Chess Quotes

‘A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.’ – Emo Philips

‘These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.’ – Kobe Bryant

‘Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.’ – Jerry Seinfeld

‘Life is a chess match. Every decision that you make has a consequence to it.’ – P.K. Subban

‘Critical thinking is the most important factor with chess. As it is in life, you need to think before you make decisions.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘There’s a great phrase, written in the ’70s: ‘The definition of today’s AI is a machine that can make a perfect chess move while the room is on fire.’ It really speaks to the limitations of AI. In the next wave of AI research, if we want to make more helpful and useful machines, we’ve got to bring back the contextual understanding.’ – Fei-Fei Li

‘You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.’ – Stanley Kubrick

‘I consider myself to be a genius who happens to play chess.’ – Bobby Fischer

‘In life, as in chess, forethought wins.’ – Charles Buxton

‘I think a gentleman is someone who holds the comfort of other people above their own. The instinct to do that is inside every good man, I believe. The rules about opening doors and buying dinner and all of that other ‘gentleman’ stuff is a chess game, especially these days.’ – Anna Kendrick

‘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.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘I failed to make the chess team because of my height.’ – Woody Allen

‘Fencing is a game of living chess, a match where reflexes only work in combination with intent, and mind and body must work together at every moment.’ – V. E. Schwab

‘A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it’s not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It’s more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.’ – Madeleine Albright

‘Chess is ruthless: you’ve got to be prepared to kill people.’ – Nigel Short

‘Poor people are too stupid to know they’re just chess pieces in a game.’ – Charles Barkley

‘I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.’ – Soren Kierkegaard

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

‘The great thing about chess is it’s a game for oneself. You don’t work on what you can’t control, you just work on yourself. And I think if more people did that, we’d all be a lot better off.’ – Daniel Naroditsky

‘In chess you try to do your best, but there are instances where you make mistakes or you try and take risks that you shouldn’t. And I think losing games is a good thing, because you learn more from when you lose than when you win.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘Chess is intellectual gymnastics.’ – Wilhelm Steinitz

‘Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.’ – Richard Dawkins

‘Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.’ – Terry Pratchett

‘Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.’ – David Hockney

‘Chess is a game where all different sorts of people can come together, not a game in which people are divided because of their religion or country of origin.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘Women, by their nature, are not exceptional chess players: they are not great fighters.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art – and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.’ – Marcel Duchamp

‘Each outing is its own game. You roll on your game plan. It is a different chess match each time you go out there. I just try to be prepared.’ – Jason Hammel

‘In boxing you create a strategy to beat each new opponent, it’s just like chess.’ – Lennox Lewis

‘Whoever sees no other aim in the game than that of giving checkmate to one’s opponent will never become a good Chess player.’ – Max Euwe

‘Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win – preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.’ – John Rhys-Davies

‘I learned to play chess at a young age, and I think that’s where learning to plan things out and put things in position, that was the best thing for me.’ – Jaylen Brown

‘The chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time.’ – Marilyn vos Savant

‘Boxing is like chess. You encourage your opponent to make mistakes so you can capitalise on it. People think you get in the ring and see the red mist, but it’s not about aggression. Avoiding getting knocked out is tactical.’ – Nicola Adams

‘The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility – those are the reasons that chess matches are won or lost.’ – Viktor Korchnoi

‘Life is very much about making the best decisions you can. So I think chess is very valuable.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘I am convinced, the way one plays chess always reflects the player’s personality. If something defines his character, then it will also define his way of playing.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘There’s just a lot of really great life lessons that you can take out of chess… I think that’s one of my favorite parts about it is it’s very competitive, but it’s totally cerebral.’ – Aaron Gordon

‘Once you’re a chess player, you spend a lot of time thinking about the game and you can’t get it completely out of your head.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘My problem with chess was that all my pieces wanted to end the game as soon as possible.’ – Dave Barry

‘Chess is mental torture.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There’s an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself – and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame.’ – Steve Carell

‘Life’s too short for chess.’ – Henry James Byron

‘Many leaders are tempted to lead like a chess master, striving to control every move, when they should be leading like gardeners, creating and maintaining a viable ecosystem in which the organization operates.’ – Stanley A. McChrystal

‘One of the things that first attracted me to chess is that it brings you into contact with intelligent, civilized people – men of the stature of Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, who was my part-time coach.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘I believe that true beauty of chess is more than enough to satisfy all possible demands.’ – Alexander Alekhine

‘Chess: It’s like alcohol. It’s a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online.’ – Charles Krauthammer

‘Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they’ve beaten our top human chess champions.’ – Neil deGrasse Tyson

