Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future.
The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.
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.
If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.
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.
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
I grew up with a father who taught me chess at the age of 6 or 7. He'd always beat me. Of course. I was a kid of 6 or 7. After he won, he'd look at me and say, 'It's good to be king.' And then he'd say, 'But you know what's even better? To rule the world.'
There's a popular concept of 'intelligence' as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to, say, social skills. So people say that 'it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society.' But social skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys.
When I was young, my favorite picture book was 'Fletcher and Zenobia,' written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It's long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children's book for the times.
My coach and my parents both had this relationship to what I was doing, which was allowing me to express myself with chess. And so I could love it. I had a passion for it. I was expressing myself through chess, and I was learning about myself through chess.
The best tournament that I have ever played in was in 1950. It was great - a waiter came to you during the game, and you could order anything you wanted to drink (even some vodka, if you liked). Pity, there are no longer tournaments organized in this manner.
I was happy that at home we were a closed circle and then we went out playing chess and saw the world. It's a very difficult life and you have to be very careful, especially the parents, who need to know the limits of what you can and can't do with your child.
I've never been one of those actors who plays chess with his career and goes, 'I'm going to wait now and see what project comes up that can move me to this or that level.' I take stuff as it comes, and it just so happens that it hasn't dried up yet, touch wood.
It is a well known phenomenon that the same amateur who can conduct the middle game quite creditably, is usually perfectly helpless in the end game. One of the principal requisites of good chess is the ability to treat both the middle and end game equally well.
It's less about the physical training, in the end, than it is about the mental preparation: boxing is a chess game. You have to be skilled enough and have trained hard enough to know how many different ways you can counterattack in any situation, at any moment.
When I was about six, I saw my elder siblings play chess and pestered my mother into teaching me. Very soon, I was beating everyone at home, and they thought it would be good to join a club. So my sister would take me to the Tal chess club on Thursdays and weekends.
A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it's not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It's more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.
Within these premises, the only thing one can be is an impeccable mediator. One is not the player in this cosmic match of chess, one is simply a pawn on the chessboard. What decides everything is a conscious impersonal energy that sorcerers call intent or the Spirit.
Obviously, in football you can study somebody, but at the same time, once you get out there, I think there's just a natural kind of feel for where you think guys might be or where they're going to go and knowing beforehand what's going to happen. It's just like chess.
Sometimes as writers, we try and put narrative development above character development. We try to move our characters around like chess pieces that do our bidding. The problem with that is sometimes the characters do things they shouldn't do. Things that are inorganic.
Chess as a sport requires a lot of mental stamina, and this is what that makes it different from a physical sport. Chess players have a unique ability of taking in a lot of information and remembering relevant bits. So, memory and mental stamina are the key attributes.
I had a gold medal in olympics at 12. At 14 or 15 I had my career set before me. Because I started so early, I had this daily training. It developed a focus. It became so natural that it was like a native language for me to play chess. That's why I didn't feel pressure.
For me, MMA is like speed chess. It's like I'm herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an arm bar. I'm not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I'm going to do is convince you that it's a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go.
When you're actually boxing, unless it's a proper grudge match, it's less about beating the person up and more about being better within yourself. Being patient, timing things, like chess, so really, it's as much down to you as what the other person does - and that's life.
Football is a chess game to me. If you move your pawn against my bishop, I'll counter that move to beat you. Football is the same way. I study so much film that I know exactly what teams are going to do. I love knowing what a offense is going to run and stuffing that play.
In chess, you gotta come up with a strategy. I made a lot of plans in my life. 'I'ma do this, I'ma do that, this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen.' And a lot of stuff don't go as planned. You really gotta act on events as they unfold. That's how I compare chess to life.
I think a gentleman is someone who holds the comfort of other people above their own. The instinct to do that is inside every good man, I believe. The rules about opening doors and buying dinner and all of that other 'gentleman' stuff is a chess game, especially these days.
I started playing chess in the Eighties, but it is only recently that people have begun to appreciate the importance of physical exercise for chess players. You really need to be in good condition to be able to sit for four to six hours and still maintain your concentration.
I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up - that's good, since I've known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridge with friends every week.
Even though chess isn't the toughest thing that computers will tackle for centuries, it stood as a handy symbol for human intelligence. No matter what human-like feat computers perform in the future, the Deep Blue match demands an indelible dot on all timelines of AI progress.
When teachers would say, 'When you all graduate, you won't have anywhere to go' - I'm the type of person playing chess and thinking ahead. I thought that was a good question. Am I going to be winging it? I didn't want to be in that position, so I set myself up to go to college.
When humans team up with computers to play chess, the humans who do best are not necessarily the strongest players. They're the ones who are modest and who know when to listen to the computer. Often, what the human adds is knowledge of when the computer needs to look more deeply.
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.
For me, boxing's like checkers, and MMA's like chess - there are so many ways to win the match. It's not barbaric; it's boxing, kickboxing, Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, cardio and it's all reached such an amazing level. As fans learn more about the sport, they just fall in love with it.
Being a professional chess player is not very family-friendly and I am away quite often playing tournaments, sometimes for 12 days at a time. I catch up with Gusztav every day on Skype and email but even though I miss them, I don't make a point of ringing the children every night.
I am most challenged by playing cash games against the world's top players. These games force me to think several moves in advance, like in a game of chess. And though I also find tournaments fun to play, they just don't provide the constant brain buzz that cash game players crave.
For 'Inhuman,' it's a 'chess game' series. You have a lot of pieces moving different ways at once, and it's about what they do on their own and what happens when they collide into one another. It's about long-range planning, new character creation, and trying to really build things.
About the only time our gut can truly outperform our reason is if we truly have developed a kind of informed intuition. So that means the chess master or someone who has really thought about it and given themselves feedback on a particular activity for at least 10,000 hours or more.
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.
The proponents of Steinitz' theory - Tarrasch and his supporters - tried to express Steinitz' teaching in the form of laconic rules, and as often happens in such cases, they went too far. The laconic tended to become dogmatic, and chess began to lose its freshness, originality and charm.
There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.
I'm attracted to things that are in direct opposition to something that I've just done. It's not like I'm trying to make the right chess move. It's more just that personal thing where you get connected to something for so long and then you want to do something that's in opposition to that.
There are no hopeless positions; there are only inferior positions that can be saved. There are no drawn positions; there are only equal ones in which you can play for a win. But at the same time, don't forget that there is no such thing as a won position in which it is impossible to lose.
My parents were very supportive of my chess. When I got home after a game of chess, having missed school or something, they always made me feel very welcome; I didn't feel guilty at all about pursuing chess with such fervour. They never, for instance, perceived sports as a rival to academics.
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.
When we were playing chess in the house, she would never let me win until I was good enough to beat her. It was always a competition. She was also always there for me. She was a very caring, loving mom, and the sacrifices she made to allow me to get to where I am today, I'll be forever in debt.
I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame.
The concept of 'talent' is formed under completely abstract criteria, having nothing in common with reality. But the reality is such that I don't understand chess as a whole. But then again no one understands chess in its entirety. Perhaps talent is something else, in chess it is conditionality.
I went through a few phases of finding myself: I dabbled in musical theater, chess club, dance troupe, splatter-painting, school mascot (go Wildcats), babysitter, photojournalist, drill team girl, emo kid - and not one of them defined me, but every single one will always play a part in who I am.
Botvinnik's right! When he says such things, then he's right. Usually, I prefer not to study chess but to play it. For me chess is more an art than a science. It's been said that Alekhine and I played similar chess, except that he studied more. Yes, perhaps, but I have to say that he played, too.