith
In life, as in chess, ones own pawns block ones way. A mans very wealth,
ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often
checkmate him. Charles Buxton
Life is like a game of chess: we draw up a plan; this plan, however, is
conditional on what - in chess, our opponent - in life, our fate - will
choose to do. Artur Shopenhauer
I often use the analogy of a chess game: one can learn all the rules of
chess, but one doesn't know how to play well. The present situation in
physics is as if we know chess, but we don't know one or two rules. But in
this part of the board where things are in operation, those one or two rules
are not operating much and we can get along pretty well without
understanding those rules. That's the way it is, I would say, regarding the
phenomena of life, consciousness and so forth. Richard Feynman
Chess is a substitute for life itself. David Spanier
On the chessboard, if nowhere else, justice does triumph. Irving Chernev
We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which
constitutes "the world" is something like a great chess game being played by
the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of
the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course,
if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules.
The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Richard
Feynman
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
The game of chess is a highly rigorous process which nevertheless allows for
a considerable degree of imagination and intuition. The process actually has
more to do with the intangible space of the intellect than the physical
space of our world. The pieces and board are only markers for the mental
processes which they map out. Rodney Cottrell
The chess pieces are the block alphabet, which shapes thoughts; and these
thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their
beauty abstractly, like a poem. Marcel Duchamp
A recorded game of chess is a story in symbols, relating in cipher the
struggle of two intellects; a story with a real plot, a beginning, a middle,
and an end, in which the harmonies of time and place are scrupulously
observed; the fickleness of fortune is illustrated; the smiles of the
prosperous, the struggles of adversity, the change that comes over the two;
the plans suggested by one, spoiled by the tactics of the other - the lures,
the wiles, the fierce onset, the final victory. An hour's history of two
minds is well told in a game of chess. Jose R. Capablanca
A chess tournament is not a horse race. Besides official results, it leaves
something much more important: games - products of human intellect.
Mikhail Krasenkow
To the players, the game is like an unfolding drama. Tension builds and a
crisis is reached which decides whether or not there will be a happy ending.
The players live through the emotions of an exciting story. Ralph L. Hall
The act of playing chess is an act of creative cooperation. Even though
you're trying to defeat your opponent, you're still creating something in
partnership with him, a brand new game. Whether that creation is ultimately
beautiful or ugly makes no difference, the aesthetics don't matter - you're
still teaming up to make a game that's never been played before. David
Bronstein
Oh! This opponent, this collaborator against his will, whose notion of
Beauty always differs from yours and whose means (strength, imagination,
technique) are often too limited to help you effectively! What torment, to
have your thinking and your fantasy tied down by another person! Alexander
Alekhine
The opponent is always very annoying! Bent Larsen
And the rigidity of the material with which we have to compose, is a more
formidable opponent than Lasker or Capablanca. Because these lifeless
opponents do not have any moments of human weakness! Henri Weenink
In my case, when I look at a chess position, I do not see a static
arrangement of squares and markers. I see motion and lines of force; each
position tells the story of its past while pointing towards its future. A
well-played combination is a symphony of spatial manipulation; it is poetry
of the intellect and ecstasy of the soul. Bruce Moon
Self-transcendent Love, Magic, myth and mystery abound on sixty-four tiles.
A complex evolutionary dialectic lies concealed in colored pieces. Donald
McLean
Via the squares on the chessboard, the Indians explain the movement of time
and the age, the higher influences, which control the world, and the ties
which link chess with the human soul. Al-Masudi
Take these pieces, set them in their rank and file upon an 8 x 8 magic
square and you have the recipe for endless centuries of romance and
intrigue. Donald McLean
Chess you don't learn ... chess you understand! Viktor Korchnoi
Few sports have such a deep and complicated world that is completely closed
to outsiders. One of the reasons chess has such an intellectual reputation
is because if you dont understand chess, you don't understand it at ALL,
and this also makes it more attractive to us, the members of the club. It's
like speaking a foreign language or liking cauliflower, it puts you into a
special group of people that understand something that those out of the
group can't. Mig Greengard
We perceive after a careful consideration of the evolution of the chess mind
that such evolution has gone on, in general, in a way quite similar to that
in which it goes on with the individual chess player, only with the latter
more rapidly. Richard Reti
Today we see in chess the fight of aspiring Americanism against the old
European intellectual life: a struggle between the technique of Capablanca,
a virtuoso in whose play one can find nothing tangible to object to, and
between great European masters, all of them artists, who have the qualities
as well as the faults of artists in the treatment of the subject they devote
themselves to: they experimentalize and in striving after what is deep down:
they overlook what is near to hand. If Americanism is victorious in chess,
it will also be so in life. For in the idea of chess and the development of
the chess mind we have a picture of the intellectual struggle of mankind.