‘In chess, you should be as cool as a cucumber.’ – Yuliya Snigir

‘There is technology where you can watch the match live online and also on TV. If people understood the game, I’m sure we would have a lot of chess fans by now.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.’ – Raymond Chandler

‘Football is a bit like chess: it’s not just the piece being moved that matters; it’s also the effect that move has on all the other pieces.’ – Mal Peet

‘In my view, the fact that computers caught up to humans and completely dominate humans in chess and some other domains already, that says there’s evidence that, yes, in principle, they can be better programmers than humans.’ – Jaan Tallinn

‘Whoever called snooker ‘chess with balls’ was rude, but right.’ – Clive James

‘For Germany, the war was like an end game in chess in which she possessed one castle less than her adversary. The loss of the war was as certain as the loss of an end game under these conditions.’ – Werner Heisenberg

‘All I want to do, ever, is play chess.’ – Bobby Fischer

‘I’ve never been much of a computer guy at least in terms of playing with computers. Actually until I was about 11 I didn’t use a computer for preparing for games at all. I was playing a bit online, was using the chess club mainly. Now, obviously, the computer is an important tool for me preparing for my games.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘Chess was natural for me; I was extremely successful.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘Football is a chess game to me. If you move your pawn against my bishop, I’ll counter that move to beat you. Football is the same way. I study so much film that I know exactly what teams are going to do. I love knowing what a offense is going to run and stuffing that play.’ – Junior Seau

‘Chess is not only knowledge and logic.’ – Alexander Alekhine

‘Top players are privileged in the chess world.’ – Anish Giri

‘A powerful studio boss doesn’t want to be bested by a woman, even in chess. And a successful agent steps on a lot of toes. You lose actors jobs so you can get them for your own clients.’ – Sue Mengers

‘I get more upset at losing at other things than chess. I always get upset when I lose at Monopoly.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘Chess is not for timid souls.’ – Wilhelm Steinitz

‘Among a great many other things that chess teaches you is to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good. It trains you to think before grabbing and to think just as objectively when you’re in trouble.’ – Stanley Kubrick

‘Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another.’ – Marcel Duchamp

‘I want to serve chess through games, books that are works of art. I would like to bring the game closer to many people all over the world.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘I had a lot of fun playing football and basketball, but deep down, the chess match or cat-and-mouse game between the pitcher and batter in baseball really drew me in. It’s a thinking man’s game, and for me, nothing can compare to that.’ – Aaron Judge

‘In chess, computers show that what we call ‘strategy’ is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.’ – Tyler Cowen

‘I play football like chess. You have to think a lot and anticipate what could happen after you make your move.’ – Henrikh Mkhitaryan

‘You bring to chess facets of your personality and what you are. I have interests other than chess, like music and world and current affairs. I also have many friends around the world with whom I like to keep in touch.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘Chess and me, it’s hard to take them apart. It’s like my alter ego.’ – Bobby Fischer

‘I’m attracted to things that are in direct opposition to something that I’ve just done. It’s not like I’m trying to make the right chess move. It’s more just that personal thing where you get connected to something for so long and then you want to do something that’s in opposition to that.’ – Anna Kendrick

‘When I speak of the beauty of a game of chess, then naturally this is subjective. Beauty can be found in a very technical, mathematical game for example. That is the beauty of clarity.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘If you look at the democratic process as a game of chess, there have to be many, many moves before you get to checkmate. And simply because you do not make any checkmate in three moves does not mean it’s stalemate. There’s a vast difference between no checkmate and stalemate. This is what the democratic process is like.’ – Aung San Suu Kyi

‘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.’ – Dorothy Dunnett

‘A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn’t geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves. It’s a drawing; it’s a mechanical reality.’ – Marcel Duchamp

‘I stole a piece of the chess set on the first film. I took a piece of the treasure out of Bellatrix’s vault on this film. And I’ve taken my wand and I’ve got my cloak.’ – Emma Watson

‘I think for me the main goal that I have, or at least what I really aspire to, is to raise the level of chess.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.’ – Steve Sabol

‘In the barber shop you start playing checkers, and eventually you want to learn how to play chess. The pieces look a little more interesting. You’re doing more things. I’m pretty good at it.’ – O. J. Mayo

‘In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night.’ – Bruno Schulz

‘Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course, chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have a very strong nervous system, and then you must be well prepared; you must be able to work a lot.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘My father and mother are exceptional pedagogues who can motivate and tell it from all different angles. Later, chess for me became a sport, an art, a science, everything together. I was very focused on chess, and happy with that world.’ – Judit Polgar

‘I think there’s a misconception that chess players are all total nerds. Well, I guess they are.’ – Daniel Naroditsky

‘The Soviet Union was an exception, but even there chess players were not rich. Only Fischer changed that.’ – Boris Spassky

