Chess Players Quotes - Page 2

• You can't overestimate the importance of psychology in chess, and as much as some players try to downplay it, I believe that winning requires a constant and strong psychology not just at the board but in every aspect of your life.

  Garry Kasparov

  Strong, Believe, Winning

  Garry Kasparov (2010). “How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom”, p.81, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Chess books should be used as we use glasses: to assist the sight, although some players make use of them as if they thought they conferred sight

  Jose Raul Capablanca

  Book, Player, Glasses

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• Chess is like a language, the top players are very fluent at it. Talent can be developed scientifically but you have to find first what you are good at.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Player, Chess, Firsts

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• This is the essential element that cannot be measured by any analysis or device, and I believe it's at the heart of success in all things: the power of intuition and the ability to harness and use it like a master.

  Garry Kasparov

  Success, Believe, Heart

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• I am the best player in the world, and I am here to prove it.

  Bobby Fischer

  Player, Chess Game, World

  "Chess Digest Magazine", Volume 4, 1971.

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• It is not enough to be a good player... you must also play well

  Siegbert Tarrasch

  Success, Player, Playing Chess

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• Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack

  Wilhelm Steinitz

  Player, Chess, Strategy

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• I claim that nothing else is so effective in encouraging the growth of chess strength as such independent analysis, both of the games of the great players and your own.

  Mikhail Botvinnik

  Independent, Player, Games

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• The combination player thinks forward; he starts from the given position, and tries the forceful moves in his mind

  Emanuel Lasker

  Moving, Player, Thinking

  Emanuel Lasker (1960). “Lasker's Manual of Chess”, p.167, Courier Corporation

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

  Garry Kasparov

  Moving, Doe, Opponents

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• When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties - before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since.

  Bobby Fischer

  Player, People, Manhattan

  Radio Interview, www.geocities.jp. October 16, 2006.

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• One interesting indication of Capablanca's greatness is that to non-chess players his name was better known than the names of all other chess masters together! This was due partly to his engaging personality and distinguished appearance: he was one of those exceptional people who at once stand out in a crowd.

  Fred Reinfeld

  Player, Greatness, Names

  Fred Reinfeld (2012). “The Immortal Games of Capablanca”, p.2, Courier Corporation

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• Most chess players know, thanks to the study of master games, that two bishops are stronger than two knights or than bishop and knight, though very few know the reason for this advantage and how to turn it to account.

  Richard Reti

  Player, Knights, Games

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• Could we look into the head of a Chess player, we should see there a whole world of feelings, images, ideas, emotion and passion

  Alfred Binet

  Passion, Player, Ideas

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• I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.

  Vladimir Kramnik

  Believe, Player, Creating

  "Art, Chess, Beauty and Depth". Interview with Ugo Dossi, en.chessbase.com. December 21, 2005.

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• Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they've beaten our top human chess champions.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Player, Champion, Chess

  "How Does the Brain Work?". "NOVA scienceNOW", www.pbs.org. September 14, 2011.

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• A Soviet diplomat, like a skilled chess player, does not expect his opposite number to give up something for nothing, not even a pawn.

  Arthur Dean

  Giving Up, Player, Opposites

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• But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Success, Player, Men

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Chess as a sport requires a lot of mental stamina, and this is what that makes it different from a physical sport. Chess players have a unique ability of taking in a lot of information and remembering relevant bits. So, memory and mental stamina are the key attributes.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Sports, Memories, Unique

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• Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Angel, Player, Discipline

  Jorge Luis Borges (1962). “Ficciones”, p.34, Grove Press

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• Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, Science, Math

  Orthodoxy ch. 2 (1908)

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• I don't know how many calories an average chess player burns per game, but it often exceeds that of a player in ball games. It is not only the chess as such: You need to be fit and undergo complicated preparation.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Player, Average, Games

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• Nowadays the dynamic element is more important in chess - players more often sacrifice material to obtain dynamic compensation.

  Boris Spassky

  Sacrifice, Player, Important

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• When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy - as Faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space; or as Van Gogh saw vortices in the skies of Provence.

  Arthur Koestler

  Stress, Player, Curves

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• Chess has given me a lot more than I could ask for. I have been able to feel special, travel the world and do what I truly enjoy. Moreover, chess players love being their own boss and hate having to wake up early!

  Viswanathan Anand

  Hate, Player, Up Early

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