Good Chess Quotes & Sayings

Chess isn't one of my favorites, it takes a cool calculating hatred to play well, and I'm not good at that. — Lilith Saintcrow

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

I started by just sitting by the chessboard exploring things. I didn't even have books at first, and I just played by myself. I learnt a lot from that, and I feel that it is a big reason why I now have a good intuitive understanding of chess. — Magnus Carlsen

The most intelligent inspection of any number of fine paintings will not make the observer a painter, nor will listening to a number of operas make the hearer a musician, but good judges of music and painting may so be formed. Chess differs from these. The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others. — Emanuel Lasker

You can only get good at Chess if you love the game — Bobby Fischer

It is a well known phenomenon that the same amateur who can conduct the middle game quite creditably, is usually perfectly helpless in the end game. One of the principal requisites of good chess is the ability to treat both the middle and end game equally well. — Aron Nimzowitsch

Black is now in desperate need of a good idea. Or, to put it standard chess notation, +- — Mark Dvoretsky

What we need are lots of girls who aren't as good as us, who'll treat us with the proper respect and reverance. — David Norwood

In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters. — Tyler Cowen

Fischer was a good kid but very unsophisticated about anything but chess. It was all chess for him, every waking moment. We'd go down to the Four Continents bookstore and he'd buy any Russian chess material he could get his hands on. He'd learned enough Russian to get the gist of prose and he just absorbed the chess part. — Ronald Gross

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

If, in our first match for the world champion's title, I had managed to make the score 6-0, there would have been no Kasparov as a good chess player at all. — Anatoly Karpov

There is a parallel between the twos and the tens. Tens are trying to test their abilities again, sizing up and experimenting to discover how to fit in. They don't mean everything they do and say. They are just testing ... Take a good deal of your daughter's behavior with a grain of salt. Try to handle the really outrageous as matter-of-factly as you would a mistake in grammar or spelling. — Stella Chess

You may not see every single piece of the puzzle that creates your life
you may not see every move the grand chess player makes
but know, He is in complete control of the game board. Sometimes certain pieces are moved or knocked over to make room for new ones. Other times, things happen because of the world we live in. But everything in the end, will always turn out for good. It's a nice promise, isn't it? To know there's a reason for it all? — Rachel Van Dyken

The Buke of Ye Chess used the game as the basis for a series of sermons on morality. Neither book illustrates play or player improvement, but uses the chessboard and pieces to 'allegorize a political community whose citizens contribute to the common good'2. — Laura Caine Ramsey

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

The Girlfriend 911 Cheat Sheet:
1) Change your behavior, and you'll change his.
2) Create a high standard for yourself.
3) Create a boundary for yourself and for him.
4) Allow him to take the lead every step of the way. It's a chess game. He makes his move, then you make yours.
5) Don't contact him unless he contacts you first. Don't play games or lead him on if you're not interested. Always be honest and up-front with your intentions.
6) Pay close attention to signs and red flags. Don't ignore them. When you see one, figure out what it means and act accordingly.
7) If you want a long-term relationship, postpone sleeping with him. Wait until a good amount of time has gone by, both of you are on the same page, and you both want to be in a committed relationship. If there's any doubt on his part, don't sleep with him. If he tells you he doesn't want to be in a relationship, take him at his word and move on. — Jacquee Kahn

Parents' ability to survive a child's unabating needs, wants, and demands ... varies enormously. Some people can give and give ... Whether children are good or bad, brilliant or just about normal, enormously popular or born loners, they keep their cool and say just the right thing at all times ... even when they are miserable themselves, inexhaustible springs of emotional energy, reserved just for children, keep flowing unabated. — Stella Chess

You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas. — Stanley Kubrick

Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop. — C.S. Lewis

Chess was the only thing Hermione ever lost at, something Harry and Ron thought was very good for her. — J.K. Rowling

The reason I like the game chess is because each move has countless repercussions, but you're in charge of them. And it's your ability to see into the future and the effects of the decisions you've made that males you either a good or not a good chess player. It's not luck. — Bono

When you see a good move, look for a better one — Emanuel Lasker

I am not some sort of freak. I might be very good at chess but I'm just a normal person. — Magnus Carlsen

I try to help developing junior chess. When I lived in USSR, I got a lot of free help from very good coaches - now I am trying to repay that debt. — Boris Spassky

