Chess Playing Quotes & Sayings

Playing black, I put great stake in the Ruy Lopez: I liked it, feel it, and understand it; in matches with Hjartarson and Timman it served me well. - on preparing for World Championship versus Garry Kasparov — Anatoly Karpov

I'm playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, that's why I always lose — Josh Stern

But of course, the most important trick in beating the S-chool game is to know that it is a game, as abstract, unreal, and useless as chess, and that beating it is a trick. The game is important only because (as with chess) there are rewards for playing it well, and (unlike chess) penalties for playing it badly. This is something that almost all successful students know, almost by instinct. I sensed it at ten, and knew it thoroughly and consciously by the time I was thirteen. — John Holt

And he calls it playing? Like, whatever happened to chess? Or cards? Or tag? — Cherise Sinclair

Playing chess is more athletic than artistic. Champions are more concerned with victory than beauty: it's war with occasionally graceful kicks. — Jennifer Shahade

Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money — Benjamin Franklin

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

Memorization of variations could be even worse than playing in a tournament without looking in the books at all. — Mikhail Botvinnik

I don't consider myself a particularly young chess player. I have been playing in the best tournaments in the world since I was 16 years old. In other sports, if you have been playing for seven years, you are not a young prodigy any more. You're one of the pros. — Magnus Carlsen

An amusing fact: as far as I can recall, when playing the Ruy Lopez I have not yet once in my life had to face the Marshall Attack! — Anatoly Karpov

I'm not sure I would call it agony but there is a kind of cyclic frustration. You get one story right and then here comes another one. When does that end? What I'm trying to do is get it to end right now, by recognizing that that cycle is writing. That is: trying to understand the frustrations and setbacks (and agony) as part of a bigger chess game you are playing with art itself. — George Saunders

HIs chess-playing methods did the same thing - as did the games on the Colossi - and posed the question as to where a line could be drawn between the 'intelligent' and the 'mechanical'. His view, expressed in terms of the imitation principle, was that there was no such line, and neither did he ever draw a sharp distinction between the 'states of mind' approach and the 'instruction note' approach to the problem of reconciling the appearance of freedom and of determinism. — Andrew Hodges

Agreeing to draws in the middlegame, equal or otherwise, deprives you of the opportunity to practice playing endgames, and the endgame is probably where you need the most practice. — Pal Benko

Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening. — Henry A. Kissinger

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

He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers. — Karin Slaughter

Who is your opponent tonight, tonight I am playing against the Black pieces — Akiba Rubinstein

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life. — Garry Kasparov

The old chess is too limited. Imagine playing cards, black jack for example, and every time the dealer has the same starting hand you have the same starting hand. What's the point? — Bobby Fischer

I'm not forcing you to do anything. You need to make your own damn decisions . And I'm not playing this game where we ignore reality and pretend to have a normal conversation for a few hours. You need to face reality and stop turning life into a movie. I'm not a puppet in your show. This is real life and you're always trying to ignore it for some cheap fantasy version where no problems exist. That's not noble of you, okay? You're not strong. You're a weak person like the rest of us. You've just learned to excel at avoiding issues. But there are issues . Life has so many freaking issues and if you can't force your own self to face life and make decisions without someone telling you what the hell to do, you're just going to end up another chess piece moved around by others. — Marilyn Grey

Playing for complications is an extreme measure that a player should adopt only when he cannot find a clear and logical plan. — Alexander Alekhine

In Chess, as it is played by masters, chance is practically eliminated. — Emanuel Lasker

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 person's 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've never been much of a computer guy at least in terms of playing with computers. Actually until I was about 11 I didn't use a computer for preparing for games at all. I was playing a bit online, was using the chess club mainly. Now, obviously, the computer is an important tool for me preparing for my games. — Magnus Carlsen

I am convinced, the way one plays chess always reflects the player's personality. If something defines his character, then it will also define his way of playing. — Vladimir Kramnik

You know, also I, you know, I was on those birth control pills and my breasts were like, they hurt ... and, you know, it was like they blew up like. You know, they wouldn't fit into any of my dresses. I had to quit taking those birth control pills ... This was like - I mean they were like, I thought they should be photographed really ... So they were, for immortality. (On being photographed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp at Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art.) — Eve Babitz

I thought I was playing the world champion, not some 27-eyed monster who sees everything in all positions. — Tony Miles

I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a
coffee cup in a park for old men playing
chess or silly games of some sort. — Charles Bukowski

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. Even if we know every rule, however . . . what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we "understand" the world. — Richard Rhodes

It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs. — Jon Stewart

Playing rapid chess, one can lose the habit of concentrating for several hours in serious chess. That is why, if a player has big aims, he should limit his rapidplay in favour of serious chess. — Vladimir Kramnik

When I started out playing chess as a kid I thought I should be world champion. As a kid you have no idea what that means and you only sort of picture it. It is hard to imagine that I waited all those years and it happened in a late stage of my career. — Viswanathan Anand

