Dvoretsky Quotes

#1. Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual ... may well be the chess book of the year ... [It] comes close to an ultimate one-volume manual on the endgame.

Lubomir Kavalek

#2. Experience is what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.

Katherine Anne Porter

#3. It is very important to learn to weigh up objectively (or assess intuitively) the totality of the competitive and psychological factors.

Mark Dvoretsky

#4. Emotional instability can be one of the factors giving rise to a failure by chess players in important duels. Under the influence of surging emotions (and not necessarily negative ones) we sometimes lose concentration and stop objectively evaluating the events that are taking place on the board.

Mark Dvoretsky

#5. In positions of strategic manoeuvring (where time is not of decisive importance) seek the worst-placed piece. Activating that piece is often the most reliable way of improving your position as a whole.

Mark Dvoretsky

#6. Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all.

Michael Ende

#7. As a rule, pawn endings have a forced character, and they can be worked out conclusively.

Mark Dvoretsky

#8. Sometimes, the people we invest the most time in disappoint us the most.

Mike Tyson

#9. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.

Umberto Eco

#10. Women who routinely have orgasm in intercourse without explicit clitoral stimulation all say that it makes little difference what the guy does, as long as he doesn't come too soon,

Mary Roach

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

Mark Dvoretsky

#12. I feel that it is no less interesting to be a trainer than to play oneself. I even take greater delight in the tournament successes of my lads than I do in my own.

Mark Dvoretsky

#13. Not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just do what you can and should. And

Marcus Aurelius

#14. It is hardly useful if you trustingly play through variation after variation from a book. It is a great deal more useful and more interesting if you take part actively in the analysis, find something yourself, and try to refute some of the author's conclusions.

Mark Dvoretsky

#15. I do not know to whom the aphorism 'There are no sound studies, only ones that haven't been busted yet' belongs, but it has measure of truth in it.

Mark Dvoretsky

#16. Training in analysis (like any other form of chess training) should be treated very seriously.

Mark Dvoretsky

#17. I was a foreign correspondent in Berlin in the mid-'90s.

Rick Atkinson

#18. Welfare is ... the victim of national compassion fatigue.

Ellen Goodman

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

Mark Dvoretsky