Quotes & Sayings About Chess Moves

Our stories affect one another whether we know it or not. Sometimes obedience isn't for us at all, but for another. We don't know how God holds the kingdom in balance or why he moves a chess piece at a crucial time; we might never see the results of his sovereignty [ ... ] I might just be one shade of one color of one strand, but I'm a part of an elaborate tapestry that goes beyond my perception. — Jen Hatmaker

The human mind isn't a computer; it cannot progress in an orderly fashion down a list of candidate moves and rank them by a score down to the hundredth of a pawn the way a chess machine does. Even the most disciplined human mind wanders in the heat of competition. This is both a weakness and a strength of human cognition. Sometimes these undisciplined wanderings only weaken your analysis. Other times they lead to inspiration, to beautiful or paradoxical moves that were not on your initial list of candidates. — Garry Kasparov

Check your moves well, because it can
cost one pawn or losing a lot of just from three moves! — Deyth Banger

How good is Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel anyway? ... to me, Daniel's brilliance has nothing to do with the big numbers he puts up more or less every week. Howie Long once gave a great explanation of what it was like to get beat by quarterback legend Joe Montana. He said it was like getting knocked out in a pillow fight. You never felt the blow. And you were all kinds of mad afterward. That's as good as any description of Daniel ... So what does Daniel do? Something right. On every play. In chess, grandmasters will tell you that it's the most innocuous-looking moves that are deadliest. — Joe Posnanski

A draw can be obtained not only by repeating moves, but also by one weak move. — Savielly Tartakower

I'm playing checkers while they're playing chess
They make the big moves that make me a little less
Even when I win and beat the pants off of the best
I'm still playing checkers while they're playing chess — Billy Joe Shaver

Chess players do not care about the pawns. They sacrifice the least powerful so they can hold on to their power.Your leaders play chess with your lives,but what the world does not yet know is that someone else whispers the moves as they play... — Catherine Linka

He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights.
'White to play and mate in two moves.'
Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates. — George Orwell

The game of chess. Supposedly men made it up, and it's about war and men and the ravages and the bravery and the genius of commanding and moving pieces and ... No. It's marriage. The Queen moves anywhere she wants. — Bill Cosby

Realize that the social media success equation isn't big moves on the chess board, it's little moves made every day that eventually add up to a major shift. — Jay Baer

I wanted us to share the sense that the number of wrong moves far exceeds the number of good moves, to share the frightening instability of the correct decision, to bond in being confounded. — Aleksandar Hemon

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

When she moves a chess piece on the board, it isn't so she can win; it's to move the game forward. She's just keeping us all moving forward. — Danielle Stewart

I haven't played a chess match for several decades. At one point I lost most of my chess games. Then I realized many of my competitors were memorizing the best moves and I was unwilling to do this. — John Harsanyi

Tis action moves the world ... [in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it. — Susanna Kearsley

I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame. — Steve Carell

You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances — Bobby Fischer

It'll be like a game of chess. We can let the game unfold as it did before, but if we want to avoid checkmate, we'll have to readjust the pieces a few moves shy of the finish. — Darren Shan

My sister bought me a set at a candy store and taught me the moves. — Bobby Fischer

I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves — Bobby Fischer

Like looking down on a lubricious chess set, isn't it? The king moves in tiny steps, with no direction, like a drunkard trying to avoid the archer's bolt. The others work their strategies and wait for the old man to fall. He has no power, yet all power moves in his orbit and to his mad whim. Do you know there's no fool piece on the chessboard, Kent?" "Methinks the fool is the player, the mind above the moves. — Christopher Moore

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

Magic = Chess, Chess is with strategy, doing moves which people think that
they are random, but they aren't random. They are part of the strategy. The same is
in the magic. However, the magic, have the ability to distraction! — Deyth Banger