Playing chess or Go or Tigris and Euphrates - a very good game, by the way - I can watch people as they choose their strategy and note how they respond to something I've done. Even — Jeffery Deaver

It was like playing checkers, only to learn that your opponent was playing chess all along. — Barry Lyga

Expert chess playing, for example, was once thought to epitomize human intellection. In the view of several experts in the late fifties: "If one could devise a successful chess machine, one would seem to have penetrated to the core of human intellectual endeavor. — Nick Bostrom

The Kremlin is constantly changing the rules of the game to suit its purposes. We are not playing chess, we're playing roulette. — Garry Kasparov

Near the gardens, Pei stopped and caught her breath. She liked sweet-voiced Song Lee and hoped for the best in dealing with the other sisters, but Pei rememered all too well the different personalities that had affected her life, first at the girls' house, then at the silk factory and sisters' house. Dealing with so many people was often like playing a game of chess. There were so many pieces, all moving in different directions. It was always wise to guard all sides against capture. — Gail Tsukiyama

Let the perfectionist play postal. — Yasser Seirawan

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

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

Listening to a book and in the same time playing chess is one of the best decision ever made. — Deyth Banger

Crossword puzzles, Sudoku ... I'm good at all those things. It's not daily, but I'll do stuff on the airplane. I love playing chess. It's my favorite game. — Larry Fitzgerald

You have good instincts,trust them. Thinking through every step is fine if you're playing chess, but this isn't chess. — Rick Yancey

The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish. — Joseph Heller

I spend hours playing chess because I find it so much fun. The day it stops being fun is the day I give up. — Magnus Carlsen

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

I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow. — Jerry Spinelli

Shall we ever live to see the following wise prohibition - the audience is forbidden to smoke and the masters are forbidden to 'smoke out' the audience by playing exchanging variations? — Savielly Tartakower

The Indians and Chinese have become brilliant chess professionals. They get on a plane and play all over the world. This has led to dramatic pressure on incomes. Nowadays, the best chess player in Argentina can no longer make a living playing chess. — Kenneth Rogoff

Never having played Chess before, it was most interesting to be playing the game with no pieces in front of me. But I still knew how to stroke my hair when I won. — Peter Mayhew

We've been playing chess with this iPhone app. He hasn't made a move in so long our last game got forfeited. Ten days, or something like that."
"You two play chess on your phones?" Ty asked.
"Yeah." Zane shrugged. — Abigail Roux

Who the hell let you animals into my office?
I'll have you know I was playing a VERY unimportant game of chess right now with a man that kept saying King me. — Matt Fraction

Riding a bike works your legs but not your brain. Playing chess works your mind but not your body. Climbing brings it all together. — Pat Ament

There is luck in chess. My opponent was lucky that he was playing against an idiot. — James M. Loy

Pretenders try to out-think their opponents as if they were playing chess. Tennis is a martial art. Instinctive fluid action is far more effective than thinking. — Anonymous

Downright ridiculous legislation (such as laws specifically prohibiting blacks and whites from playing chess together). — Michelle Alexander

Don't worry about your rating, work on your playing strength and your rating will follow. — Dan Heisman

When I was a kid, I really liked playing chess, which is pretty geeky; I just enjoyed it - thinking, exercising my mind. And I found computers to be like an eight-hour day chess game. — Michael Birch

It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory. — Douglass North

You know you're going to lose. Even when I was ahead I knew I was going to lose -on playing against Fischer — Andrew Soltis

It's important, according to me, to train in small doses so as to not lose the joy of playing chess. I personally think too many coaching and training classes may take away a child's interest in the game itself. The essential thing to do is practise often and, in case of a doubt, to consult a trainer. — Viswanathan Anand

Little boys are still playing the game [baseball], more little girls are playing, and it is still the world's most interesting game, a duel, a chess match, a foot race, a gymnastics exhibition, that rare opportunity for individuals to be recognized within a group effort. — Robert Lipsyte

Charles Babbage proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of every sort of move. Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing game, the more experienced it would become by the accumulation of experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents the acquirement of experience by our nervous organization. — William Stanley Jevons

What I say is, don't go playing unless you can win. Only sit down to chess with idiots, only kick a dog what's dead already, and don't love a lady unless she loves you first. — N.D. Wilson

We've seen computers play chess and beat grand masters. We've seen computers drive a car across a desert. But interestingly, playing chess is easy, but having a conversation about nothing is really difficult for a computer. — Hod Lipson

Chess is more than a game or a mental training. It is a distinct attainment. I have always regarded the playing of chess and the accomplishment of a good game as an art, and something to be admired no less than an artist's canvas or the product of a sculptor's chisel. Chess is a mental diversion rather than a game. It is both artistic and scientific. — Jose Raul Capablanca