‘In poker, you want to play the weaker guys. In chess, it’s the opposite.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘My biggest competitor was my mum. I used to try to beat her at Chinese chequers, chess, carrom, volleyball, badminton, football, wrestling.’ – Sunil Chhetri

‘Right now I’m really happy with how things are going with my chess career, so I’m not thinking of doing anything else.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘A woman can beat any man; it’s difficult to imagine another kind of sport where a woman can beat a man. That’s why I like chess.’ – Alexandra Kosteniuk

‘She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces, sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked hungry for the kiss which they invited.’ – Kate Chopin

‘Chess is life.’ – Bobby Fischer

‘I attend to my fitness. I go the gym every day and try to maintain my physical fitness; without that, it is tough to take challenges on the chess board.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘Anti-submarine warfare is the military version of chess. You must work out what the enemy is going to do before they even think of it.’ – Sarah West

‘The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You’re a pawn in somebody else’s chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that’s very thrilling.’ – Amber Benson

‘Some people see life as a game of chess, while others prefer to see it as a game of cricket; but the longer I live, the more I think of it as a game of Consequences.’ – Craig Brown

‘I don’t think I’m a workaholic. Every weekend, I invite my colleagues and friends to my home to play cards. And people, my neighbors, are always surprised because I live on the second floor apartment, and there are usually 40 pairs of shoes in front of my gate, and people play cards inside and play chess. We have a lot of fun.’ – Jack Ma

‘The image that everyone has of a chess player is not necessarily positive. I think it’s partly due to Bobby Fischer – his rise to fame and then his descent into madness. That left a lot of people with negative stereotypes, of nerds who aren’t interesting.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘Even though chess isn’t the toughest thing that computers will tackle for centuries, it stood as a handy symbol for human intelligence. No matter what human-like feat computers perform in the future, the Deep Blue match demands an indelible dot on all timelines of AI progress.’ – Steven Levy

‘The development of beauty in chess never depends on you alone. No matter how much imagination and creativity you invest, you still do not create beauty. Your opponent must react at the same highest level.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘Chess is a great game. It’s a lot of fun, but sometimes you wonder what else is out there.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘If the media didn’t know I played chess, there’d be no angle on me at all.’ – Lennox Lewis

‘Al Sharpton is not important. He’s nothing more than a black pawn in a very sophisticated white economic chess game.’ – Byron Allen

‘I honestly don’t read that much. Obviously I read chess books – in terms of favorites, Kasparov’s ‘My Great Predecessors’ is pretty good.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘If you never give up and you strive hard and focus on every move like a chess game, you will make it. I believe that wholeheartedly.’ – Coy Bowles

‘I felt that chess… is a science in the form of a game… I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist.’ – Bobby Fischer

‘Chess demolishes differences. It’s a language of different generations.’ – Judit Polgar

‘My mother is Russian and father Nepalese, so we always had a chess board at home. Chess is part of the culture in both Russia and Nepal.’ – Anish Giri

‘I started by just sitting by the chessboard exploring things. I didn’t even have books at first, and I just played by myself. I learnt a lot from that, and I feel that it is a big reason why I now have a good intuitive understanding of chess.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘It’s easy for me to get along with chess players. Even though we are all very different, we have chess in common.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘It’s quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.’ – Nicolas Chamfort

‘I’m like Bush, I see the world more like checkers than chess.’ – Dennis Miller

‘Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.’ – Felix Frankfurter

‘My dad sacrificed many things in life for me. He abandoned a very promising and lucrative career of an army officer just so that he could continue helping me with my chess and accompanying me to tournaments.’ – Alexandra Kosteniuk

‘Life’s to short for chess.’ – Henry James Byron

‘Chess is a sport. The main object in the game of chess remains the achievement of victory.’ – Max Euwe

‘Every time I win a tournament I have to think that there is something wrong with modern chess.’ – Viktor Korchnoi

‘Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.’ – Boris Spassky

‘Chess for me is not a game, but an art. Yes, and I take upon myself all those responsibilities which an art imposes on its adherents.’ – Alexander Alekhine

‘Chess first of all teaches you to be objective.’ – Alexander Alekhine

‘Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.’ – Wilhelm Steinitz

‘Far be it from me to force anyone into either chess or dressage, but if you choose to do so yourself, in my opinion there is only one way: follow the rules.’ – Lars von Trier

‘I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future.’ – Maurice Ashley

‘I think that by and large chess players have been very kind. Like I said there have been a few incidents, but they certainly didn’t serve to bring me down any.’ – Maurice Ashley