Richard Reti
There was a time when chess was just a game, a hobby for leisure hours. In
our days, it has become an art in which the virtuosi create real works of
art, games which are then disseminated by press, radio, and television to
millions of fans who get aesthetic pleasure from them. In many countries the
game has become one aspect of a nations culture. Alexander Kotov
There is no any difference between chess and other arts: one cannot confuse
a beautiful game with an ordinary one, but there is no precise definition of
the beauty, in my opinion. Peter Svidler
I comprehend the beauty of chess as a symbiosis of investigations and
analytical work at home with improvisation and creative work when playing at
the board. Most beautiful games in the history of chess have appeared as a
result of previous accumulation of knowledge, experience, combined with
inspiration, break-through, emotional bursting of the chess player during
the play. Sergey Ivanov
There's a tremendous beauty in chess. The simplest thing is just the love of
the game. You've got to enjoy it. Yasser Seirawan
There are still those who only play for the love of the game. T Bone
Burnett
What occurs on (the chessboard), in the form of a creative act sometimes
resembling a true work of art, is in reality a struggle of exceptional
violence, a form of bloodless homicide whose outcome is shared by the
contenders alone. Nothing binds two people like a serious challenge on
chessboard, making them counterposed poles of a jointly produced mental
creation in which one is annihilated to the other's advantage. There is no
harsher or more implacable defeat. The players bear lifelong scars, neither
body nor soul ever recovering fully. Anything that might reawaken memory of
the mutilation is violently repulsed.
Paolo Maurensig
A title match is a two-person action, there are two people creating at the
board, not one. Klara Kasparova
A real chess game can only be experienced by two people. Jan Hein Donner
True beauty in chess consists in an elemental struggle between totally
different tendencies. It is the multiplicity of the various styles of
personalities that gives chess its magic attraction. Paul Keres
As a matter of fact, every chess player is a pragmatist. Every chess player
prefers to play the positions where he is stronger than his rivals. Kasparov
plays active chess not because he is a romantic, but because this is what he
can do best of all. Shirov, Morozevich, Karpov - all of them have their own
styles. And all of them are pragmatists, that is, they seek the positions
where they have advantages over their opponents. Vladimir Kramnik
Chess is an aggressive game; it depends on the opponent what sort of style
comes to the fore. Alexei Shirov
When two fiercely aggressive masters clash, the struggle is usually short
and violent. Irving Chernev
I cannot imagine anything that puts such a strain on all the vital organs -
brain, heart, kidneys and liver - at once, as the excitement when playing
chess. Wilhelm Steinitz
When I completely forget where I am for five hours, this is an experience I
want to repeat again and again. Life can give no security, but the chess
goddess you can always trust. She doesn't promise anything and she doesn't
disappoint you. She is like a pet animal that is happy when it gets fed.
That animal doesn't rail at you, it's just there. Source Unknown
The passion is victorious. Chess is not football. Alexander Alekhine
It is games such as this that sustain the spirit and soothe the soul.
Sunil Weeramantry (on a brilliant game he'd played)
The whole majesty of the game, the strategies, plans and ideas. I just
jumped in headfirst and fell in love. Chess is life or death. The pieces are
alive, but what actually happens on the chessboard is about 1 percent of the
game. It goes on in the heads of the opponents, at almost a psychic level,
and that's what makes it so absolutely intense. To me, it's like the golf
shot that wins the Masters, or like Michael Jordan taking the last shot to
win the NBA finals. Chess has that kind of intensity from the first move.
Maurice Ashley
Chess has this in common with making poetry; that the desire for it comes
upon the amateur in gusts. A. A. Milne
The universe created within a chess game can be a very unforgiving one.
There are no instant replays, no extra credit after school, and no disaster
relief loans. It is a sharp edged reality, lacking the dulling aspects of
Deus ex machina luck, and unwarped by insider connections. Robert Morrell
The exhilarating feeling that one walks in a minefield, that one has to be
constantly on the alert for a tactical surprise, plotting at the same time
to surprise one's opponent, these are the very things that make chess
exciting. Hans Ree
For all their wealth of content, for all the sum of history and social
institution invested in them, music, mathematics, and chess are
resplendently useless (applied mathematics is a higher plumbing, a kind of
music for the police band). They are metaphysically trivial, irresponsible.
They refuse to relate outward, to take reality for arbiter. This is the
source of their witchery. George Steiner
It is my belief that chess is an amazingly accurate model for many
situations in life. The strategies, the competition and the challenges of
living. Ken Smith
In life, we are all duffers. Emanuel Lasker
In chess, just as in life, today's bliss may be tomorrow's poison. Assiac
Life is a kind of chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events.
Benjamin Franklin
Human life very much resembles a game of chess: for, as in the latter, while
a gamester is too attentive to secure himself very strongly on one side of
the board, he is apt to leave an unguarded opening on the other, so doth it
often happen in life.
