chess-olympiad-competitors

"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."

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

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

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

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I have stated the research problem and the subsequent research question and goals."

"A literature review is included where information with regards to drug abuse, exercise psychology and the use of chess in various contexts is provided."

"The final push to write my book came as I needed to find a way to offer sport psychology to children. My goal is to make sport psychology accessible to as many children as possible."

"In this research report I introduced Stabilis Treatment Centre by exploring and providing an overview of their existing programmes."

"Sport participation is a lifelong pursuit for many people, especially with people becoming more active and appreciating the value of being fit and healthy."

"believe good mental preparation starts with our youth and that it is important for them to learn about mental skills."

"As a competitive athlete I know full well the highs and lows of winning and losing. Athletes experience sport participation on different levels."

"Just without all the frills and complicated academic jargon."

"I want to win every opponent lined against me and this was one driving factor that explains how I won it."

"I am happy to have won the championship. Many people have improved, the last time I played here there were not many woman candidate masters, today we have about three kids with those titles and I was really impressed with the way they played."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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”"

"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”."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"Age is part of it. For instance, I recognise that [Carlsen] is going to do certain things because he's 22 and there are certain things I can do because I'm 43."

"I felt I had I worked hard enough and I felt confident I had done the right kind of work and the right amount of work. But when you talk of preparations, the measure of success is whether it works or not. In that area, I failed completely. I did not stay the course. When you hit the right spot, the sweet spot, it feels great and you feel the preparations have been ideal, but I never got there."

"To become a world chess champion."

"The fact is he outplayed me. He just proved to be stronger."

"I can relate to many of the emotions they describe...But personally I just like to get on with the job of playing chess. I understand that if I win, I'm probably crushing my opponent's ego but it's not like I do that with great satisfaction. So I don't really look for conflict around the game … It's true that someone like Kasparov has this sense of history, and I'm talking world history rather than chess history. He has a sense of himself being in it, which, for me, is very hard to understand or even relate to in any way."

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

"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."

"He must make sure Magnus is out of his comfort zone, he needs to direct the positions. It needs to be a mess. He needs to get Magnus into a brawl."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."