‘I learned that fighting on the chess board could also have an impact on the political climate in the country.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘I may play some exhibition games so I don’t want to quit the game of chess completely. I just decided and it’s a firm decision not to play competitive chess anymore.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘Theses officers were good friends, so it must have been a terrible argument, because the one who played chess with my father was so angry that he walked over to the dentist’s house and got the dentist out of bed and shot him.’ – Bruno Schulz

‘My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.’ – Eric Allin Cornell

‘Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school’s DEC mainframe in the language Basic.’ – Eric Allin Cornell

‘Never having played Chess before, it was most interesting to be playing the game with no pieces in front of me. But I still knew how to stroke my hair when I won.’ – Peter Mayhew

‘You all know that each title in the Chronicles has a chess theme; that’s partly because of the overall design of the Chronicles themselves – the game of chess as an analogue of the game of life.’ – Dorothy Dunnett

‘The ability to get ahead in an organization is simply another talent, like the ability to play chess, paint pictures, do coronary bypass operations or pick pockets.’ – Robert Shea

‘It’s less about the physical training, in the end, than it is about the mental preparation: boxing is a chess game. You have to be skilled enough and have trained hard enough to know how many different ways you can counterattack in any situation, at any moment.’ – Jimmy Smits

‘Leonard Chess passed, and that was the end of the Chess label for that time.’ – Solomon Burke

‘Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.’ – Donald E. Westlake

‘Ensemble is hard to do. It’s like 3-D chess.’ – Eric Bogosian

‘I play chess badly and I’ve been beaten by my 10-year old son.’ – John Turturro

‘Life is not always like chess. Just because you have the king surrounded, don’t think he is not capable of hurting you.’ – Ron Livingston

‘If I’m home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.’ – Rex Stout

‘Chess is an infinitely complex game, which one can play in infinitely numerous and varied ways.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘For me art and chess are closely related, both are forms in which the self finds beauty and expression.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘For us chess players the language of artist is something natural.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘In chess one cannot control everything. Sometimes a game takes an unexpected turn, in which beauty begins to emerge. Both players are always instrumental in this.’ – Vladimir Kramnik

‘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.’ – Douglass North

‘After that, Kasparov stepped back from chess which is, and I want this to be clear, not good for chess in general at all. As a whole, the current situation in the chess world leaves a lot to be desired.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘Chess is my life, but my life is not chess.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘I am thinking about chess in schools in particular. In the USA more than 3200 children competed in an event.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘I still love to play chess. So I do not even spend a minute on the possibility to step back.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘In Kansas I have a chess school.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘No, no, it is obvious that the ECU should act as a close alliance for the benefit of chess.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘I also follow chess on the Internet, where Kasparov’s site is very interesting.’ – Boris Spassky

‘I try to help developing junior chess. When I lived in USSR, I got a lot of free help from very good coaches – now I am trying to repay that debt.’ – Boris Spassky

‘In my country, at that time, being a champion of chess was like being a King. At that time I was a King – and when you are King you feel a lot of responsibility, but there is nobody there to help you.’ – Boris Spassky

‘Nowadays the dynamic element is more important in chess – players more often sacrifice material to obtain dynamic compensation.’ – Boris Spassky

‘Nowadays there is more dynamism in chess, modern players like to take the initiative. Usually they are poor defenders though.’ – Boris Spassky

‘Nowadays young people have great choice of occupations, hobbies, etc, so chess is experiencing difficulties because of the high competition. Now it’s hard to make living in chess, so our profession does attract young people.’ – Boris Spassky

‘On the other hand, chess is a mass sport now and for chess organisers shorter time control is obviously more attractive. But I think that this control does not suit World Championship matches.’ – Boris Spassky

‘The place of chess in the society is closely related to the attitude of young people towards our game.’ – Boris Spassky

‘We can compare classical chess and rapid chess with theatre and cinema – some actors don’t like the latter and prefer to work in the theatre.’ – Boris Spassky

‘There is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman.’ – Charles Dudley Warner

‘I’d like to go away for six months and learn to kiteboard and windsurf. I love pinochle, I love chess and I love windsurfing.’ – Christopher Meloni

‘There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.’ – Rainn Wilson

‘What do I do when we’re not taping? Sit in a dark room and refine my plans for someday ruling Earth from a blimp. And chess.’ – Ryan Stiles

‘Sexiness, particularly in movies, is the chess game in the ‘Thomas Crown Affair’. It’s, it’s, I don’t know, but Faye Dunaway comes up a lot in that thinking. It’s the subtlety of sexiness. The moment you try to be sexy, then it’s not.’ – Daniel Craig

‘The pitcher setting up the batter. It’s chess, and you play with it.’ – Al Leiter

‘Pitches are like pages of a book; they’re so important. The chess game; how I set you up early, and how I’ll do it differently later.’ – Al Leiter