Henry Fielding
O life, what art thou? Life seldom answers this question. But her silence is
of little consequence, for schoolmasters and other men of good will are
well-qualified to answer for her. She is, they inform us, a game. Which
game? Bagatelle? No, life is serious, so not bagatelle, but any game that -
er - is not a game of chance; not Baccarat, but Chess. E. M. Forster
Since there are two elements, in life, the uncontrollable and that which we
are supposed to control; and since games of chance exaggerate the former and
chess the latter - what game reflects their actual proportion? E. M.
Forster
The beauty of a chess move is not in its appearance, but in the thought
behind it. Aaron Nimzowitsch
I find beauty in moves because they are strong. Emanuel Lasker
A combination composed of a sacrifice has more immediate effect upon the
person playing over the game in which it occurs than another combination,
because the apparent senselessness of the sacrifice is convincing proof of
the design of the player offering it. Hence it comes that the risk of
material, and the victory of the weaker material over the stronger material,
gives the impression of a symbol of the mastery of mind over matter. Now we
see wherein lies the pleasure to be derived from a chess combination. It
lies in the feeling that a human mind is behind the game dominating the
inanimate pieces with which the game is carried on, and giving them the
breath of life. We may regard it as an intellectual delight, equal to that
afforded us by the knowledge that behind so many apparently disconnected and
seemingly chance happenings in the physical world lies the one great ruling
spirit - the law of Nature. Richard Reti
There's not the mystery in ten murders that there is in one game of chess.
Detective Linley (in Two Bottles of Relish)
There are more adventures on a chessboard than on all the seas of the world.
Pierre Mac Orlan
Anything may happen in a chess game. Richard Reti
For me, chess is life and every game is like a new life. Every chess player
gets to live many lives in one lifetime.
Eduard Gufeld
When I reflect on our constitution, I seem as it were to contemplate a game
of chess, a recreation in which we both delight. For we have a king whose
dignity we strenuously defend, but whose power is very limited; the knights,
and bishops, and other pieces, have some kind of resemblance to the order of
nobility, who are employed in war, and in the management of public affairs;
but the principal strength is in the pawns or people; if they are firmly
united they are sure of victory, but if divided and separated, the battle is
lost. The motions of all, as in the game of chess, are regulated by fixed
laws. Sir William Jones
There is a class of men who gather in coffeehouses and play with a desire
that dieth not, and a fire that is not quenched. The passion for playing
chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of
natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations, the
least satisfying of desires, an aimless excrescence upon life. It
annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising
artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and
unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess! Our statesmen would
sit with pocket boards while the country went to the devil, and our
breadwinners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible mates.
H. G. Wells
It is a great time-waster. How many precious hours, which can never be
recalled, have I profusely spent in this game! It hath had with me a
fascinating property; I have been bewitched by it: when I have begun, I have
not had the power to give over. It hath not done with me, when I have done
with it. It hath followed me into my study, into my pulpit; when I have been
praying or preaching, I have (in my thoughts) been playing at chess; than I
have had, as it were, a chess-board before my eyes. It hath caused me to
break many solemn resolutions; nay, vows and promises. Sometimes I have
obliged myself, in the most solemn manner, to play but so many mates at a
time, or with any one person, and anon I have broken these obligations and
promises. It hath wounded my conscience and broken my peace. I have had sad
reflections upon it, when I have been most serious. I find, if I were now to
die, the remembrance of this game would greatly trouble me and stare me in
the face. I have read in the life of the famous John Huss, how he was
greatly troubled, for his sing of this game, a little before his death. My
using of it hath occasioned much sin, as passion, strife, idle (if not
lying) words, in myself and my antagonist, or both. It hath caused the
neglect of many duties both to God and men. Rev. E. Harley
Chess is a good mistress but a bad master. Gerald Abrahams
It is a fact that chess games and chess positions have a hold upon many, a
hold strong enough to make them burst into applause and to cause these games
and positions to be preserved in books and to be fondly remembered.
Emanuel Lasker
Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so
that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer. Alburt Einstein
The high points in chess never quite make up for the low points. Andrew
Soltis
Human affairs are like a chess game: only those who do not take it seriously
can be called good players. Hung Tzu Ch'eng
Many have become chess masters - no one has become the master of chess.
Siegbert Tarrasch
Those who say they understand chess, understand nothing. Robert Hόbner
After all, in the end, what chess creativity consists of is non-routine
thinking. Alexander Suetin
Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player,
not the chess piece. Ralph Charell
If the point of playing chess is as a battle of the intellect then most
people would say that the memorization of other peoples ideas is something
that is anathema to the spirit of chess. Nigel Davies
Let us depart from science. Chess can never reach its height by following in
the path of science. Let us, therefore make a new effort and with the help
of our imagination turn the struggle of technique into a battle of ideas.
