Sayings About Playing Chess

#1. 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

#2. Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.

David Hockney

#3. But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here.

Dorothy Dunnett

#4. I got arrested for playing chess in the street. I said, it's because I'm black, isn't it.

Milton Jones

#5. You have good instincts,trust them. Thinking through every step is fine if you're playing chess, but this isn't chess.

Rick Yancey

#6. When I started out playing chess as a kid I thought I should be world champion. As a kid you have no idea what that means and you only sort of picture it. It is hard to imagine that I waited all those years and it happened in a late stage of my career.

Viswanathan Anand

#7. 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

#8. It was like playing checkers, only to learn that your opponent was playing chess all along.

Barry Lyga

#9. It was once stated that God didn't play with dice, but then I discovered that most of the Gods did play with dice. However, they didn't see Destiny playing chess the entire time behind them. They never stood a chance, seeing that Destiny was on both sides of the board.

Lionel Suggs

#10. I spend hours playing chess because I find it so much fun. The day it stops being fun is the day I give up.

Magnus Carlsen

#11. One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.

Scarlett Thomas

#12. I think I can safely conclude that there is not a lot to be said for playing chess while on Valium.

Tony Miles

#13. I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow.

Jerry Spinelli

#14. Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences.

John Ortberg

#15. We've been playing chess with this iPhone app. He hasn't made a move in so long our last game got forfeited. Ten days, or something like that."
"You two play chess on your phones?" Ty asked.
"Yeah." Zane shrugged.

Abigail Roux

#16. Pretenders try to out-think their opponents as if they were playing chess. Tennis is a martial art. Instinctive fluid action is far more effective than thinking.

Anonymous

#17. Downright ridiculous legislation (such as laws specifically prohibiting blacks and whites from playing chess together).

Michelle Alexander

#18. The Kremlin is constantly changing the rules of the game to suit its purposes. We are not playing chess, we're playing roulette.

Garry Kasparov

#19. It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory.

Douglass North

#20. When I was a kid, I really liked playing chess, which is pretty geeky; I just enjoyed it - thinking, exercising my mind. And I found computers to be like an eight-hour day chess game.

Michael Birch

#21. I'm playing checkers while they're playing chess
They make the big moves that make me a little less
Even when I win and beat the pants off of the best
I'm still playing checkers while they're playing chess

Billy Joe Shaver

#22. I started playing chess when I was five years old. I learned the moves from my mother, then worked with my father - and later trainers. My style became very technical. I sacrificed a lot of things. I was always hunting for the king, for the mate. I'd forget about my other pieces.

Garry Kasparov

#23. Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival.

Frank Herbert

#24. We've seen computers play chess and beat grand masters. We've seen computers drive a car across a desert. But interestingly, playing chess is easy, but having a conversation about nothing is really difficult for a computer.

Hod Lipson

#25. Listening to a book and in the same time playing chess is one of the best decision ever made.

Deyth Banger

#26. 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

#27. Playing chess is more athletic than artistic. Champions are more concerned with victory than beauty: it's war with occasionally graceful kicks.

Jennifer Shahade

#28. It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.

Jon Stewart

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. These young guys are playing checkers. I'm out there playing chess.

Kobe Bryant

#32. 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

#33. Levity and sincerity are not antonyms. We take pleasure in playing chess, but that does not mean we make wasteful moves. You

Claire North

#34. He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers.

Karin Slaughter

#35. Playing chess has many aspects that can be useful in everyday situations like planning, concentration and combinations. You learn to win but also to lose and to be creative.

Judit Polgar

#36. Riding a bike works your legs but not your brain. Playing chess works your mind but not your body. Climbing brings it all together.

Pat Ament

#37. Being on Facebook too much in a row is like playing chess in a black hole. You never know if the next move will lead you to a checkmate or a mate checked.

Ana Claudia Antunes

#38. I'm playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, that's why I always lose

Josh Stern

#39. Two monks sit facing, playing chess on the mountain, The bamboo shadow on the board is dark and clear. Not a person sees the bamboo's shadow, One sometimes hears the pieces being moved.

Bai Juyi

#40. Everyone have a game, everyone is playing in his own game and his own game he is the king the others are the other figures from the chess.

Deyth Banger

#41. Playing for complications is an extreme measure that a player should adopt only when he cannot find a clear and logical plan.

Alexander Alekhine

#42. You know you're going to lose. Even when I was ahead I knew I was going to lose -on playing against Fischer

Andrew Soltis

#43. If I win a tournament, I win it by myself. I do the playing. Nobody helps me

Bobby Fischer

#44. AI does not keep me up at night. Almost no one is working on conscious machines. Deep learning algorithms, or Google search, or Facebook personalization, or Siri or self driving cars or Watson, those have the same relationship to conscious machines as a toaster does to a chess-playing computer.