‘If people will be interested in me, they will be interested in chess also.’ – Alexandra Kosteniuk

‘It’s a shame to be the face of chess and to play chess badly.’ – Alexandra Kosteniuk

‘Chess is changing. I hope chess is getting more popular, more spectacular.’ – Alexandra Kosteniuk

‘I’ll always take Scrabble and chess if I’m going filming. But I do have the Scrabble dictionary, which can be infuriating for other players.’ – Saffron Burrows

‘I was a terrible father. The most I ever did for my children was to teach them chess. At least they got that.’ – David Bailey

‘I don’t play chess with my life, ya’ know.’ – Russell Crowe

‘Maybe if I didn’t have the talent in chess I’d find the talent in something else. The only thing I know is that I have talent in chess, and I’m satisfied with that.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘I was lucky enough to attend schools where they were understanding about when I needed to go abroad to play chess. Of course, socially it is important to go to school and interact with people your own age.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘Chess only appeals to quite a small minority. It does not have the cachet of a mainstream popular sport.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘My father, a fine chess player himself, has been a massive influence throughout my life.’ – Magnus Carlsen

‘I play a lot of chess. I probably played 200 games while we were making ‘Andromeda.” – Ricky Schroder

‘Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, ‘Chess is life.’ I would say, ‘Pi is life.” – Daniel Tammet

‘I suspect millions of people from my generation probably have comparable stories to tell: if not of sports simulations then of Dungeons & Dragons, or the geopolitical strategy of games like Diplomacy, a kind of chess superimposed onto actual history.’ – Steven Johnson

‘When I was young, my favorite picture book was ‘Fletcher and Zenobia,’ written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It’s long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children’s book for the times.’ – Rick Riordan

‘I love speculating about solutions to problems in mathematics. I have no interest whatever in sudoku. But I do look at chess and bridge problems in newspapers. I find that relaxing.’ – Vikram Seth

‘The truth is that throughout my careers in both chess and the martial arts, I often knew that my rivals were more naturally gifted than me – either with their mental machines or their bodies. But I have believed in my training, my approach to learning, and my ability to rise to the challenge under pressure.’ – Joshua Waitzkin

‘I tend not to dwell on the parallels between chess and business, chess and the martial arts, or any two things for that matter, because the truth is that all pursuits are connected if we gain an eye for the thematic links.’ – Joshua Waitzkin

‘Initially I was very drawn to the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist philosophy. It was helping me deal with the balance of these external and internal issues with my chess life. Tai chi is the martial embodiment of Taoist philosophy. Initially, I had no intention of competing in the martial arts; it was just the meditation.’ – Joshua Waitzkin

‘My coach and my parents both had this relationship to what I was doing, which was allowing me to express myself with chess. And so I could love it. I had a passion for it. I was expressing myself through chess, and I was learning about myself through chess.’ – Joshua Waitzkin

‘Television is like speed chess, as you have no time and no money. It is like trying to play Grandmaster chess with a 20 minute timer. The rewards are great, though, as it moves faster and you get to see the finished results much quicker.’ – Dean Devlin

‘For me, MMA is like speed chess. It’s like I’m herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an arm bar. I’m not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I’m going to do is convince you that it’s a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go.’ – Ronda Rousey

‘There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.’ – Roger Ebert

‘I think that the actors that I work with feel safer with me. Because they know I understand what they go through and I don’t see them as chess pieces.’ – Adrienne Shelly

‘I have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners – that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards.’ – Graydon Carter

‘Rather than opera, football is more like ballet or a chess game. You can really see it in a team like Arsenal, especially when Dennis Bergkamp was playing. He seemed to be able to read the game like a chessboard and knew where a player would be several seconds later and put the ball there for him.’ – Marcus du Sautoy

‘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.’ – Hod Lipson

‘For me, baseball is more comparable to chess than it is to hockey.’ – Jeff Garlin

‘I was the guy literally in the chess club who decided to wear a bow tie for the last two years of high school, so I obviously wasn’t trying to get the ladies.’ – Dallas Roberts

‘Comedy has sort of been my life-long obsession. I literally obsessed over comedy. I really didn’t play sports – for me it was just comedy, computers and chess club; those were my big things.’ – Chris Hardwick

‘I played tournament chess from fifth grade up into high school.’ – Chris Hardwick