Jose R. Capablanca
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they
may start a winning game.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Clearly it is very difficult to approach chess in a truly objective manner -
so much seems to be based on 'instinct'. Simon Webb
Independence of thought is the most valuable quality in a chess player, both
at the board and when preparing for a game.
David Bronstein
Objectivity consists in understanding that the only one who never makes a
mistake is the one who never does anything.
Vladimir Kramnik
Reason, which governs the world, governs also the chessboard. Emanuel
Lasker
Let us hope that also in these days of all-round mediocrity, reason is not
wholly without partisans. Emanuel Lasker
It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my
opponent over the board and against myself on the clock. Viktor Korchnoi
Mozart was incredibly prodigious at a tender age, but his early creations
were by no means equal to the majesty of his later productions. And as good
as Capablanca and Reshevsky were at eight, it took years of growth and
development before they assumed the mantle of world-class grandmasters.
Bruce Pandolfini
A man ceases to be a beginner in chess and becomes a master when he has
learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life. paraphrased from
R. G. Collingwood
Man is frivolous, a specious creature and, like a chess player, cares more
for the process of attaining his goal than the goal itself. Fyodor
Dostoevsky
The function of chess is to make clever people appear to be idiots. Source
Unknown
It is quite possible for a wise man to be a great chess player, but it is
equally possible for a great chess player to be a fool.
Denis Diderot
Chess, like the tomb, levels all grades of conventional rank and distinction
and reserves its high places for the best players.
George Walker
Chess is replete with quiet Walter Mitty types who tear onto the boards with
bloodthirsty fury. And there also can be found high-rolling entrepreneurial
folk who play slow, subtle, positional chess. My guess is that our chess
styles tell us more about what we miss in our lives than what is really in
them. Robert Morrell
Everybody blunders, even grandmasters. Bent Larsen
Extraordinarily tense, full-blooded struggles that are absolutely without
any mistakes are only to be found in distant interplanetary chess
tournaments. Mikhail Tal
Sacrifices only prove that someone has blundered. Saviely Tartakower
Without error there can be no brilliancy. Emanuel Lasker
First-class players lose to second-class players because second-class
players sometimes play a first-class game.
Siegbert Tarrasch
Humans err all their lives long. And chess-players probably even more so.
Nevertheless it can happen that all of a sudden genius strikes. And if
Caissa decides to have a generous day a masterpiece can be born even to the
most random and insignificant of chess-players. Richard Forster
A few years ago, John Fedorowicz was described as having become 'one of the
deepest strategic thinkers in American chess'. When I told 'the Fed' about
that, he replied, 'Yeah? Well, my new strategy is just to stop taking
draws.' Andrew Soltis
To play for a draw, at any rate with White, is to some degree a crime
against chess. Mikhail Tal
Draws make me angry. Oleg Romanishin
A game of chess is never drawn until it's drawn. All too frequently players
agree draws in level positions, without realizing that there are ways of
winning these positions against a careless opponent. Simon Webb
You can't expect to go through a tournament without losing. Losing is part
of the game, like hitting your clock and writing down the moves. And you
can't expect to do well just by offering draws when you think you're in
trouble or in an unknown position.
Norman Weinstein
I realized that I had become more concerned with not losing than with
winning. I decided to stop worrying about norms and ratings and the gnawing
feeling you get when you lose, and see what happened. It worked. Andrew
Soltis
Imagine two guys, one who always draws and the other who alternates winning
six and losing six. After a year, they have the same number of points and
the same ratings. The difference is that the risk player has a big pile of
money, while the drawmaster made nothing. Lawrence Day
You give a few, take a few and in the end it all comes out equal. Hans Ree
When I lose a game I feel pretty bad, but I get over it because it is only a
game and tomorrow you can set up the pieces and play again. Joel Benjamin
Chess is not a "play fair and win" sort of game. At least that is what I
tell my students each and every week. Of course, this is only true from a
certain point of view. The best chess players are certainly masters of the
swindle, the con, and the sneaky tactical shots needed to win the game. We
all strive to leave our victims broken, bleeding and moaning in agony,
looking for any and every opportunity to toss them in front of a speeding
semi-rig (metaphorically speaking), while patting ourselves on the back for
our ingenuity. Russell Black
All chess players (and that includes you and me) must have a sadistic streak
or we would not enjoy seeing a fellow chessplayer being methodically
crushed. Irving Chernev
There is a moment in chess when your opponent knows he is lost. He knows he
can do nothing to save himself. All moves lose. It is not checkmate. It is
before checkmate. Everything he can do is wrong. There are no good moves.
All moves lose. It is a very terrible spot to be in, but it is fun to watch
him squirm. He stares at the board, but it does not change. Nothing can be
changed and there is no hope. He is a mouse and I am the cat. I watch him
very closely as he suffers. When the game is over, I will feel sympathy for
him, but not now. Now I watch him twist and turn and tear himself to
ribbons. His agonies are mine.