Think of golf as chess. You have to think two or three moves ahead every time you hit the ball. Over every shot, you should be thinking, 'Where do I need to put this ball in order to make my next shot as easy as possible. — Gary McCord

In many cases the presentation is like a game of chess. You make a move only to have the customer respond with another move. The person who makes the smartest moves wins the game. Your goal is to be the one who outsmarts the competitor and actually brings in the sale. This is most easily accomplished when you match every question and concern with an honest and thought-provoking answer. If left with nothing else to wonder, worry over or complain about, the customer has no choice but to buy. The big question is: are you up for the rigors of the game? — Dennis Postema

In chess puzzles and tactics you see moves which in game is difficult to see mainly because of time and more often from the fast moves... — Deyth Banger

Zugzwang. It's when you have no good moves. But you still have to move. — Michael Chabon

If you look at the democratic process as a game of chess, there have to be many, many moves before you get to checkmate. And simply because you do not make any checkmate in three moves does not mean it's stalemate. There's a vast difference between no checkmate and stalemate. This is what the democratic process is like. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Life is like a game of chess ... there are many moves possible, but each move determines your next move ... where you wind up is the sum total of all your past moves ... but first you have to make some kind of move. — Mort Walker

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

We move like the chess game, first the white... then the black... the moves are too fast so far it's difficult to see it. But it's logical, isn't it? — Deyth Banger

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy. — Paolo Giordano

She'd been feeling pleased with a couple of moves, had thought she was gaining the upper hand. But she'd been overconfident. She'd failed to notice his stealthy approach until he turned the tables on her with a move she hadn't expected and now she was fighting for her life. — Emily Arden

Levity and sincerity are not antonyms. We take pleasure in playing chess, but that does not mean we make wasteful moves. You — Claire North

A plan is made for a few moves only, not for the whole game. — Reuben Fine

Truth derives its strength not so much from itself as from the brilliant contrast it makes with what is only apparently true. This applies especially to Chess, where it is often found that the profoundest moves do not much startle the imagination. — Emanuel Lasker

[on chess]

He had learned the moves, back in Vidin, from Levitzky the tailor, who called it "the Russian game." Thus, the old man pointed out, the weak were sacrificed. The castles, fortresses, were obvious and basic; the bishops moved obliquely; the knights - an officer class - sought power in devious ways; the queen, second-in-command, was pure aggression; and the king, heart of it all, a helpless target, dependent totally on his forces for survival. — Alan Furst

Thinking more than a move ahead never got me anywhere in life. Only in chess. And even then it was sometimes a burden. I saw fifteen moves ahead once, in Norway, but there was a much easier path to victory, and I missed it. Looking into the future too hard, I've found can be paralyzing. — Jennifer DuBois

Bridget did not budge, and her face was without expression. She sat, quietly defeated like a chess player who lost a career match in less than four moves. — Emmie White

He hated games they made the world look too simple. Chess, in particular, had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the king lounged about doing nothing. If only the pawns would've united ... the whole board could've been a republic in about a dozen moves. — Terry Pratchett

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

My idea is to make moves to bring chess back to the world's map, to make it part of the world's geography again. — Anatoly Karpov

A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it. — Leo Tolstoy

Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just "trusting in God" to give me the moves. — Bobby Fischer

We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

The game of baseball between pitcher and hitter sets up like a game of chess in that you have to anticipate several moves ahead to set up your opponent. — Brad Lidge

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

The good thing in chess is that very often the best moves are the most beautiful ones. The beauty of logic. — Boris Gelfand

A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn't geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves. It's a drawing; it's a mechanical reality. — Marcel Duchamp

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

Never in the history of chess have so many moves been repeated so often so quickly by so many people who didn't really understand them. — Michael Stean

You will already have noticed how often Capablanca repeated moves, often returning to positions which he had had before. This is not lack of deciciveness or slowness, but the employment of a basic endgame principle which is 'Do not hurry'. — Alexander Kotov