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

A chess game, after all, is a fight in which all possible factors must be made use of, and in which a knowledge of the opponent's good and bad qualities is of the greatest importance. — Emanuel Lasker

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

When you're good at something, you should continue to do it. Too many players have stopped at a relatively young age ... — Jan Timman

I honestly don't read that much. Obviously I read chess books - in terms of favorites, Kasparov's 'My Great Predecessors' is pretty good. — Magnus Carlsen

I'm a pretty good chess player. — Joel Kinnaman

Whoever sees no other aim in the game than that of giving checkmate to one's opponent will never become a good Chess player. — Max Euwe

Give me a good game-day party on Sunday afternoon and I'll show up, but knowing the intricate details about what was happening on the field had no interest for me. And I told that to my pal, Johnny. He was raving about a game, and I said that it seemed to me that 'every play was a few seconds of incomprehensible frenetic activity, followed by a minute and a half of standing around.' And he said, "Man, every single play is an entire chess game played out in six seconds." I didn't play chess, but I got the idea. The thought of a battle for territory being played both physically and strategically fascinated me. That was war, right? And if the game was war, then each play was a battle. — Gilbert Klein

Everyone at a high level has a huge amount of chess understanding, and much of what separates the great from the very good is deep presence, relaxation of the conscious mind, which allows the unconscious to flow unhindered. — Josh Waitzkin

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

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

Maybe I have said it, maybe I haven't chess isn't about math, it's about strategy. If you know math this doesn't make you good in chess, you must have strategy to win. — Deyth Banger

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

You cannot say, 'Go! Go! Rah! Rah! Good move!' People want some emotion. Chess is an art and not a spectator sport. — Garry Kasparov

The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly ten years, if you think about four hours a day. — Malcolm Gladwell

Women can do anything men can do. Except math, chess, running, jumping, lifting stuff, fixing things, making money, hockey, surfing, driving, making decisions, being tall, taking out the garbage, tipping, fishing, being funny (on purpose), reading a map, listening to good bands, writing, running the country, inventing anything important, or being fun to hang out with. — Daniel Tosh

Ralph ... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player. — William Golding

Well, the bad news," Swedish said from the wheel, "is that Chess still thinks he's funny."
"What's the good news?" Loretta asked, leaning on our little copper-tubed harpoon. "That Kodoc dropped a bomb on the city? — Joel N. Ross

For me, MMA is like speed chess. It's like I'm herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an arm bar. I'm not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I'm going to do is convince you that it's a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go. — Ronda Rousey

I just want to know...if I am special,' finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. 'In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it's because she's special, because she's smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and . . . I don't know that I'm any of those things. I don't even know that I'm as ill-tempered as all that. I'm not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl's house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn't mean to choose me at all, because I'm not like storybook girls. I'm short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn't even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird. — Catherynne M Valente

One thing with Garry, and I think it is due in a large part to his Soviet training, he'll never quite understand that you have to be able to criticize constructively. When you have someone who is always on your case and it's never good enough no matter how you win a game, it just brings you down, you lose confidence. And as a chess player you have to be confident, you have to believe in yourself. — Hikaru Nakamura

Is she gone, then?" Lizzie asked, her mouth turned down in a slight frown.

"I don't know," Johnny answered carefully. "We had a picnic out at the reservoir after the dance. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, she was gone. But her shoes were still there."

"Oh." Lizzie nodded, as if her question had been satisfied. She finished off her ice cream and proceeded to lick her fingers clean.

"So do you know where she is?" Johnny was really trying not to get impatient, but so far he had gotten exactly nowhere. He wondered if Lizzie Honeycutt was good at chess.

"She probably went back," Lizzie dutifully protected her queen.