Richard Laurie (spoken by the fictional Alekhine in Laurie's play "Knight
of the Id" about Alekhine's last days)
There is no more happy a moment for a chess player than a win. Leonid
Shamkovich
Although it is more fun to win, be in the game for the game and ultimately
be satisfied that winning and losing are both part of playing. If you can
internalize that one, you'll really know one of the secrets of life. But
play your hardest anyway; just be positioned higher than the win. Source
Unknown
Whatever chess players might say, there always is a chessboard, and only
over the chessboard may you prove that you are better than somebody!
Ruslan Ponomariov
It makes no difference whether you win or lose, until you lose. Anonymous
Loser
The true sweetness of chess, if it can be sweet, is to see a victory
snatched, by some happy impertinence, out of the shadow of apparently
irrevocable disaster. H. G. Wells
For the players, their own game is never boring, only the spectators think
so. Hans Ree
A bad day of chess is better than any good day at work. Source Unknown
I have never had the satisfaction of beating a completely healthy opponent.
Amos Burn
Do chessplayers exist who lose a game without being handicapped by an
appointment at the consulate, or by being ill or having dined too heavily
the day before? Chessplayers who lose just because their opponent was
better? They exist, but they are a rare find. Hans Ree
Indeed, for every chessplayer it is just the normal state of affairs when he
wins by his own merit, but winning completely undeservedly by plain luck
reflects the benevolence of the gods. Hans Ree
Combinations have always been the most intriguing aspects of chess. The
masters look for them, the public applauds them, and the critics praise
them. It is because combinations are possible that chess is more than a
lifeless mathematical exercise. They are the poetry of the game; they are to
chess what melody is to music. They represent the triumph of mind over
matter.
Reuben Fine
If a combination has been found, nothing avails the opponent, for the
demonstration of the win can be grasped. In Life, it is different. There the
struggles are not so indubitably terminated as in a game. The game gives us
a satisfaction that Life denies us. And for the chess player, the success
which crowns his work, the great dispeller of sorrows, is named combination.
Emanuel Lasker
On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative
combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact,
culminating in the checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite. Emanuel Lasker
Many players, even of a high caliber, will assert, half jokingly and half
seriously, that a difficult labor of analysis can be replaced by intuition.
'I played this move in a flash - it was obvious it couldn't be bad' is the
sort of thing we often hear in a post-mortem. Criticizing such a policy is
not simple - not after it has just been successful! Instead of appraising
the state of struggle on the basis of precise calculation, Black makes a
move, which on general considerations, is wholly in the spirit of the
position - a flank attack is countered by a break in the center. Yet in
chess there are no axioms. Vladimir Zak
Contemporary chess is now entering a new stage of its development, with an
even greater wealth of internal and external substance. It would be too much
to reject the practical side too quickly for the sake of analytical and
romantic creativity. I am sure the further development of chess will move
along a harmonious blending of what seem at first glance to be mutually
exclusive principles. Garry Kasparov
There is a great difference between years of analysis and minutes at the
board. Mikhail Tal
On the chessboard, first we seek the truth. Tony Miles
The truth in chess is much more in the ideas than in the variations.
Richard Reti
Chess is a creative process. Its purpose is to find the truth. To discover
the truth, you must be uncompromising. You must be brave. Bruce Pandolfini
As Bobby Fischer said, you have to go for the truth in chess, and if that
requires taking on a risky activity, you have to go ahead and do it. Edmar
Mednis
The board is square, the pieces in opposition. All the rest is just theory.
Jason Varsoke
Chess without ideas is lifeless and, worse, unenjoyable. When a player
becomes bored with chess, he is probably at a plateau of competence. The
first move he sees usually turns out to be the move he makes. He feels he
has mastered all the combinations, has a grasp of opening and endgame
theory, but becomes impatient with the subtleties of positional play and
doesn't feel it is worth the time to try to extract something extra out of
every position. The most damning criticism that can be made of such a player
is that "he doesn't have any ideas." Robert Burger
I went into each game with a clear head and using common sense avoided lines
that my opponents might have analyzed beforehand or looked up on their
laptop computers. I was sustained by the faith that if you don't play bad
moves in chess you can't get a bad position no matter how much your opponent
has prepared. And not knowing what you are going to do before that game
starts has the definite advantage that your opponents won't know what you
will do either! Nigel Davies
Even if you hardly know the rules of chess you can appear to be a shrewd
chess analyst by copying the analyses on the net, which often are scanty,
but always good enough for a newspaper, and sometimes of top quality. A
highly developed skill of the past, chess reporting, has become almost
obsolete, just as the samurai's sword-fighting skill became obsolete when
effective handguns were introduced. Hans Ree
The level of usefulness that others see in chess will depend upon two
things. First, it will depend upon the level of usefulness that they see in
chess players. Second, it will depend upon their perception of the game
itself, its depth, complexity and disciplines. Final responsibility for both
of these perceptions rests with chess players, so if chess suffers a bad
reputation we really have no one to blame but ourselves. Robert Morrell
Chess players learn the importance of detail, as well as the dangers of
oversight, assumption, and good old-fashioned ignorance. Would you rather
have your brakes worked on by a player of 1) the lottery, or 2) chess?