Ramez Naam

#45. I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a
coffee cup in a park for old men playing
chess or silly games of some sort.

Charles Bukowski

#46. Agreeing to draws in the middlegame, equal or otherwise, deprives you of the opportunity to practice playing endgames, and the endgame is probably where you need the most practice.

Pal Benko

#47. There is luck in chess. My opponent was lucky that he was playing against an idiot.

James M. Loy

#48. Playing without a concurrent critical review of one's skills will simply get you nowhere.

Edmar Mednis

#49. Playing black, I put great stake in the Ruy Lopez: I liked it, feel it, and understand it; in matches with Hjartarson and Timman it served me well. - on preparing for World Championship versus Garry Kasparov

Anatoly Karpov

#50. Every Chess master was once a beginner

Irving Chernev

#51. You can win in business by playing checkers until someone sneaks in one night after you've closed for the day and flips the board.

Mark Miller

#52. In Chess, as it is played by masters, chance is practically eliminated.

Emanuel Lasker

#53. Like dogs who sniff each other when meeting, chess players have a ritual at first acquaintance: they sit down to play speed chess.

Anatoly Karpov

#54. I stopped taking notes on my Palm Pilot and started playing the little chess game.

Roger Ebert

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

Henry A. Kissinger

#56. Memorization of variations could be even worse than playing in a tournament without looking in the books at all.

Mikhail Botvinnik

#57. What I say is, don't go playing unless you can win. Only sit down to chess with idiots, only kick a dog what's dead already, and don't love a lady unless she loves you first.

N.D. Wilson

#58. We are a thick skinned people with emtpy souls. We spend our days playing dice, chess, or sleeping - and we say we are the best people that ever came to mankind?

Nizar Qabbani

#59. I am convinced, the way one plays chess always reflects the player's personality. If something defines his character, then it will also define his way of playing.

Vladimir Kramnik

#60. Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

Terry Pratchett

#61. Bezos is like a chess master playing countless games simultaneously, with the boards organized in such a way that he can efficiently tend to each match.

Brad Stone

#62. An amusing fact: as far as I can recall, when playing the Ruy Lopez I have not yet once in my life had to face the Marshall Attack!

Anatoly Karpov

#63. And he calls it playing? Like, whatever happened to chess? Or cards? Or tag?

Cherise Sinclair

#64. Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money

Benjamin Franklin

#65. The old chess is too limited. Imagine playing cards, black jack for example, and every time the dealer has the same starting hand you have the same starting hand. What's the point?

Bobby Fischer

#66. Life, is a chess game you win or loose, but just keep playing.

Auliq Ice

#67. I really enjoy playing with someone else and whether it's chess or tennis or games, I love card games. I love that, but I think there's something so important to gain from winning and losing and learning how to lose and how you can be better from that.

Hilary Swank

#68. Who the hell let you animals into my office?
I'll have you know I was playing a VERY unimportant game of chess right now with a man that kept saying King me.

Matt Fraction

#69. My job is to play chess, the game that I love. I achieve what I can in chess. That is what I focus on. Basically, I am always focused on playing the game, and this is important to me.

Viswanathan Anand

#70. 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

#71. Don't be afraid of losing, be afraid of playing a game and not learning something.

Dan Heisman

#72. When I analyse a position, I have a sparring partner who understands chess amazingly well. In a way I feel sorry for him, because of his work with me he cannot play as much chess as he wants. He more or less gave up his playing career.

Boris Gelfand

#73. 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

#74. Who is your opponent tonight, tonight I am playing against the Black pieces

Akiba Rubinstein

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

Siegbert Tarrasch

#76. Let the perfectionist play postal.

Yasser Seirawan

#77. Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it's futile to continue playing (conceptualizing).

Bill Gaede

#78. 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

#79. Don't worry about your rating, work on your playing strength and your rating will follow.

Dan Heisman

#80. Little boys are still playing the game [baseball], more little girls are playing, and it is still the world's most interesting game, a duel, a chess match, a foot race, a gymnastics exhibition, that rare opportunity for individuals to be recognized within a group effort.

Robert Lipsyte

#81. I thought I was playing the world champion, not some 27-eyed monster who sees everything in all positions.

Tony Miles

#82. Never having played Chess before, it was most interesting to be playing the game with no pieces in front of me. But I still knew how to stroke my hair when I won.

Peter Mayhew

#83. I have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners - that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards.

Graydon Carter

#84. 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

#85. Shall we ever live to see the following wise prohibition - the audience is forbidden to smoke and the masters are forbidden to 'smoke out' the audience by playing exchanging variations?

Savielly Tartakower

#86. 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

#87. Expert chess playing, for example, was once thought to epitomize human intellection. In the view of several experts in the late fifties: "If one could devise a successful chess machine, one would seem to have penetrated to the core of human intellectual endeavor.

Nick Bostrom

#88. 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