When Grand Masters play, they see the logic of their opponent's moves. One's moves may be so powerful that the other may not be able to stop him, but the plan behind the moves will be clear. Not so with Fischer. His moves did not make sense - at least to all the rest of us they didn't. We were playing chess, Fischer was playing something else, call it what you will. Naturally, there would come a time when we finally would understand what those moves had been about. But by then it was too late. We were dead. — Mark Taimanov

In expert tennis, 80% of the points are won, while in amateur tennis, 80% are lost. The same is true for wrestling, chess, and investing: Beginners should focus on avoiding mistakes, experts on making great moves." Erik Falkenstein — Lucas Carlson

Television is like speed chess, as you have no time and no money. It is like trying to play Grandmaster chess with a 20 minute timer. The rewards are great, though, as it moves faster and you get to see the finished results much quicker. — Dean Devlin

By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking. — Anatoly Karpov

A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it's not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It's more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together. — Madeleine Albright

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. — Sergey Belavenets

I play chess about four hours a day in training camp. You have to decide what move to use, or what combination of moves. I think less when I box because the reaction time is a lot quicker, but some people call me the chess boxer because they say I think too much in the ring. I take my time and they don't see the action they want. Some boxers just go in there and just throw punches and hope to win ... — Lennox Lewis

Only Uncle Pascha ignored her. He was contemplating his chessboard. She doubted that he'd move his piece today. It had been his turn for only six months. Once, he had gone three years between moves. He preferred a leisurely game. — Sarah Beth Durst

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

Just as it is wrong to work on chess by studying only the first 10-15 moves, so it is wrong to play one and the same opening system, even though it be rich in variations and nuances. — Efim Geller

I started playing chess when I was five years old. I learned the moves from my mother, then worked with my father - and later trainers. My style became very technical. I sacrificed a lot of things. I was always hunting for the king, for the mate. I'd forget about my other pieces. — Garry Kasparov

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head
no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it. — Herman Melville

Those chess lovers who ask me how many moves I usually calculate in advance, when making a combination, are always astonished when I reply, quite truthfully, 'as a rule not a single one' — Richard Reti

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make. — David Hockney

Chess holds deep wisdoms of the people. It is truly an image of life, the reflection of human fate that has shown us the earthly way of suffering in darkness and permanent shortage of time. Like in chess, we encounter all kinds of traps, mistakes, settlements, sacrifices, kings, and queens, doubled pawns, and extraordinary moves while we are on the board ourselves. — Pope John Paul II

I have read that the Builders made toys that could play chess. Toys, as small as the silver bishop in my hand, that could defeat any player, taking no time to select moves that undid even the best minds amongst their makers. The bishop made a satisfying click when tapped to the board. I beat out a little rhythm, wondering if any point remained in playing a game that toys could own. If we couldn't find a better game then perhaps the mechanical minds the Builders left behind would always win. — Mark Lawrence

Far from all of the obvious moves that go without saying are correct. — David Bronstein

Before one day, which will mean the day before today, I just played chess with a friend the strategies were incrediable the moves which I made were wise and I win the two games... This happens in other games also, however today I and two my friends we played football it ended 7 for me and my friend and for the other fried 5-6 somewhere there... We just played football! — Deyth Banger

Chess is a game of bad moves. — Andrew Soltis

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

When it comes to fully understanding how to strategically move all the pieces on the marketing and distribution chess board on a worldwide basis, Jeff Blake is always thinking two moves ahead and that gives Sony a true competitive edge. He is the studio's secret weapon and while he would be the first to credit his fantastic sales and marketing team, there are few executives here that deserve more credit for our successes during the past several years than Jeff. — Amy Pascal

Every time you take a step, even when you don't want to ... When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that's good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move. — Ray Bradbury

Today, chess programs have become so good that even grandmasters sometimes struggle to understand the logic behind some of their moves. — Kenneth Rogoff

My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don't take these things into consideration — Bobby Fischer