Robert Morrell
There are two classes of men; those who are content to yield to
circumstances, and who play whist; and those who aim to control
circumstances, and who play chess. Mortimer Collins
At the amateur level, no one questions a jogger or weight lifter's need for
exercise, despite the fact that few will ever use their improved muscles for
anything more urgent than changing a tire. Chess players, on the other hand,
exercise the one "muscle" that makes us uniquely human, that if not saving
our lives, improves it daily. Robert Morrell
In an instant world of sound bites, short term profits, micro-nuked food,
and flash cut MTV-style video editing, chess players may become the last
people alive who can maintain continuous, coherent thought for longer than
eight seconds. Robert Morrell
Perhaps chess is useful for the banal reason that it demonstrates to
children that thinking is not boring. David Norwood
Apart from logical thinking and planning ahead, children also learn from the
feedback they get in playing chess. They can see their own thinking process
in action and can start to feel responsible for their own decisions.
Jonathan Levitt
Results show that just one year of chess tuition will improve a student's
learning abilities, concentration, application, sense of logic,
self-discipline, respect, behavior and the ability to take responsibility
for his/her own actions. Garry Kasparov
Children learn so much from chess; it's beautiful to watch. Problem solving,
goal setting, concentration, focus, patience; these are all the wonderful
things you want kids to learn. You don't get good if you don't use your
mind. You have to sharpen your mental skills, and that's exactly what it
does for kids. It gives them that mental acuity so they can become confident
about their mental abilities. Maurice Ashley
We have scientific support for what we have known all along - chess makes
kids smarter! Dr. Gerard Dullea
The exciting part, educationally, is the discovery that children who learn
chess at an early age achieve more in the traditional math and sciences.
Chinese, European, and American research all find significant correlational
values after just one year of systematic chess exposure. The most striking
benefits of chess are those associated with problem solving and creativity.
A four-year Pennsylvania study compared the effect of various enrichment
techniques on student scores on standardized tests. On the Watson-Glaser
Critical Thinking Appraisal, non-chess enrichment showed an average annual
increase effect of 4.56%. Chess groups' annual increase effects weighed in
at 17.3%. The York Board became the first English board in Canada to add
chess to the curriculum. In December, New Jersey became the first US state
to legislate chess into the curriculum starting in 1993. The United States
now joins Quebec and New Brunswick and 29 other countries in the world in
deploying chess systematically to develop thinking. Canadian Education
Association Newsletter: June 1993
The most wonderful thing about chess is the way it transforms people from
the inside out. Once they're exposed to the instruction, kids get chess
fever. And once they get hooked, their desire to apply themselves soars. The
ability to concentrate - really concentrate - takes a quantum leap the
minute chess sinks in. John Kennedy (NY chess teacher)
Chess is a terrific way for kids to build self-image and self-esteem.
Saudin Robovic
Becoming successful at chess allows you to discover your own personality.
That's what I want for the kids I teach.
Saudin Robovic
I started playing chess when I was about 4 or 5 years old. It is very good
for children to learn to play chess, because it helps them to develop their
mental abilities. It also helps to consolidate a persons character, because
as it happens both in life and in a chess game we have to make decisions
constantly. In chess there is no luck and no excuses: everything is in your
hands.
Vladimir Kramnik
I think that it's quite important to start chess education for children all
over the world. I think that this is a very important field, which is
practically not touched yet. I mean nobody is truly doing anything so far
about it, but I think it's very, very important and it's possible that I'll
open my own school, some kind of academy with the most talented chess
youngsters from all over the world. I'll work quite a lot in this direction,
because I believe this is the future for chess. I mean, we need to explain
to people, for instance to the parents, that it's good for their children to
study chess. Not even to become a professional chess player - not everybody
can do this - but just for developing your brain, just to develop some
strategical understanding. It's simply very good and I'll try to do
something in this direction. Vladimir Kramnik
I think that chess, in some form, will continue to remain popular in the
foreseeable future for a few good reasons. It is a good mental challenge
both for adults and children, it lends itself to study, it has appeal to
both solitary and social people, it transcends language and other barriers,
and of course it is ideally suited to distance play on the Internet. Tim
Harding
Chess playing provides a model task environment for the study of basic
cognitive processes, such as perception, memory, and problem solving. It
also offers a unique opportunity for the study of individual differences
(chess expertise) because of Elo's development of a chess-skill rating
scale. Psychological Research 1992 Vol.54 No.1
Certainly we cannot refuse to appreciate the part played by genius, the
mystery of creation. Years of study cannot make for the lack of imagination.
