Chess Player Quotes

#1. Don't worry kids, you'll find work. After all, my machine will need strong chess player-programmers. You will be the first.

Mikhail Botvinnik

#2. There is not a single true chess-player in the world whose heart does not beat faster at the mere sound of such long beloved and familiar words as 'gambit games'.

David Bronstein

#3. 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

#4. It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.

Alison Gopnik

#5. She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces, sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked hungry for the kiss which they invited.

Kate Chopin

#6. 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

#7. The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There's never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I'll buy some of the feminism ...

Pat Robertson

#8. Analysis is a glittering opportunity for training: it is just here that capacity for work, perseverence and stamina are cultivated, and these qualities are, in truth, as necessary to a chess player as a marathon runner.

Lev Polugaevsky

#9. Bridget did not budge, and her face was without expression. She sat, quietly defeated like a chess player who lost a career match in less than four moves.

Emmie White

#10. Genius is a starry word; but if there ever was a chess player to whom that attribute applied, it was Paul Morphy.

Andrew Soltis

#11. 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

#12. My father, a fine chess player himself, has been a massive influence throughout my life.

Magnus Carlsen

#13. But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#14. Could we look into the head of a Chess player, we should see there a whole world of feelings, images, ideas, emotion and passion

Alfred Binet

#15. A long time afterwards, she was to remember what an excellent chess-player Francis Crawford was.

Dorothy Dunnett

#16. I'm not much of a chess player, but there is an aspect of the game that I find fascinating. After a while, you can almost see lines of force between the pieces. Areas of danger where it is physically impossible to move pieces into. Clouds of possibility, forbidden zones.

Hannu Rajaniemi

#17. Mistrust is the most necessary characteristic of the Chess player

Siegbert Tarrasch

#18. It is a delight to watch a young and gifted chess player. To him have come no sinister experiences; to him continual carping care is foreign. Therefore he loves the attack and the bold sacrifice; for theirin lies the shortest way to his ultimate objective.

Richard Reti

#19. 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

#20. The strategist is a chess player thrown into life.

VIRGIL PROFEANU

#21. A Soviet diplomat, like a skilled chess player, does not expect his opposite number to give up something for nothing, not even a pawn.

Arthur Dean

#22. Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.

Henri Poincare

#23. I'm a pretty good chess player.

Joel Kinnaman

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

Lev Polugaevsky

#25. There's never before been a Chess player with such a thorough knowledge of the intricacies of the game and such an absolutely indomitable will to win. I think Bobby is the greatest player that ever lived

Lisa Lane

#26. 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

#27. Chess hasn't really influenced my literature. It's true, there's a character in Pigeon Post, an old chess player; but it's more of a wink, a self-portrait and not much more.

Dumitru Tepeneag

#28. When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy - as Faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space; or as Van Gogh saw vortices in the skies of Provence.

Arthur Koestler

#29. 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

#30. A strong memory, concentration, imagination, and a strong will is required to become a great Chess player

Bobby Fischer

#31. I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.

Vladimir Kramnik

#32. But a man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#33. Independence of thought is a most valuable quality in a chess-player, both at the board and when preparing for a game.

David Bronstein

#34. A chess player never has a heart attack in a good position.

Bent Larsen

#35. I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov.

Lou Gerstner

#36. The highest Art of the Chess player lies in not allowing your Opponent to show you what he can do.

Garry Kasparov

#37. 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

#38. For me, Chess is life and every game is like a new life. Every chess player gets to live many lives in one lifetime.

Eduard Gufeld

#39. I have always thought it a matter of honour for every chess player to deserve the smile of fortune.

Mikhail Tal

#40. We perceive after a careful consideration of the evolution of the chess mind that such evolution has gone on, in general, in a way quite similar to that in which it goes on with the individual chess player, only with the latter more rapidly.

Richard Reti

#41. I spend around one hour per day on physical exercise. Exercise is a must for every chess player. As the proverb says, 'A sound mind in a sound body'.

Humpy Koneru

#42. Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening.

Henry A. Kissinger

#43. 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

#44. As a chess player one has to be able to control one's feelings, one has to be as cold as a machine.

Levon Aronian

#45. I learned a lot. I really did. Millennium is a state of mind. I always thought of Frank Black as the greatest chess player that could take random pieces of information and string them together into a scenario that was accurate. I never thought of him as a psychic at all. We need people like that.

Lance Henriksen

#46. 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

#47. Once you're a chess player, you spend a lot of time thinking about the game and you can't get it completely out of your head.

Magnus Carlsen

#48. The chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time.

Marilyn Vos Savant

#49. For what it was worth, she got the impression that Niessa liked her, or at least approved of her, in the same way a chess-player approves of one of his pieces when it stays where it's been put and doesn't go wandering off all over the board.

K.J. Parker

#50. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.

Edgar Allan Poe

#51. Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.

Ralph Charell

#52. There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage , and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.

Edgar Allan Poe

#53. I don't know how many calories an average chess player burns per game, but it often exceeds that of a player in ball games. It is not only the chess as such: You need to be fit and undergo complicated preparation.

Viswanathan Anand

#54. To play a match for the World Championship is the cherished dream of every chess player.

David Bronstein

#55. A great chess player always has a very good memory.