‘It’s important, according to me, to train in small doses so as to not lose the joy of playing chess. I personally think too many coaching and training classes may take away a child’s interest in the game itself. The essential thing to do is practise often and, in case of a doubt, to consult a trainer.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘My parents were very supportive of my chess. When I got home after a game of chess, having missed school or something, they always made me feel very welcome; I didn’t feel guilty at all about pursuing chess with such fervour. They never, for instance, perceived sports as a rival to academics.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘In Gujarat, we had the world record of largest number of chess games in a single venue – 20,500 – and in Tamil Nadu, I have been emphasizing on the positives of chess to the authorities.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘I was very lucky that while I was a chess player in a country where chess was not a big deal, I happened to be in the one city where there was a sprouting chess team: Chennai.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘Professional players work almost every day, for hours on end, and the emphasis is on the word ‘work.’ It can be with a partner or it can be alone, but professional chess is always a pursuit of something new and surprising.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘I don’t know how many calories an average chess player burns per game, but it often exceeds that of a player in ball games. It is not only the chess as such: You need to be fit and undergo complicated preparation.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘My job is to play chess, the game that I love. I achieve what I can in chess. That is what I focus on. Basically, I am always focused on playing the game, and this is important to me.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘If you have a strong opponent, a competition is stimulating. I am generally most open to ideas when I have had a bad result. In chess, too, players specialise. This specialty then becomes an entry barrier.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘When I was about six, I saw my elder siblings play chess and pestered my mother into teaching me. Very soon, I was beating everyone at home, and they thought it would be good to join a club. So my sister would take me to the Tal chess club on Thursdays and weekends.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘Chess has given me a lot more than I could ask for. I have been able to feel special, travel the world and do what I truly enjoy. Moreover, chess players love being their own boss and hate having to wake up early!’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘Chess as a sport requires a lot of mental stamina, and this is what that makes it different from a physical sport. Chess players have a unique ability of taking in a lot of information and remembering relevant bits. So, memory and mental stamina are the key attributes.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘In chess, knowledge is a very transient thing. It changes so fast that even a single mouse-slip sometimes changes the evaluation.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘Before a match, I do not follow any chess news except the games.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘We want more women players to take up chess. There are few participants at the national level and hope it will grow.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘The broader the chess player you are, the easier it is to be competitive, and the same seems to be true of mathematics – if you can find links between different branches of mathematics, it can help you resolve problems. In both mathematics and chess, you study existing theory and use that to go forward.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘I was reasonably interested in mathematics in school. Typically what happens is… when you start playing chess, it takes up a lot of your attention. But about 10 years ago, I found that the Internet is very good to start learning about a lot of subjects.’ – Viswanathan Anand

‘At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk – games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance, I head over to my friend Kyri’s house to play his PS3.’ – Beau Willimon

‘In chess, we have styles – like in any other field. There are also fashions in the kinds of systems that people play. So I’m trying to know my opponent as much as possible.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘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.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘I organize a chess festival in Hungary. I support chess in schools, and I have my own chess foundation. And I started writing books.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘You cannot say, ‘Go! Go! Rah! Rah! Good move!’ People want some emotion. Chess is an art and not a spectator sport.’ – Garry Kasparov

‘There’s a popular concept of ‘intelligence’ as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to, say, social skills. So people say that ‘it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society.’ But social skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys.’ – Eliezer Yudkowsky

‘Classical – perhaps I should say ‘orchestral’ – music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It’s all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities.’ – Brian Eno

‘I used to play chess when I was a kid and participate in national-level tournaments with the geekiest guys. This one time, I was losing terribly, so I batted my eyelashes and flirted as I asked for a draw. My dad just couldn’t believe it. He thought, ‘What have I created, a floozy?’ But it worked!’ – Jordana Spiro

‘I was involved in a bunch of school activities – I was a cheerleader, I was on the chess team, I was vice president of my class.’ – Olivia Holt

‘Crime is interesting. It’s huge and fascinating, and it’s what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It’s reduced to a chess game.’ – Peter Capaldi

‘As a journalist, I cannot help imagining with excitement a new era with a face-off between Hedi Slimane at YSL and Raf Simons at Dior – a magnificent battle of style and wills to echo the Armani/Versace, Gucci/Prada or even Chanel/Schiaparelli face-offs of earlier years. But I remind myself that this is not a game of chess.’ – Suzy Menkes

‘I went through a few phases of finding myself: I dabbled in musical theater, chess club, dance troupe, splatter-painting, school mascot (go Wildcats), babysitter, photojournalist, drill team girl, emo kid – and not one of them defined me, but every single one will always play a part in who I am.’ – Debby Ryan

‘When humans team up with computers to play chess, the humans who do best are not necessarily the strongest players. They’re the ones who are modest and who know when to listen to the computer. Often, what the human adds is knowledge of when the computer needs to look more deeply.’ – Tyler Cowen

‘In a crazy way, writing is a lot like any kind of very complex game – like chess, where you have the knowledge as you’re composing all of the ramifications of each move, of each choice you make.’ – Adam Ross