And yet look at Legal's mate. The mediocre chess player will never invent
anything like it; he will never even think of such. But, when the mechanism
of the stratagem has been explained to him, this same player will be able
not only to reproduce it when occasion arises, but to apply it in other
positions. Eugene Znosko-Borovsky
Our game is just too difficult for ordinary intelligent people. Jan Hein
Donner
The chess does make the man wiser and clear-sighted. Vladimir Putin
What we do realize is that smart people are smart for numerous reasons, and
that intelligence no longer can be understood merely in terms of traditional
concepts. In the current scheme there's room for the inclusion of various
expressions of aptitude, including those needed for verbalizing and those
helpful for playing chess. Maybe one day some ingenious person will connect
these talents and chessplayers will derive new insights into how they play
games, chess and language. For now, what we cannot speak about we must play
over in silence. Bruce Pandolfini
What distinguishes those great names from the average grand master is an
incredible, incredible sense of confidence, and it's palpable. It's not just
a question of being gutsy or courageous. It's a question of belief, of
confidence, of knowing it's going to happen. That's something a Fischer has,
a Kasparov has: an incredible sense of self. Yasser Seirawan
Chess is an example of something that is just beyond human mental abilities,
but not so far beyond them that we cannot make a decent stab at it. We're
very good at language, no better than rats at mazes, and somewhere in
between at chess.
Noam Chomsky
The first advantage of chess turns chiefly on the benefits of food and
exercise for the mind in which chess is marked out as an active agent,
intended by its inventor to conduce to intellectual energy in pursuit of
knowledge. Source Unknown
Chess opens and enriches your mind. Saudin Robovic
Chess requires that individuals become actively involved in a mentally
demanding competition; its effects are stimulating, wholesome, and healthy.
Ralph L. Hall
Chess masters subject themselves to much the same kind of discipline as that
of great music composers. Success at the highest levels in both art forms
comes from: constant practice and study; memorizing; trying new ideas;
developing a unique style; holding to an unwavering faith in personal
ability; and genius. Ralph L. Hall
Chess success is an intellectual achievement appropriate for schools. It
belongs in schools because: it is a fascinating game; it can provide a
lifetime hobby; it has international appeal; it requires a minimum of
resources; and, it demands that participants exercise their best powers of
planning, memory, decision-making, judgment, creativity, and concentration.
For these reasons alone, all schools should be providing opportunities for
the learning and practicing of chess. Ralph L. Hall
We are interested in the more general question of how expertise develops.
The classic expertise literature includes studies of chess. In fact, chess
has been called the 'fruit fly' of cognitive psychology because of its
centrality to our understanding of cognition. Chess has been important in
the study of thinking because it pushes human information processing to the
limits of their cognitive abilities. Dianne Horgan & David Morgan (from
the 1986 paper "Chess and Education")
Chess is good for the brain - even for adults. No one has ever seen a senile
chess player! Dan Heisman
I believe that chess possesses a magic that is also a help in advanced age.
A rheumatic knee is forgotten during a game of chess and other events can
seem quite unimportant in comparison with a catastrophe on the chessboard.
Vlastimil Hort
There are so many wonderful and useful things to be learned from chess -
losing with dignity, winning with grace, concentration, rational thinking,
memory, creativity - and the list goes on and on. Certainly, these lessons
and skills can also be learned from any number of other endeavors, but I
know of no other which combines all of them in such a rich and enjoyable
manner as chess does. Kelly Atkins
Chess harmonizes the intuitive and analytical functions of your mind,
essentially bringing together both sides of your brain on the same page.
Charles Martel
Ability in chess is not due to the presence in an individual of only one or
two abilities but that a large number of aptitudes all work together in
chess. Chess utilizes all the abilities of an individual. Robert Ferguson
Purists make a strong argument for playing the game for the game's sake, but
chess teachers and organizers know a different reality. They realize that
incentives are often needed to keep kids involved and motivated. And while
this may be repugnant to hard-core chessplayers, educators contend that it's
worth it to keep kids interested, almost no matter what it takes, because
the benefits derived from chess are so great. Bruce Pandolfini
By constantly questioning a student's thoughts, by always seeking
explanations, a teacher lays groundwork for the student's eventual adoption
of the analytic method. This is primarily what I mean by saying I try to
teach thinking. I question them so that they learn to question everyone and
everything. For both student and teacher the process succeeds when it
culminates in a great realization, that the teacher is no longer needed.
Bruce Pandolfini
It has only been in recent years that psychologists have moved away from the
one-dimensional measure of IQ towards recognition of the multifaceted
aspects of intelligence. Chess players have known of this for centuries.
