chess-grandmasters

"You must take your opponent into a deep, dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."

"Every game for him was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem."

"Misha was so ill-equipped for living... When he travelled to a tournament, he couldn't even pack his own suitcase... He didn't even know how to turn on the gas for cooking. If I had a headache, and there happened to be no one home but him, he would fall into a panic: "How do I make a hot-water bottle?" And when I got behind the wheel of a car, he would look at me as though I were a visitor from another planet. Of course, if he had made some effort, he could have learned all of this. But it was all boring to him. He just didn't need to. A lot of people have said that if Tal had looked after his health, if he hadn't led such a dissolute life... and so forth. But with people like Tal, the idea of "if only" is just absurd. He wouldn't have been Tal then."

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

"Late in his career, Tal did win another, albeit unofficial world championship: the 1988 World Blitz Championship in St. John, Canada. The 32-player field included Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and numerous other greats. Pleasantly fortified with a few drinks, Tal played nervelessly at age 51. "I did not take the tournament too seriously," he later said. "I walked around the pressroom, smoked a few cigarettes and sacrificed some pieces." Then he added, "I am waiting until next year when I can become a new ex-world champion.""

"The chess story of Mikhail Tal is about the act itself of straining against the leash of limited human imagination to create mammoth combinations on the chessboard. During his games, Tal wished to go where no chess player had ever gone before, choosing the middlegame as his metier for creative expression. He burned energy profligately. A chain-smoker and a heavy drinker, Tal pulsated nervous energy, pacing like a caged tiger in between moves. And as a young man with those famous fierce, hooded eyes and that imposing hooked nose, he bulldozed all before him."

"Some years ago I was playing in the Hastings tournament with Mikhail Tal. One evening, he picked up an English newspaper, casually glanced at the chess column and started laughing. What had attracted his attention was the position given for readers to solve: it was from his own game against Platonov played at Dubna in 1973. The amusement, however, was caused by the set of par solving times appended in order to rate one’s achievement in finding the answer. These began at 20 seconds, indicating grandmaster strength, then proceeded via master, county player and club player to stop at "average" – five minutes. "That’s very funny", said Tal. "I spent 15 minutes looking at the position before I saw it, and my opponent didn’t see it at all.""

"I can't imagine him without a cigarette in his mouth - he'd smoke five packs a game! He never needed a lighter - he'd finish one, and light the next one from it."

"When one of us first plays chess, he is like a man who has already caught a dose of microbes of, say, Hong Kong flu. Such a man walks along the street, and he does not yet know that he is ill. He is healthy, he feels fine, but the microbes are doing their work."

"There are two kinds of sacrifices: correct ones, and mine."

"Later, I began to succeed in decisive games, perhaps because I realised a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but so was my opponent."

"He was an unusual man. I miss him terribly. Sometimes I think that Misha flew in from another planet - just to play chess, and then fly home."

"Chess Life: Let’s begin by talking about your return to the Candidates tournament. What does it mean to you at this point in your career to be a Candidate once more? Hikaru Nakamura: First and foremost, it comes as a very pleasant surprise. It was not really an objective of mine when I chose to play in the (2022) FIDE Grand Prix. I was very fortunate to be granted a wild card by the FIDE president, Arkady Dvorkovich. I went into the event wanting to see if I could still cut it against the best players in the world. As most people know, I’ve been streaming a lot over the last couple of years. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I still feel I am quite competitive [with the top players]. I wanted to see how it would go, but there were really no illusions — or delusions, you could say — of qualifying for the Candidates for me.Even after the first event, which I did win, it [qualifying] was not anything that I was thinking about in a serious way. Then in the second event, probably one of the worst possible results [from my perspective] occurred with [GM] Richard Rapport winning, and [GM] Maxime [Vachier-Lagrave] and [GM] Anish [Giri] having fairly... decent results.Before the third event started, I knew the groups weren’t very favorable with [GM] Levon [Aronian] being in mine. I never really was thinking about [qualifying] until I won this game against Levon in the fourth round of the third FIDE Grand Prix. Prior to that, I knew there were chances. Everyone [was] talking about it when I’m streaming and so forth, but it really wasn’t something that I was thinking about."

"The chess world is officially a joke. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE IN HISTORY. I can’t believe that the official body of chess is being controlled by a singular player FOR THE 2ND TIME THIS WEEK. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE WORLD CHAMPION!"

"I have never cheated in an over-the-board game. And other than when I was 12 years old I have never cheated in a tournament with prize money. I decided the only way to make up for my mistake was to prove that I could win over the board events. That has been my mission. And that is why I have lived in a suitcase and played 260 games in one year, trained for 12 hours a day, because I have something to prove."

