Chess Master Quotes & Sayings

The majority of people imagine a chess master as being a townsman who passes his life in an atmosphere of smoke and play in cafes and clubs: a neurasthenic individual, whose nerves and brains are continually working at tension: a one-sided person who has given up his whole soul to chess. — Richard Reti

In my opinion, the style of a player should not be formed under the influence of any single great master. — Vasily Smyslov

I have always had a number of parts lined up in case the muse failed. A lepidopterist exploring famous jungles came first, then there was the chess grand master, then the tennis ace with an unreturnable service, then the goalie saving a historic shot, and finally, finally, the author of a pile of unknown writings- Pale Fire, Lolita, Ada- which my heirs discover and publish. — Vladimir Nabokov

If you truly have expertise - and expertise can be say a chess master who has really mastered something or an artist or a musician of some sort you know if you give a jazz musician ... — Sheena Iyengar

These chunks represent patterns (such as faces) as well as specific knowledge. For example, a world-class chess master is estimated to have mastered about 100,000 board positions. Shakespeare used 29,000 words but close to 100,000 meanings of those words. Development of expert systems in medicine indicate that humans can master about 100,000 concepts in a domain. If we estimate that this "professional" knowledge represents as little as 1 percent of the overall pattern and knowledge store of a human, we arrive at an estimate of 107 chunks. — Ray Kurzweil

About the only time our gut can truly outperform our reason is if we truly have developed a kind of informed intuition. So that means the chess master or someone who has really thought about it and given themselves feedback on a particular activity for at least 10,000 hours or more. — Sheena Iyengar

Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it's futile to continue playing (conceptualizing). — Bill Gaede

The temptation to lead as a chess master, controlling each move of the organization, must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing. A gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive. The leader acts as an "Eyes-On, Hands-Off" enabler who creates and maintains an ecosystem in which the organization operates. — Stanley McChrystal

The chess master says nothing, other than moving the silient chess piece. — Rumi

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Elizabeth Goudge

The range of circumstances in which it is possible to presuppose the presence of a combination is very limited. The presence of such circumstances is the reason for the genesis of the idea in the master's brain. — Emanuel Lasker

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote. — Donald E. Westlake

During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey. — Alexander Alekhine

I love the competitive aspect of it [business]. It's like playing chess. Why do people play chess? Knowing the realm of moves? Even when you get to be a chess master, there are other chess masters you want to beat or outperform. And to me business is just a sport that I love to compete in; a continuous intellectual challenge that really motivates me. — Mark Cuban

The stomach is an essential part of the Chess master — Bent Larsen

Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours on chess without making any progress. Without going into any further calculations, I can assert with a high degree of certainty that nowadays we achieve only a fraction of what we are capable of achieving. — Emanuel Lasker

Titled players appeared to be trotting out game after game in which the same old hoary opening sequences, memorized out to fifteen, twenty, or even more moves, were repeated endlessly. True novelties were becoming scarcer, and sometimes these 'opening' novelties didn't appear until well into the middlegame. (A master-level friend once proudly showed me a novelty he'd discovered at move twenty-seven of a very well-trodden chess opening, and it's said that even as far back as the 1950's Mikhail Botvinnik had some openings memorised past the thirtieth move). — Steve Lopez

You can become a big master in chess only if you see your mistakes and short-comings. Exactly the same as in life itself. — Alexander Alekhine

The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure. — Martin Rees

The sign of a great Master is his ability to win a won game quickly and painlessly — Irving Chernev

Miss Vesper Holly has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master. She is familiar with half a dozen languages and can swear fluently in all of them. She understands the use of a slide rule but prefers doing calculations in her head. She does not hesitate to risk life and limb- mine as well as her own. No doubt she has other qualities as yet undiscovered. I hope not. — Lloyd Alexander

He can be regarded as the great master of simplification. The art of resolving the tension at the critical moment and in the most effacious way so as to clarify the position as desired is Capablanca's own. — Max Euwe

If you are going to make your mark among masters, you have to work far harder and more intensively, or, to put it more exactly, the work is far more complex than that needed to gain the title of Master. — Mikhail Botvinnik

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

Every great master will find it useful to have his own theory on the openings, which only he himself knows, a theory which is closely linked with plans for the middle game. — Mikhail Botvinnik

Bezos is like a chess master playing countless games simultaneously, with the boards organized in such a way that he can efficiently tend to each match. — Brad Stone

King Yorandt to Kristina in book three of Fracture the Secret Enemy Saga~Secrets
release date: Summer 2014

Even the master does not play perfectly. He can only hope to make fewer mistakes than his opponent, and that in the end, he is the victor. Sajah (chess) is a ruthless game where the pieces are all pawns and the Queen is the true killer.
She spares no one to protect the king. The king however, is ruled by all of the pieces that lay before him, even his opponent. Every move is a decision that can change the whole board, and the endgame. — Virginia McKevitt

It's the horsey-shape piece that moves in an L shape. It's what makes chess complicated, and why stupid people can't play chess. Go play checkers! Knights are the first piece you look at. They elevate the game. No chess master wants to lose her knights. — Courtney Love

Even in the heat of a middlegame battle the master still has to bear in mind the outlines of a possible future ending. — David Bronstein

Chess is a good mistress but a bad master. — Gerald Abrahams

In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night. — Bruno Schulz

No other great master has been so misunderstood by the vast majority of chess amateurs and even by many masters, as has Emanuel Lasker. — Jose Raul Capablanca

A child is nothing like a racing car ... Souping up babies doesn't work that way. The child is what she is. There is a certainirreducible if elusive core. Pushing, pulling, stretching, and shrinking will not really change it. There may be spectacular interim results. The baby may say the alphabet before she walks, master two-times or even ten-times table at three. In the long run, however, this forced precocity tends to be irrelevant ... Whatever gains there are become unimportant. The losses can be irrevocable. — Stella Chess

Fischer was a master of clarity and a king of artful positioning. His opponents would see where he was going but were powerless to stop him — Bruce Pandolfini

He felt like a chess-master who, two moves from achieving checkmate, suddenly sees a live kitten dropped on to the middle of the board, scattering pieces. — Frances Hardinge

Chess will always be the master of us all. — Alexander Alekhine

I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through ... The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it's astonishing. You can show a chess master one of their games and they'll say "Yeah, that is done by that player." — Rainn Wilson

Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer. — Albert Einstein

Daniel Wolpert, of Cambridge University, is fond of pointing out that IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer is capable of beating a grand master at the game of chess, but no computer has yet been developed that can move a chess piece from one square to another as well as a 3-year-old child. — Stuart Firestein

Many have become chess masters - no one has become the master of chess. — Siegbert Tarrasch

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 — Ashley Jeffery

Every Chess master was once a beginner — Irving Chernev

A chess master can keep track of more choices than the number of stars in the galaxy within an instant, but these are people that have truly learned and mastered the choices that they have and how to deal with those choices over a very, very long period of training, so essentially what they're really doing is ruling out all the irrelevant choices and only zeroing in on the most relevant, useful choices at the moment. — Sheena Iyengar

The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There's never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I'll buy some of the feminism ... — Pat Robertson