Leonid Shamkovich

#56. I was very lucky that while I was a chess player in a country where chess was not a big deal, I happened to be in the one city where there was a sprouting chess team: Chennai.

Viswanathan Anand

#57. Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.

G.H. Hardy

#58. 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

#59. The enormous mental resilience, without which no Chess player can exist, was so much taken up by Chess that he could never free his mind of this game

Albert Einstein

#60. India and China are improving by leaps and bounds and it will be their chess players who will lead the revolution of the XXI century.

Judit Polgar

#61. Anyone who wishes to learn how to play chess well must make himself or herself thoroughly conversant with the play in positions where the players have castled on opposite sides.

Alexander Kotov

#62. 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

#63. In order to become a grandmaster class player whose understanding of chess is superior to the thousands of ordinary players, you have to develop within yourself a large number of qualities, the qualities of an artistic creator, a calculating practitioner, a cold calm competitor.

Alexander Kotov

#64. It so often happens that, after sacrificing a pawn, a player aims not to obtain the initiative for it, but to regain sacrificed material.

Efim Geller

#65. You may have the bishop pair but I have the ultimate advantage; I am the better player!

John Adams

#66. Life is like a chess. The most important is being a player not a figure. It doesn't matter you will win or lose.

Me

#67. It is not enough to be a good player ... you must also play well

Siegbert Tarrasch

#68. Chess-players are so unsociable, they are no company for any but themselves.

Anne Bronte

#69. 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

#70. Unless a player has an 'understanding chess' rating of at least 2400, the amount of significant knowledge that he can impart on others is limited.

Edmar Mednis

#71. I have known many chess players, but among them there has been only one genius - Capablanca!

Emanuel Lasker

#72. In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.

Stephen Potter

#73. 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

#74. Chess continues to advance over time, so the players of the future will inevitably surpass me in the quality of their play, assuming the rules and regulations allow them to play serious chess. But it will likely be a long time before anyone spends 20 consecutive years as number, one as I did.

Garry Kasparov

#75. All chess players know what a combination is. Whether one makes it oneself, or is its victim, or reads of it, it stands out from the rest of the game and stirs one's admiration.

Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

#76. Bobby Fischer's current state of mind is indeed a tragedy. One of the worlds greatest Chess players - the pride and sorrow of American Chess

Frank Brady

#77. In my opinion, the style of a player should not be formed under the influence of any single great master.

Vasily Smyslov

#78. Far more people make a living as professional chess players today than ever before. Thanks partly to the availability of computer programs and online matches, there has been a mini-boom in chess interest among young people in many countries.

Kenneth Rogoff

#79. 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

#80. By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.

Anatoly Karpov

#81. Many Chess players were surprised when after the game, Fischer quietly explained: 'I had already analyzed this possibility' in a position which I thought was not possible to foresee from the opening

Mikhail Tal

#82. Once in a Moscow chess club I saw how two first-category players knocked pieces off the board as they were exchanged, so that the pieces fell onto the floor. It was as if they were playing skittles and not chess!

Alexander Kotov

#83. All Chess players should have a hobby

Savielly Tartakower

#84. One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.

Anatol Rapoport

#85. The first great chess players, including the world champion, got by perfectly well without constant coaches.

Anatoly Karpov

#86. A lot of these ideas are built under wrong presumptions which officials have that chess players are lazy bastards whose sole idea is to deceive (the) public and to make short draws and go home. It's not true. It's a lie.

Boris Gelfand

#87. There are tough players and nice guys, and I'm a tough player

Bobby Fischer

#88. Bobby Fischer was hugely important for the American chess community because it put chess on the map - he made it possible for other chess players to make a living.

Liz Garbus

#89. It's hard to run from checkmate, checkmate is like the dead... but it's possible to block it. Unfortunately dead you can't block it, but checkmate can be blocked, in such way so the player can't make it.

Deyth Banger

#90. While it is a cause for regret that Fischer did not continue to produce scintillating games, he perhaps had a greater impact on chess than any other twentieth century player

John Nunn

#91. Those who think that it is easy to play chess are mistaken. During a game a player lives on his nerves, and at the same time he must be perfectly composed.

Viktor Korchnoi

#92. 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

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

Wilhelm Steinitz

#94. Fischer is the strongest player in the world. In fact, the strongest player who ever lived

Larry Evans

#95. ...That is my biography from the first day of my chess life to the present.

JOURNALIST. And your plans.
PLAYER. To play!

Mikhail Tal

#96. Lack of proper endgame technique allows many players to escape from lost positions, even without any spectacular play on their part.

Leonid Shamkovich

#97. 19.Rxc7N. There comes the novetly! [sic] Actually, the impression I had is that both players had more or less analyzed the rest of the game.

Romain Edouard

#98. Not infrequently ... the theoretical is a synonym of the stereotyped. For the 'theoretical' in chess is nothing more than that which can be found in the textbooks and to which players try to conform because they cannot think up anything better or equal, anything original.

Mikhail Chigorin

#99. Barcza is the most versatile player in the opening. He sometimes plays P-KKt3 on the first, sometimes on the second, sometimes on the third, and sometimes only on the fourth move.

Harry Golombek

#100. It is not possible to become a great player without having learned how to analyse deeply and accurately.

Mark Dvoretsky