Chess Quotes

What is chess?

• Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders - Savielly Tartakower
• Chess is a beautiful mistress. - Larsen
• Chess is life - Bobby Fischer
• Chess is like life - Boris Spassky
• Chess is everything - art, science, and sport. - Karpov
• Chess is 99 percent tactics. - Teichmann
• Chess is really 99 percent calculation - Soltis
• Chess is mental torture. - Kasparov
• Chess is ruthless: you've got to be prepared to kill people. - Nigel Short
• Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe - Indian proverb
• Chess is as much a mystery as women - Purdy

Reflections

• Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy. - Tarrasch
• You cannot play at chess if you are kind-hearted. - French Proverb
• Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all. - Fischer
• Every chess master was once a beginner. - Chernev
• Life is too short for chess. - Byron
• A good player is always lucky. - Capablanca
• A chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second when you believe you have an advantage, and the third... when you know you're going to lose! - Tartakower
• When the chess game is over, the pawn and the king go back to the same box - Irish saying contributed by Etienne Goldstein

General Tips

• When you see a good move wait - look for a better one. -  Emanuel Lasker
• Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine. - Spielmann
• All that matters on the chessboard is good moves. - Bobby Fischer
• The pawns are the soul of chess. - Philidor

Tactics

• The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made. - Tartakover
• No price is too great for the scalp of the enemy King. - Koblentz
• The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. - Tartakover
• A man surprised is half beaten. - Proverb
• Chess is 99 percent tactics. - Teichmann
• There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine. - Tal
• The defensive power of a pinned piece is only imaginary. - Nimzovich
• The pin is mightier than the sword. - Reinfeld
• The combination player thinks forward; he starts from the given position, and tries the forceful moves in his mind. - Emanuel Lasker
• Discovered check is the dive-bomber of the chessboard. - Fine
• If the student forces himself to examine all moves that smite, however absurd they may look at first glance, he is on the way to becoming a master of tactics. - Purdy
• The tactician knows what to do when there is something to do; whereas the strategian knows what to do when there is nothing to do. - Gerald Abrahams
• Examine moves that smite! A good eye for smites is far more important than a knowledge of strategical principles. - Purdy
• The scheme of a game is played on positional lines; the decision of it, as a rule, is effected by combinations. - Reti
• In the perfect chess combination as in a first-rate short story, the whole plot and counter-plot should lead up to a striking finale, the interest not being allayed until the very last moment. - Yates and Winter
• A thorough understanding of the typical mating continuations makes the most complicated sacrificial combinations leading up to them not only not difficult, but almost a matter of course. - Tarrasch
• It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men. - Tartakover

Middlegame The middlegame I repeat is chess itself; chess with all its possibilities, its attacks, defences, sacrifices, etc. - Znosko-Borovsky Before the endgame, the gods have placed the middlegame. - Tarrasch

Endgame Every pawn is a potential Queen. - Mason The Passed Pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient. - Nimzovich A Passed Pawn increases in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes. - Capablanca Any material change in a position must come about by mate, a capture, or a Pawn -promotion. - Purdy

Planning Even a poor plan is better than no plan at all. - Mikhail Chigorin It is not a move, even the best move, that you must seek, but a realisable plan. - Znosko-Borovsky Analysis Methodical thinking is of more use in chess than inspiration. - Purdy Chess is the art of analysis. - Botvinnik Chess mastery essentially consists of analysing chess positions accurately. - Botvinnik Half the variations which are calculated in a tournament game turn out to be completely superfluous. Unfortunately, no one knows in advance which half - Jan Tinman