"Chess speaks for itself."

"How. Am I. This! Fucking! Good?! Holy shit! I am the fucking best!"

"My entire life and career have been destroyed. I'll have to live with the fact that every conversation I have about chess, we'll eventually discuss anal beads."

"No matter the obstacles that I will face, no matter how much you try to blacklist me, no matter what you do to try to ruin my career or slander my reputation—these difficult times... have only invigorated me even more to reach the top of chess. There will be a day when I will be the best chess player in the world."

"Mistakes are often made when a player persists in his delusions."

"You probably think that Russia is a bad country and we are bad people. But there is a large number of people who share the same values as you do in Europe. When the military actions started, it felt crazy, it was hard to believe. We were just shocked."

"I think Sergey went over the top in quite a few of his statements. He’s definitely entitled to an opinion, but some of his tweets were in very poor taste."

"Sergey Karjakin is found guilty of breach of article 2.2.10 of the FIDE Code of Ethics, and is sanctioned to a worldwide ban of six months from participating as a player in any FIDE rated chess competition, taking effect from the date of this decision, 21 March 2022."

"I saw what he’s been writing on Twitter — I have nothing to say against Sergey, but I think he’s lost his mind in the last couple of months. [...] This is not just about a political opinion, but it is about the killing of innocent civilians, innocent Ukrainians."

"Many people ask if I regret my public support of the special operation? After all, I have already lost invitations to Western tournaments and may lose an invitation to the candidates tournament. My answer is simple. I am on the side of Russia and my President. No matter what happens, I will support my country in any situation without thinking for a second!"

"I wanted to say it was a good fake, but no. It was a bad fake."

"A lot of Russians who previously supported Putin openly or did not say anything about it, chose to turn around and are now saying that Putin went too far. Karjakin has chosen the other way. He has increased his support for Putin. This type of attitude cannot be accepted."

"The only way to change anything in Russia is a revolution."

"There are many people who criticize Putin and are still free. I don't really see myself in trouble. I don't insult my country. I just think we made a very big mistake. If that gets me in trouble, so be it."

"It can't get any worse for Russia. We can't make up for it. What’s going on is a disaster. The consequences will be long and unpleasant, no matter where the conflict will go. I hope it will end as soon as possible."

"I find it hard to think about my future in chess. Nuclear war could break out. I could miss the end of the world while analyzing the Italian opening."

"When you lose, you really feel a sense of self … You actually feel that you are being taken apart, rather than just your pieces."

"What happens to you at the board begins to feel like it's happening to you in person."

"A [world title] match has that feeling much more strongly because it's the same guy doing it over and over and over … When you play a single person, it becomes narrower because you are so focused on each other. It is a lot more personal."

"My dream is chess played in every school in India. The Soviets would include a chessboard along with the bride’s trousseau to ensure that the children born of that marriage knew the rules of chess."

"When I started out, Indians did not have much interest in chess…Now India seems to spawn new chess academies every day."

"I started at the age of six. My elder brother and sister were dabbling a bit, and then I went to my mother and pestered her to teach me as well."

"You would have to sit at the board and sweat and feel the fear of defeat or the nearness of victory to understand what goes through a player's head … If you think it's that easy, switch off the computer and try and figure out a few moves on your own."

"I learned to play fast without agonizing about strategy or overanalyzing individual moves"

"One of the things I bring to my play is my Indian identity – my ability to shrug off a loss as destiny and hope for better tomorrow. I am often described as a “natural” or “intuitive player”."

"I have what I think is an extremely Indian relationship with God....In Moscow before the tie breaker of the World Championship in May 2012, I again entreated God:Just stay on my side of the board."

"...in 2000, when I defeated Alexei Shirov at the World Chess Championship in Teheran to become the first Indian ever to win the title."

"Since the 1990s technology has taken some of the sheen off the Russian trainers and their methods."

"When I first visited Moscow in the late 1980s, I was so intimidated. I thought I could be checkmated by every cabdriver."

"As a young kid sprouting a wispy moustache, I was sometimes dismissed by the Russians as an upstart. I have been referred to even as a “coffeehouse player”"

"Anything unusual that you can produce has quadruple, quintuple the value, precisely because your opponent is likely to do the predictable stuff, which is on a computer."

"Being the undisputed world champion is a relief. We instituted a unified chess title, I am the absolute world champion."

"It's going to be important for him to start ducking and weaving and playing different positions."

"But perhaps they were thrown off by my playing style, which was intuitive-and perhaps a little influenced by Vodka. I ran away with the match early. The result was overwhelmingly in my favour: four wins, five draws and only one loss –an annihilation. The Russians were stunned . I was pretty surprised myself."

"To become a world chess champion."