” (about Lasker) For me, this personality, notwithstanding his fundamentally optimistic attitude, had a tragic note. The enormous mental resilience, without which no chess player can exist, was so much taken up by chess that he could never free his mind of this game, even when he was occupied by philosophical and humanitarian questions.”
Albert Einstein
Carlsen is paying far less attention to opening theory than his rivals, he is happy to go down paths that may offer no advantage yet have the benefit of dragging opponents out of their “openings book”. Once beyond the reaches of computer-aided openings, Carlsen starts to turn the screw.
Judith Polgar FT, 2014
When Korchnoi was living in the USSR I called him ‘hero of socialist labour’; when he moved to the West I renamed him ‘hero of capitalist labour’!
Boris Spassky
First of all, I am a mother, and only then a chessplayer
Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant 2009
Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another.
Marcel Duchamp