But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here. — Dorothy Dunnett

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes. — Scarlett Thomas

I really enjoy playing with someone else and whether it's chess or tennis or games, I love card games. I love that, but I think there's something so important to gain from winning and losing and learning how to lose and how you can be better from that. — Hilary Swank

Being on Facebook too much in a row is like playing chess in a black hole. You never know if the next move will lead you to a checkmate or a mate checked. — Ana Claudia Antunes

Good decision-making is like playing chess and you must avoid making hasty decisions without thinking of how that particular decision will impact on different aspects of your work and organization. The worst kind of decision-making is to decide to delay a difficult decision until later or to pass it to someone else to have to make. You will never excel and be valued by your colleagues if you get into these habits of procrastination and passing responsibility to others. — Nigel Cumberland

I got arrested for playing chess in the street. I said, it's because I'm black, isn't it. — Milton Jones

Two monks sit facing, playing chess on the mountain, The bamboo shadow on the board is dark and clear. Not a person sees the bamboo's shadow, One sometimes hears the pieces being moved. — Bai Juyi

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

You can win in business by playing checkers until someone sneaks in one night after you've closed for the day and flips the board. — Mark Miller

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. A nameless 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 and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess. — H.G.Wells

Rather than opera, football is more like ballet or a chess game. You can really see it in a team like Arsenal, especially when Dennis Bergkamp was playing. He seemed to be able to read the game like a chessboard and knew where a player would be several seconds later and put the ball there for him. — Marcus Du Sautoy

And from the time I was a kid, I've had this internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn't stop - unless I'm asleep. I'm sure every person has this; it's just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I'm constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask a question, it's programmed to respond, whether there's an answer or not. I'm constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe manipulate events are the more appropriate words. It's like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess! — Jordan Belfort

If you're playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-minute chess games. But that's kind of like the cheap chess version. — Paul Banks

I have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners - that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards. — Graydon Carter

Public men in America are too public. Too accessible. This sitting on the stoop and being 'just folk' was all very well for local politics and the simple farmer days of a hundred years ago, but it's no good for world affairs. Opening flower-shows and being genial to babies and all that is out of date. These parish politics methods have to go. The ultimate leader ought to be distant, audible but far off. Show yourself and then vanish into a cloud. Marx would never have counted for one tenth of his weight as 'Charlie Marx' playing chess with the boys, and Woodrow Wilson threw away all his magic as far as Europe was concerned when he crossed the Atlantic. Before he crossed he was a god -- what a god he was! After he arrived he was just a grinning guest. I've got to be the Common Man, yes, but not common like that. — H.G.Wells

Every Chess master was once a beginner — Irving Chernev

Life, is a chess game you win or loose, but just keep playing. — Auliq Ice

Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for. — Northrop Frye

It was once stated that God didn't play with dice, but then I discovered that most of the Gods did play with dice. However, they didn't see Destiny playing chess the entire time behind them. They never stood a chance, seeing that Destiny was on both sides of the board. — Lionel Suggs

I stopped taking notes on my Palm Pilot and started playing the little chess game. — Roger Ebert

Everyone have a game, everyone is playing in his own game and his own game he is the king the others are the other figures from the chess. — Deyth Banger

I think I can safely conclude that there is not a lot to be said for playing chess while on Valium. — Tony Miles

it is again: that Hindu belief that all of life is maya, illusion. Once we see life as a game, no more consequential than a game of chess, then the world seems a lot lighter, a lot happier. Personal failure becomes "as small a cause for concern as playing the role of loser in a summer theater performance," writes Huston Smith in his book The World's Religions. If it's all theater, it doesn't matter which role you play, as long as you realize it's only a role. Or, as Alan Watts said: "A genuine person is one who knows he is a big act and does it with complete zip. — Eric Weiner

What is the object of playing a gambit opening? ... To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game — Siegbert Tarrasch

It is not enough to be a good player ... you must also play well — Siegbert Tarrasch

I was reasonably interested in mathematics in school. Typically what happens is ... when you start playing chess, it takes up a lot of your attention. But about 10 years ago, I found that the Internet is very good to start learning about a lot of subjects. — Viswanathan Anand

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

Playing chess has many aspects that can be useful in everyday situations like planning, concentration and combinations. You learn to win but also to lose and to be creative. — Judit Polgar

The world is one unending chess match, my dear, and I am the one playing it how I please. I poke and prod to move my pieces to places I find desirable. And the defiant ones who resist me I simply remove from the board." He pulled up his right sleeve, showing Laura a sheathed dagger strapped to his arm. "But you, Laura, are not of this chess match at all. You walked unexpectedly onto my board, scattering my pieces out of the way, the ones that I had worked on so tirelessly to arrange to perfection. — J.S. Bailey

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

He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess ... the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leas to standstill or to anarchy. — Emanuel Lasker

When I analyse a position, I have a sparring partner who understands chess amazingly well. In a way I feel sorry for him, because of his work with me he cannot play as much chess as he wants. He more or less gave up his playing career. — Boris Gelfand

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

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