"Back where? — Amy Harmon

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

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble — Stanley Kubrick

In Fischer's hands, a slight theoretical advantage is as good a being a Queen ahead — Isaac Kashdan

Human affairs are like a chess-game: only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players. Life is like an earthen pot: only when it is shattered, does it manifest its emptiness. — Seneca The Younger

I never have heard somebody talking about games which are educationable or with logic like chess for example. Nobody watch it from the people which watch football and are good at math. Why they don't do it?? — 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

That a good fit between parental handling and child temperament is vital to help children adapt to the imperatives of their society is a crucial concept that can be applied to other cultures. — Stella Chess

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

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

Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind. — Terry Pratchett

But when he was with Chess he wasn't the bad guy no more. He was the one keeping her safe, making her smile. He still wasn't good enough for her, but he were better than he'd ever been. That mattered. — Stacia Kane

Concentrate on material gains. Whatever your opponent gives you take, unless you see a good reason not to. — Bobby Fischer

Theses officers were good friends, so it must have been a terrible argument, because the one who played chess with my father was so angry that he walked over to the dentist's house and got the dentist out of bed and shot him. — Bruno Schulz

Chess is like a language, the top players are very fluent at it. Talent can be developed scientifically but you have to find first what you are good at. — Viswanathan Anand

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

You want a fact???
...
I'm bad at math but good at chess, I beat the best guy on chess... so you make your own conclusions! — Deyth Banger

Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game. — Wilhelm Steinitz

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

You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go. — Hans Berliner

the more interesting their conversation, the more cultured they are, the more they will be trapped into thinking that they are effective at what they are doing in real business (something psychologists call the halo effect, the mistake of thinking that skills in, say, skiing translate unfailingly into skills in managing a pottery workshop or a bank department, or that a good chess player would be a good strategist in real life). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Chess is a good way to learn, to keep your brain fit and the ego in check, a mental form of your local gymnasium. Those who see chess merely as a means of self-proof make the game experience uncomfortable and drive many of the better, more sensitive brains to analysis, correspondence, problems, studies and the like. — Peter Abelard

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably. — Ezra Pound

Swimming is about the only physical activity during which I am unlikely to injure anyone. I am also good at chess, which I feel should count as physical activity because you have to reach over and move pieces all the time. Some of the boards are quite large, so one must lean AND reach at the same time, thereby expending even more energy. — Wendy Mass

Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without ant errors, or as they say 'flawless game' is colorless. — Mikhail Tal

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

Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events. — Benjamin Franklin

It amazed Chess how he'd really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he'd miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool.

Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk - on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy's face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook's voice preaching, or Yancey's, singing. Ed's heartbeat under his cheek. — Gemma Files

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

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

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

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

I think a gentleman is someone who holds the comfort of other people above their own. The instinct to do that is inside every good man, I believe. The rules about opening doors and buying dinner and all of that other 'gentleman' stuff is a chess game, especially these days. — Anna Kendrick

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

In chess, without the king, the other pieces would all be "dead", so their existance is supported by the king, but they need to serve the king with their capacity for action in order to have a good game. — Roumen Bezergianov

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

In chess, as played by a good player, logic and imagination must go hand in hand, compensating each other. — Jose Raul Capablanca

Only a good bishop can be sacrificed, a bad bishop can only be lost. — Yuri Razuvaev

After that, Kasparov stepped back from chess which is, and I want this to be clear, not good for chess in general at all. As a whole, the current situation in the chess world leaves a lot to be desired. — Anatoly Karpov

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

"Chess has definitely helped me understand a lot of the strategy of football. In chess, good offense is often an exercise in putting multiple points of pressure on one square. In football, offensive play design (particularly passes) involves putting multiple points of pressure on one player." "In chess, you often give your opponent a move that looks strong for him, but it turns into a trap. Football is the same way. I've always thought of defense in football as being totally reactive. But now I understand the ways in which football defenses force the offense to make certain choices." — Reggie Rivers

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

Chess is a great game. No matter how good one is, there is always somebody better. No matter how bad one is, there is always somebody worse. — Israel Albert Horowitz

I really chess-play culture shifts. I'm really good at understanding what worldwide cell-phone use means. That's what I do. I try to picture it three to four to five steps ahead. — Gary Vaynerchuk

I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or don't, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that has tied them together, or tried. That's why programming - or buying software - on the basis of "lists of features" is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant unification, as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess. — Ted Nelson

A chess player never has a heart attack in a good position. — Bent Larsen

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

A good player is always lucky. — Jose Raul Capablanca

The only good Rook is a working Rook! — Samuel Reshevsky

I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up - that's good, since I've known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridge with friends every week. — Maeve Binchy

I don't know if people know this but I am pretty good at chess. I was always on the chess team at school when I was younger. — Justin Bieber

A form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys - if not the greatest one - of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must be intellectually productive, and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy. — Siegbert Tarrasch