Athletes stretch their body's limits, chess players stretch their minds. We
are sensitive to its nuances; understanding both its weaknesses and
strengths. A chess player learns the smell of self-deception the way a
runner learns to anticipate leg cramps. We know the blinding effects of
greed, and the difference in the textures of confidence and cockiness. We
understand careful analysis, but can also trust our intuition and
spontaneous insight. Robert Morrell
Chess has also helped me to understand that without an objective evaluation
of a position, it is impossible to achieve good results not only in chess
but in your life as well. Undoubtedly chess has a very important pedagogic
value. It develops memory, logic and fantasy. It improves our reactions,
attention and capacity for work in our lives. It also helps us develop a
deep respect for our opponents. Boris Alterman
Chess gives us a medium in which we can directly experience improvements in
intellectual ability. No one who has gone from the mate only attacks of the
E-D level, to the pawn counting materialism of the C player, and then on to
the B+ thrill of intuitive sacrificial play has any doubts about the ability
to improve intellect. Robert Morrell
Whether the game is poker, gin rummy, bridge, backgammon or chess, at the
top levels of play the skills rewarded are all vitally important in
business. Among them are discipline, memory, coolness under pressure,
psychological insightfulness, a readiness to stick to a strategy even when
it produces losing streaks in the short run, and rapid and intuitive
calculation of probabilities - of spotting opportunities and balancing risks
against rewards. Forbes Magazine
For chess to have value as an activity, it must enhance life, not dominate
it. If a chess player loses perspective, or turns inward, failing to utilize
the gifts of chess in everyday life, then chess is indefensible. Truth be
known, most tournament chess players do cross this line at one time or
another, but nearly all seem to come to their senses eventually, usually
after their first ratings plateau. Robert Morrell
In chess there is a world of intellectual values. Gerald Abrahams
By means of chess I build my character. Chess first of all teaches you to be
objective. Alexander Alekhine
The world is not likely to tire of an amusement which never repeats itself,
of a game which today presents features as novel and charms as fresh as
those with which it delighted, in the morning of history, the dwellers on
the banks of the Ganges and the Indus. Willard Fiske
If you're too busy to play chess... you're too busy. Source Unknown
In the next world, if there is no chess, I would rather complete extinction
- check and checkmate! John Paris
To be enchained at night in a dark cavern without the company of
chess players - such miserable fate! Flan O'Brien
A well-played chess game, like a woman, is music to the soul. Source
Unknown
Just as ones imagination is stirred by a girls smile, so is ones
imagination stirred by the possibilities of chess. One recognizes the
harmonious interplay, the beauty of combinations and thus is drawn to the
chessboard. Mikhail Tal
For me, chess is almost something sacred. I guess that I - and many others -
feel about it the same way that van Gogh must have felt about painting, or
Bach felt about music. Kelly Atkins
Luzhin, preparing an attack for which it was first necessary to explore a
maze of variations, where his every step aroused a perilous echo, began a
long meditation: he needed, it seemed, to make one last prodigious effort
and he would find the secret move leading to victory. Suddenly, something
occurred outside his being, a scorching pain - and he let out a loud cry,
shaking his hand stung by the flame of a match, which he had lit and
forgotten to apply to his cigarette. The pain immediately passed, but in the
fiery gap he had seen something unbearably awesome, the full horror of the
abysmal depths of chess. He glanced at the chessboard and his brain wilted
from hitherto unprecedented weariness. But the chessmen were pitiless; they
held and absorbed him. There was horror in this, but in this also was the
sole harmony, for what else exists in the world besides chess?
Vladimir Nabokov
To the sound of this voice, to the music of the chessboard's evil lure,
Luzhin recalled, with the exquisite, moist melancholy peculiar to the
recollections of love, a thousand games that he had played in the past. He
did not know which of them to choose so as to drink, sobbing, his fill of
it; everything enticed and caressed his fancy, and he flew from one game to
another, instantly running over this or that heart-rending combination.
There were combinations, pure and harmonious, where thought ascended marble
stairs to victory; there were tender stirrings in one corner of the board,
and a passionate explosion, and the fanfare of the Queen going to its
sacrificial doom. Everything was wonderful, all the shades of love, all the
convolutions and mysterious paths it had chosen. And this love was fatal.
Vladimir Nabokov
For chess, that superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel
the ardor of a lover, the humility of a disciple.
Herbert Russel Wakefield
Of chess it has been said that life is not long enough for it - but that is
the fault of life, not chess. William Napier
An ancient writer said that if there were no flowers and moon and beautiful
women, he would not want to be born into the world. I might add that if
there were no pen and ink and chess and wine, there was no purpose in being
born a man. Chiang Chao
There are those who feel that chess is a matter of life or death. It's not.
It's more important than that. Source Unknown
Every moment in life is precious; that's why I play chess. Joseph Siroker
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