Quotes & Sayings About Chess

Because of all the things I've experienced on this journey - shrinking and growing, flying sprites, living chess pieces - not a one of them is more magical than this moment. — A.G. Howard

There is no doubt that Bronstein's shrewd understanding of chess psychology was crucial to his success. Without it, his impetuous style and technical flaws might have relegated him to a minor career. — Pal Benko

When I was eleven, I just got good. — Bobby Fischer

There's no luck involved in chess. You just have to work at it. — Bobby Fischer

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

Well, so you're pleased with your day. And so am I. First, I solved two chess problems, one of them a very nice one - it opens with a pawn. I'll show you. — Leo Tolstoy

Never play for the win, never play for the draw, just play chess! — Alexander Khalifman

Life's too short for chess. — Henry James Byron

Why not,' said Gaultier viciously, 'play chess?'

It silenced Lymond. His head went back as if he had been struck, the indrawn air caught in his throat. He said nothing more. — Dorothy Dunnett

Life is a kind of chess. — Benjamin Franklin

Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, 'Chess is life.' I would say, 'Pi is life.' — Daniel Tammet

I put my hand on a bishop, my would be assassin, and thought of my father's heights when he won, how he galloped around. The depths of his despair at losing, I expected, would be equal to the peaks. He'd mope about, his face fallen and miserable, his posture stooped as if his back ached. I took my hand from the piece and leaned back in deliberation. — Rion Amilcar Scott

When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all. — Mark Lawrence

If chess is a vast jungle, computers are the chainsaws in a giant environmentally insensitive logging company. — Nigel Short

Seize the outpost K5 with your knight, and you can go to sleep. Checkmate will come by itself. — Savielly Tartakower

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome. — Jerry Seinfeld

An hour's history of two minds is well told in a game of chess. — Jose Raul Capablanca

Life's to short for chess. — Henry James Byron

I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life. — Raymond Chandler

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 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

Pawns are such fascinating pieces, too ... So small, almost insignificant, and yet
they can depose kings. Don't you find that interesting? — Lavie Tidhar

It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my opponent over the board and against myself on the clock. — Viktor Korchnoi

It's the fault of the chess players themselves. I don't know what they used to be, but now they're not the most gentlemanly group. When it was a game played by the aristocrats it had more like you know dignity to it. When they used to have the clubs, like no women were allowed and everybody went in dressed in a suit, a tie, like gentlemen, you know. Now, kids come running in their sneakers. Even in the best chess club-and they got women in there. It's a social place and people are making noise, it's a madhouse. — Bobby Fischer

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

We often hear the terms 'positional' and 'tactical' used as opposites. But this is as wrong as to consider a painting's composition unrelated to its subject. Just as there is no such thing as 'artistic' art, so there is no such thing as 'positional' chess. — Samuel Reshevsky

Our efforts in chess attain only a hundredth of one percent of their rightful result ... Our education, in all domains of endeavour, is frightfully wasteful of time and values. — Emanuel Lasker

Fischer is the greatest genius to descend from the chess heavens. — Mikhail Tal

There were adventure stories supplied with cloths for mopping your brow, thrillers containing pressed leaves of soothing valerian to be sniffed when the suspense became too great, and books with stout locks sealed by the Atlantean censorship authorities ("Sale permitted, reading prohibited!"). One shop sold nothing but 'half' works that broke off in the middle because their author had died while writing them; another specialised in novels whose protagonists were insects. I also saw a Wolperting shop that sold nothing but books on chess and another patronised exclusively by dwarfs with blond beards, all of whom wore eye-shades. — Walter Moers

The wisdom of the chess player is displayed more in winning over a capable opponent than a novice. The wisdom of the general is displayed more in defeating a superior army than in subduing an inferior one. Even more so, the wisdom of God is displayed when He brings good to us and glory to Himself out of confusion and calamity rather than out of pleasant times. — Jerry Bridges

To play for a draw (at any rate with White) is to some degree a crime against chess. — Mikhail Tal

I maintain that in every position that arises, we should deliberately search, among other things, for pieces which have no retreat. If we see one, we automatically look to see if it can be netted. — Cecil Purdy

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

When I was in grade school I was into chess club, Latin club, D&D, computer camp - everything that made vaginas go away. — Chris Hardwick

Caissa, the goddess of chess, had punished me for my conservative play, for betraying my nature. — Garry Kasparov

If Chess is the switch," Loretta said, "how does he turn the Fog off?"