‘We lived in the provincial town of Ramat Gan where I spent most of my youth adjacent to the chess board.’ – Arnon Goldfinger

‘Drama is played at the pace of chess… or billiards… or poker. Engrossing? Sure. But comedy is played at the jubilant, high-octane speed of sports like basketball or hockey.’ – Mark Waters

‘Chess is a lot of fun for me. Football is a physical game, and in chess you can just beat someone mentally – you outwit somebody, outmaneuver them, think ahead of them.’ – Larry Fitzgerald

‘Crossword puzzles, Sudoku… I’m good at all those things. It’s not daily, but I’ll do stuff on the airplane. I love playing chess. It’s my favorite game.’ – Larry Fitzgerald

‘I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up – that’s good, since I’ve known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridge with friends every week.’ – Maeve Binchy

‘I keep track of my blog stats, Facebook subs, my Amazon rank, Twitter followers, Facebook likes per posts, my chess ranking. I get stressed when they all don’t go up.’ – James Altucher

‘Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences.’ – John Ortberg

‘My kids are in school and in all these clubs – chess club, fashion club, you name it. When my dad came home from work, it was late, and when he left, it was early in the morning. On my days off, I’m still taking my kids to school and picking them up. I do what I have to do to keep that relationship.’ – Omar Dorsey

‘For ‘Inhuman,’ it’s a ‘chess game’ series. You have a lot of pieces moving different ways at once, and it’s about what they do on their own and what happens when they collide into one another. It’s about long-range planning, new character creation, and trying to really build things.’ – Charles Soule

‘As a personality, I’m fighter, you know. And I don’t give up, and if I believe I’m correct, I’m right, then I work, and I fight. Okay, this could be over a chess board, this could be in life, and so I defend my principles.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘I didn’t know so well chess theory, the theory of chess openings. And so, of course I knew the theory, but not on the level of the best players, so this was my… this was always my weakness.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘I was world champion. For me, chess is my life. It is everything.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘My idea is to make moves to bring chess back to the world’s map, to make it part of the world’s geography again.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘If, in our first match for the world champion’s title, I had managed to make the score 6-0, there would have been no Kasparov as a good chess player at all.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘Las Vegas is a beautiful place. I like it more and more and plan to be here often. It’s a great place for chess.’ – Anatoly Karpov

‘I’m a pretty good chess player.’ – Joel Kinnaman

‘I’m a fat kid on the inside. I love food so much, and I fluctuate about 25 to 30 pounds between movies. I feel like I have to do a chess movie that requires very little movement at some point, just so I can eat pizza and play chess on the beach all day.’ – Channing Tatum

‘Everything that Marvel does, it’s a chess move. Nothing is by accident.’ – Chris Evans

‘In chess, there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imagining of the movement or of the gesture that makes the beauty in this case.’ – Marcel Duchamp

‘I was highly attracted to chess for forty or forty-five years; then, little by little, my enthusiasm lessened.’ – Marcel Duchamp

‘I play golf, and I play chess, and sometimes I go to the gym. On the airplane or between acts when I do the performance, I play Candy Crush to forget what happens around me, just to be alone, not thinking… You need to clear your brain.’ – Ildar Abdrazakov

‘I took high school very casually. There was Teen Town, chess, tennis, boxing, running. Lots of things going on.’ – Robert Mundell

‘Chess is a thinking person’s game. But you don’t have to be smart to know what’s funny! Lots of check, mate!’ – Steve Breen

‘When I saw ‘Chess’ in London, I thought it was horrible. It was so static. People were coming down front and just facing the audience, singing.’ – Donna McKechnie

‘My characters aren’t chess pieces. I don’t move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.’ – Jeff Nichols

‘Sometimes as writers, we try and put narrative development above character development. We try to move our characters around like chess pieces that do our bidding. The problem with that is sometimes the characters do things they shouldn’t do. Things that are inorganic.’ – Jeff Nichols

‘Like everyone, I was a kid who played chess when I was young. And I am admittedly old enough to have been around during the fervor of the match in Reykjavik and the rise of Bobby Fischer, so those two things conspired to pique my interest.’ – Edward Zwick

‘The most interesting thing to me in chess are not the gambits. Or the moves. It’s the mental toughness.’ – Edward Zwick

‘You fight technology with technology, so you have to stay one step ahead of the criminal. It’s very much a chess game – they make a move, you have to make a move.’ – Frank Abagnale

‘Jack White is an extraordinary person because he’s like a three-dimensional chess player. He thinks so far ahead.’ – Jimmy Page

‘The most dangerous area is the centre, which has to be either attacked or defended in football, and it’s the same in chess.’ – Henrikh Mkhitaryan

