Playing Chess Quotes

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

To play for a draw (at any rate with White) is to some degree a crime against chess.

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

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

The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure.

You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela.

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.

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.

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

Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.

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.

The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly ten years, if you think about four hours a day.

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

Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival.

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.

When you don't know what to play, wait for an idea to come into your opponent's mind. You may be sure that idea will be wrong

Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty

Let the perfectionist play postal.

Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don't have this when you play a computer. I can't confuse it

Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation

I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings

One doesn't have to play well, it's enough to play better than your opponent

All I want to do, ever, is play chess.

When you see a good move, look for a better one.

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.

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

Any experienced player knows how a change in the character of the play influences your psychological mood.

The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others.

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

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.

By playing at Chess then, we may learn... First: Foresight. Second: Circumspection. Third: Caution.

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.

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

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.

Morphy gained most of his wins by playing directly and simply, and it is simple and logical method that constitutes the true brilliance of his play, if it is considered from the viewpoint of the great masters.

Play on both sides of the board is my favourite strategy.

Chess is everything: art, science, and sport.

I won't play with you anymore. You have insulted my friend -when an opponent cursed himself for a blunder

You know, also I, you know, I was on those birth control pills and my breasts were like, they hurt... and, you know, it was like they blew up like. You know, they wouldn't fit into any of my dresses. I had to quit taking those birth control pills... This was like - I mean they were like, I thought they should be photographed really... So they were, for immortality. (On being photographed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp at Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art.)

Every Chess master was once a beginner

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.

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.

I was a professional chess player in Romania, but only a small-time master. When I came to France, I continued playing chess for many years: I played tournaments in numerous countries with mixed results. I wrote and published a book - La Défense Alekhine and translated two others from Russian. I taught chess in schools; I earned more money through chess than through literature.

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.

There are two classes of men; those who are content to yield to circumstances and who play whist; those who aim to control circumstances, and who play Chess

By playing at Chess then, we may learn: First: Foresight... Second: Circumspection... Third: Caution...And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favorable chance, and that of persevering in the secrets of resources

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

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

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.