Bea bit her lower lip. "I don't know - ask Chess."
"How would I know?" I said. "You try being a switch. — Joel N. Ross

Without error, there is no brilliancy. — Emanuel Lasker

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

Analysis, if it is really carried out with a complete concentration of his powers, forms and completes a chess player. — Lev Polugaevsky

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

My style is somewhere between that of Tal and Petrosian — Samuel Reshevsky

Young people of high school age can actually feel themselves changing. Progress is almost tangible. It's exciting. It stimulates more progress. Nevertheless, growth is not constant and smooth. Erik Erikson quotes an aphorism to describe the formless forming of it. I ain't what I ought to be. I ain't what I'm going to be, but I'm not what I was. — Stella Chess

I also found out why I should never reveal the "why" to others. A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use. That is the power of chess. It is a game of secrets in which one must show and never tell. — Amy Tan

It might have begun a bit like a chess game, but it had taken on its own momentum, and owned both of them. — Julie Anne Long

A great chess player always has a very good memory. — Leonid Shamkovich

Chess truly uncovers whether or not someone has imagination and takes initiative. — Christian Morgenstern

A male scorpion is stabbed to death after mating. In chess, the powerful queen often does the same to the king without giving him the satisfaction of a lover. — Gregor Piatigorsky

Nothing was done to us - we were simply placed in a complete void, and everyone knows that nothing on earth exerts such pressure on the human soul as a void. — Stefan Zweig

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. — Yann Martel

Fathers can seem powerful and overwhelming to their daughters. Let her see your soft side. Express your feelings and reactions. Tell her where you came from and how you got there. Let her see that you have had fears, failures, anxious times, hurts, just like hers, even though you may look flawless to her. — Stella Chess

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

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

Remy you're my king." I hug him hard. "There's no chess game for me without you. — Katy Evans

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

Football is like chess, only without the dice. — Lukas Podolski

In chess, as in life, opportunity strikes but once. — David Bronstein

A championship contender in the early twentieth century needed charisma and a knack for cultivating sponsorship, and Rubinstein was the epitome of the shy and unsocial chess player. Now matter how great his chess skills, he lacked the people skills to be a self-promoter and fund-raiser. — Garry Kasparov

Sir, the slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is insufferable. — Henry Thomas Buckle

In the Soviet Union, for instance, the pressure on the chess stars was immense. When Boris Spassky came home after losing that match, he found he no longer had an apartment in Moscow. — Liz Garbus

Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don't have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode. — Garry Kasparov

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

We lived in the provincial town of Ramat Gan where I spent most of my youth adjacent to the chess board. — Arnon Goldfinger

Why people do that in case it can be predicted like the table of chess, why people are liars and hypocritical? — Deyth Banger

She'd fucked him over hardcore. She'd betrayed him and she'd lied to him, and she knew that as far as he was concerned she'd led him on and used him as well, had consorted with people who wanted to see him dead and given them information to help them make him so. Most of all, she'd hurt him. And if the pain in her chest was anything close to what he'd felt, she was more than willing to admit he deserved to get his own back. Was willing to do more than admit it; was willing to take it, in the hopes he'd eventually decide she'd been punished enough and they could maybe move on. — Stacia Kane

Chess is like body-building. If you train every day, you stay in top shape. It is the same with your brain - chess is a matter of daily training. — Vladimir Kramnik

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

A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation. — Norbert Wiener

Malina looked incredulous. "Are you anything more than a Druid?"
"Of course I am. I own this shop and I play a mean game of chess, and I've been told that I'm a frakkin' Cylon."
"What's a frakkin' Cylon?"
"I don't know, but it sounds really scary when you say it with a Polish Accent. — Kevin Hearne

A true believer may worship Jehovah, Allah, or Brahma, the supernatural beings who allegedly created all life; a true believer may slavishly adhere to a dogma designed theoretically to improve life; yet for life itself - its pleasures, wonders, and delights - he or she holds minimal regard. Music, chess, wine, card games, attractive clothing, dancing, meditation, kites, perfume, marijuana, flirting, soccer, cheeseburgers, any expression of beauty, and any recognition of genius or individual excellence: each of those things has been severely condemned and even outlawed by one cadre of true believers or another in modern times. — Tom Robbins

Every man needs a women, when his life in a trouble. just like a game of chess, queen protect the king — Anuj Kr. Thakur

My coach and my parents both had this relationship to what I was doing, which was allowing me to express myself with chess. And so I could love it. I had a passion for it. I was expressing myself through chess, and I was learning about myself through chess. — Joshua Waitzkin

