Quotes & Sayings About Chess Openings

I remember being with a girlfriend who asked me to look over some chess openings with her. I instantly fell asleep. I found that I could always take a nap in any situation by just looking at some opening variation - my eyes would shut right away. — Pal Benko

For the first lesson, I want you to play over every column of Modern Chess Openings, including the footnotes. And for the next lesson, I want you to do it again. — Bobby Fischer

The study of typical plans is something that the leading grandmasters devote a great deal of time to. I would say that the most far-seeing of them devote as much time to this as to the study of openings. — Alexander Kotov

Here's a list of things an intermediate player will have in his chess toolbox: Checkmate patterns involving the Queen, Rooks, Knights and Bishops in combination with each other. King and Queen checkmate. King and Rook checkmate. King and pawn (promotion), then King and Queen checkmate. Pins, skewers, and forks. Understands the principles of the opening. Knows a solid opening for white, and can play a sound opening for black against both e4 and d4 openings. Understands the idea of winning the exchange, and knows what to do after getting up in material. — Ronn Munsterman

I didn't know so well chess theory, the theory of chess openings. And so, of course I knew the theory, but not on the level of the best players, so this was my ... this was always my weakness. — Anatoly Karpov

Show me three variations in the leading handbook on the openings, and I will show you two of those three that are defective. — Emanuel Lasker

The best way to learn endings, as well as openings, is from the games of the masters. — Jose Raul Capablanca

Capablanca was among the greatest of chess players, but not because of his endgame. His trick was to keep his openings simple, and then play with such brilliance in the middlegame that the game was decided - even though his ooponent didn't always know it - before they arrived at the ending. — Bobby Fischer

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

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

In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn't do well. They'd get bad openings. — Bobby Fischer