Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Chess.com is my home turf.
I don't consider myself a nerd.
I play quite a bit of tennis on the side.
I'd rather play for the Yankees. You get more money.
It's good to win. Losses aren't good, and draws are O.K.
No, I've never had a job other than being a chess player.
I've had to grow up pretty fast, which is not a good thing.
I've won the U.S. Championship. I've won a lot of tournaments.
I play different styles, and am very good at changing how I play.
In poker, you want to play the weaker guys. In chess, it's the opposite.
I've found for playing that it's generally not a good thing to be drinking.
I like the feeling when you don't have much time and you have to think fast.
A lot of people see a future where you could make a living as a chess player.
There aren't really any 'American' grandmasters that are higher rated than me.
I'm into hiking and mountains and I follow hockey and basketball pretty avidly.
If you're not at the elite levels there are a lot more opportunities to play tournaments.
It's easy to become angry, but when you get better, you channel your energy into the game.
Chess is a great game. It's a lot of fun, but sometimes you wonder what else is out there.
Life is very much about making the best decisions you can. So I think chess is very valuable.
It's very encouraging that the game of chess is growing in the U.S. and is becoming more popular.
When you're 17 and 18 is when you get really good, and in college, you have to put the chess aside.
When I was younger, I would look at a game with computers and still be fascinated by the possibilities.
The single most important thing in life is to believe in yourself regardless of what everyone else says.
Because of the Internet, chess is not about your nationality or your background. Anyone can get good now.
I want to be ranked in the top 100 players. If I can achieve that, I'll think about the world championship.
When you watch chess, you don't see the four hours that the player spends preparing for a match ahead of time.
I think for me the main goal that I have, or at least what I really aspire to, is to raise the level of chess.
As you get stronger, you learn to maintain the position against higher rated players. This comes with experience.
I would say out of all the things I studied growing up, math was probably one of the things that I liked the least.
It's interesting to find new things with the game. It's fun finding new positions, new openings and new strategies.
Everybody uses computers to train so much now that the first nine or 10 moves of a match are made without thinking.
In chess, everyone's accepted. That's what's great about it. You can be a little bit different. You can be an oddball.
Critical thinking is the most important factor with chess. As it is in life, you need to think before you make decisions.
You can't follow or understand the game unless you play chess yourself, unlike poker which you can pick up in five minutes.
The way I play is not like most people. The moves are more computeresque. They're not the moves that most humans are going to play.
It's certainly an honor to have kids who are looking up to me, but at the same time, I'm just trying to do what I can to raise the profile of chess.
Well, I think, in large part, when I first began playing chess at seven years old, I was quite bad at it. I lost a lot of games when I first started.
Chess is a game where all different sorts of people can come together, not a game in which people are divided because of their religion or country of origin.
The first championship in 2005 will always be the most special but winning this fifth one was by far my best performance because of the strength of the field.
What was great about Fischer is that when he became world champion is that chess was being covered everywhere. It was in all the major newspapers, it was on TV.
No matter how badly you play, unless you make a flat-out blunder, there's always going to be some narrow path to being able to save the game and draw instead of losing.
I will say there have been occasional times - not when I'm playing, but when I'm studying - that I have found a little bit of alcohol has been good for the creative process.
Definitely, some of the artistry and poetry has been lost in modern chess. It's very rare that I play a game where I'm like, 'Wow, this is really interesting. There were so many possibilities! It was such a rich game.'
In chess you try to do your best, but there are instances where you make mistakes or you try and take risks that you shouldn't. And I think losing games is a good thing, because you learn more from when you lose than when you win.
The image that everyone has of a chess player is not necessarily positive. I think it's partly due to Bobby Fischer - his rise to fame and then his descent into madness. That left a lot of people with negative stereotypes, of nerds who aren't interesting.
Everyone is using the same programs, everyone is looking at the same opening ideas. I wouldn't say everyone is necessarily the same in terms of talent or ability, but when you're able to prepare games that go so deep that you don't have to think, really, it balances out the field.
I had been playing a lot of chess and I wasn't really enjoying it, so I decided to go to college to see what else is out there for me. But after about six or seven months away from the game, I just decided that the whole college life wasn't for me and that's why I decided to come back.
If you talk to some of the older players, they definitely say they see beauty in certain games. In my case, there are certain times when I think, 'Wow, that's so amazing, chess is so full of ideas.' But most of the time I tend to be much more pragmatic about it, as opposed to thinking about it as art or something exquisite.
First, we are born in the same galaxy. Born of the same species. Our lifetimes overlap. The meetings between humans are so unlikely as to be miraculous. To laugh, to cry, and to fall in love. Everyone is made up of a collection of 1% chances. Thus, I am dazzled by the fact that there are so many miracles in this world.
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.