I had lunch with a chess champion the other day. I knew he was a chess champion because it took him 20 minutes to pass the salt. — Eric Sykes

His life was forever a chess game played on a roulette wheel. He'd had to take precise, informed, ball-dropping gambles to get where he'd been. — Debra Anastasia

Except for a handful, chess players don't have such illusions. The game has a severe analytic quality that makes self-deception difficult. Unlike the undiscovered poet who, despite the harsh criticism of his peers, lives on his fantasies for the day that he will be recognized as the next Dylan Thomas, even a young chess player can usually gauge his talent. When Josh was six, he played several games against a pudgy thirteen-year-old who was the top player on his high school team. He beat Josh every time, but a couple of the games were close, and afterwards the boy seemed gloomy about his performance. He explained that if he didn't make significant improvement during the next year, he would wind up as just another wood-pusher. Despite his celebrity in school, he seemed to know that he didn't have it. While — Fred Waitzkin

Before the endgame, the Gods have placed the middle game — Siegbert Tarrasch

You broke a man today. Doesn't that affect you at all? These are lives, not pieces in a chess game with your uncle.'
'You're wrong. We are on my uncle's board and these men are all his pieces.'
'Then each time you move one of them, you can congratulate yourself on how much like him you are. — C.S. Pacat

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

Robert Fischer is a law unto himself — Larry Evans

I see my own style as being a symbiosis of the styles of Alekhine, Tal and Fischer. — Garry Kasparov

The game gives us a satisfaction that Life denies us. And for the Chess player, the success which crowns his work, the great dispeller of sorrows, is named 'combination'. — Emanuel Lasker

Having spent alarmingly large chunks of my life studying the white side of the Open Sicilian, I find myself asking, why did I bother? — Daniel J. King

When you absolutely don't know what to do anymore, it is time to panic — John Van Der Wiel

In chess you might find a good move. Then you might find a better move. But take your time. Find the best move. — Josh Waitzkin

I've been in prison, you see. Only three weeks, and only on remand,but when you've had to play chess twice a day with a monosyllabic West Ham supporter, who has 'HATE' tattooed on one hand, and 'HATE' on the other - using a set missing six pawns, all the rooks and two of the bishops - you find yourself cherishing little things in life. Like not being in prison. — Hugh Laurie

A knowledge of tactics is the foundation of positional play. This is a rule which has stood its test in chess history and one which we cannot impress forcibly enough upon the young chess player. A beginner should avoid Queen's Gambit and French Defence and play open games instead! While he may not win as many games at first, he will in the long run be amply compensated by acquiring a thorough knowledge of the game — Richard Reti

In modern praxis lost positions are salvaged most often when the play is highly complicated with many sharp dynamic variations to be calculated. — Leonid Shamkovich

In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word? — Jorge Luis Borges

You can read the best experts on child care. You can listen to those who have been there. You can take a whole childbirth and child-care course without missing a lesson. But you won't really know a thing about yourselves and each other as parents, or your baby as a child, until you have her in your arms. That's the moment when the lifelong process of bringing up a child into the fold of the family begins. — Stella Chess

It would be as naive to study the song of the nightingale, as it would be ridiculous to try and win a King's Gambit against a representative of the old chess guard. — David Bronstein

Chess only appeals to quite a small minority. It does not have the cachet of a mainstream popular sport. — Magnus Carlsen

I believe that Chess possesses a magic that is also a help in advanced age. A rheumatic knee is forgotten during a game of chess and other events can seem quite unimportant in comparison with a catastrophe on the chessboard. — Vlastimil Hort

...erosion control in Japan is like a game of chess. The forest
engineer, after studying his eroding valley, makes his first move, locating and building
one or more check dams. He waits to see what Nature's response is. This determines the
forest engineer's next move, which may be another dam or two, an increase in the former
dam, or the construction of side retaining walls. After another pause for observation, the
next move is made and so on until erosion is checkmated." (An Agricultural Testament) — Albert Howard

Computers have changed the World of Chess. — Vladimir Kramnik

All conceptions in the game of chess have a geometrical basis. — Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

A chess problem is an exercise in pure mathematics. — G.H. Hardy

You are never too old to play chess! — Bobby Fischer

I took high school very casually. There was Teen Town, chess, tennis, boxing, running. Lots of things going on. — Robert Mundell

I can remember times coming home from a chess club at four in the morning when I was half asleep and half dead and forcing myself to pray an hour and study (the Bible) an hour. You know, I
was half out of my head-stoned almost. — Bobby Fischer

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