Lasker Chess Quotes & Sayings

Do not permit yourself to fall in love with the end-game play to the exclusion of entire games. It is well to have the whole story of how it happened; the complete play, not the denouement only. Do not embrace the rag-time and vaudeville of chess. — Emanuel Lasker

The process of making pieces in Chess do something useful (whatever it may be) has received a special name: it is called the attack. The attack is that process by means of which you remove obstructions. — Emanuel Lasker

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

Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judging. Chess must not be memorized ... — Emanuel Lasker

None of the great players has been so incomprehensible to the majority of amateurs and even masters, as Emanuel Lasker. — Jose Raul Capablanca

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

The range of circumstances in which it is possible to presuppose the presence of a combination is very limited. The presence of such circumstances is the reason for the genesis of the idea in the master's brain. — Emanuel Lasker

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

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

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

Without error, there is no brilliancy. — Emanuel Lasker

The hardest game to win is a won game — Emanuel Lasker

The delight in gambits is a sign of chess youth ... In very much the same way as the young man, on reaching his manhood years, lays aside the Indian stories and stories of adventure, and turns to the psychological novel, we with maturing experience leave off gambit playing and become interested in the less vivacious but withal more forceful manoeuvres of the position player. — Emanuel Lasker

In mathematics, if I find a new approach to a problem, another mathematician might claim that he has a better, more elegant solution. In chess, if anybody claims he is better than I, I can checkmate him. — Emanuel Lasker

The fatal hour of this ancient game is approaching. In its modern form this game will soon die a drawing death - the inevitable victory of certainty and mechanization will leave its stamp on the fate of chess. — Emanuel Lasker

In itself the title of world champion does not give any significicant advantages, if it is not acknowledged by the entire chess world, and a champion who does not have the chess world behind him is, in my view, a laughing-stock. — Emanuel Lasker

And the rigidity of the material with which we have to compose, is a more formidable opponent than Lasker or Capablanca. Because these lifeless opponents do not have any moments of human weakness! — Henri Weenink

Chess is neither a science nor an art. It is what human nature most delights in
a fight. — Emanuel Lasker

By some ardent enthusiasts Chess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but its principal characteristic seems to be - what human nature mostly delights in - a fight. — Emanuel Lasker

As with Steinitz, Fischer's genius has often been concealed by controversies away from the board. Like Lasker, Fischer has raised chess to new financial heights despite frequent retreats from serious play. And, like Capablanca, Fischer is recognized by millions of non-players and has won the game many new enthusiasts. — Andrew Soltis

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

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

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

While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go. — Emanuel Lasker

No other great master has been so misunderstood by the vast majority of chess amateurs and even by many masters, as has Emanuel Lasker. — Jose Raul Capablanca

Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours on chess without making any progress. Without going into any further calculations, I can assert with a high degree of certainty that nowadays we achieve only a fraction of what we are capable of achieving. — Emanuel Lasker

To find the right plan is just as hard as looking for its sound justification. — Emanuel Lasker

I have known many chess players, but among them there has been only one genius - Capablanca! — Emanuel Lasker

The first chess book that I read was Dufresne's self-tutor, published with Lasker's Common Sense in Chess as an appendix. — Vasily Smyslov

Lasker thought that his rationalism rendered him immune from the surprises of chess theory. — Savielly Tartakower

The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not. — Emanuel Lasker

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