‘I love to play chess. The last time I was playing, I started to really see the board. I don’t mean just seeing a few moves ahead – something else. My game started getting better. It’s the patterns. The patterns are universal.’ – Forest Whitaker

‘Chess masters don’t evaluate all the possible moves. They know how to discard 98 percent of the ones they could make and then focus on the best choice of the remaining lot. That’s the way expertise works in other fields, too: Wise practitioners recognize familiar patterns and put their creativity, improvisation, and skill toward the marginal cases.’ – John Dickerson

‘Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition. Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.’ – John Skipper

‘I grew up with a father who taught me chess at the age of 6 or 7. He’d always beat me. Of course. I was a kid of 6 or 7. After he won, he’d look at me and say, ‘It’s good to be king.’ And then he’d say, ‘But you know what’s even better? To rule the world.” – Stephanie Corneliussen

‘I’d love to see pitches start very dry all over the world, which is good for batting but means there will be turn – a cricket match without spinners is like a chess match without two important pieces – a less interesting game.’ – Geoffrey Boycott

‘I am very lucky in my team. They sit opposite me, and I get to see them every day sitting there staring at the seating chart, not doing much. It is almost like a chess game.’ – Anna Wintour

‘I don’t think the computer will win the Booker, but no-one ever expected a computer to beat a chess grandmaster.’ – Alastair Reynolds

‘I’ve never been one of those actors who plays chess with his career and goes, ‘I’m going to wait now and see what project comes up that can move me to this or that level.’ I take stuff as it comes, and it just so happens that it hasn’t dried up yet, touch wood.’ – Mark Strong

”Alice’ is effectively a story about a game of cards. ‘Through the Looking Glass’ is a story of chess.’ – James Bobin

‘I hope ‘Chess’ will hit the big screen. It seems a natural to me. Good venues, tunes, and politics.’ – Tim Rice

‘The truth of the matter is that chess is not the game of life because life does not ever happen the way you strategize and plan.’ – Jason Reynolds

‘I have to constantly work on my reflexes and hand-eye coordination. I do a lot of puzzles. I play chess.’ – Bernard Hopkins

‘For me, boxing’s like checkers, and MMA’s like chess – there are so many ways to win the match. It’s not barbaric; it’s boxing, kickboxing, Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, cardio and it’s all reached such an amazing level. As fans learn more about the sport, they just fall in love with it.’ – Tito Ortiz

‘My younger brother ended up the British chess champion 10 times, a record.’ – Roger Penrose

‘I believe there is something going on in a conscious being, which includes many animals, as well as ourselves, that is not a computational activity. And to be conscious at all is not a quality that a computer as such will ever possess – no matter how complicated, no matter how well it plays chess or any of these things.’ – Roger Penrose

‘My father was an important person, the director of the school. He could talk to anybody – simple or educated. He liked chess, fishing, and beautiful women.’ – Svetlana Alexievich

‘The election of Trump threw the chess board up. The pieces are all over the place. That’s upsetting to a lot of people, but what I think is there’s a lot of fertile ground for good ideas.’ – Dave Rubin

‘If it hadn’t been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would’ve been unbelievably dull, and I would’ve been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.’ – Ry Cooder

‘Writing is sort of like chess for me. You have to think carefully before you move, thinking, planning.’ – Gza

‘In chess, you have to bring all the pieces into the game. It is about development. In writing, you have to develop the story.’ – Gza

‘Chess is a game of stimulation.’ – Gza

‘Like MCs, each chess player has his own style: how he likes to open, when he likes to attack. Just like we face off with each other lyrically, we challenge each other’s minds on the chessboard. Sharpen each other’s swords.’ – Gza

‘The way you have to think in chess is good for everyday thinking, really, especially for brothers in the urban community who never take that second look, never take that second thought.’ – Rza

‘I’m used to litigating against incredibly competent, high-quality lawyers that are very good chess players.’ – Michael Avenatti

‘These guys are playing checkers. I’m out here playing chess. When they figure it out, it’s too late.’ – Max Holloway

‘I grew up with plenty of smart people. They would beat me at chess; they could solve brain teasers before I could, but then they would struggle in algebra. These were incredibly smart people who simply did not have the foundation in math that I had.’ – Sal Khan

‘Being a young parent, you can play cricket, football, and I can play chess with my son. In fact, he plays the piano better than I do.’ – Ayushmann Khurrana

‘There are two different kinds of spectacular fighters. One is a subtle counter puncher who shows the work like chess. It’s kind of an art, sports art. The other kind is when a guy has blood on all his body. That’s a second kind of spectacular fighter, and people enjoy both. Both kind of fighters need to be respected.’ – Oleksandr Usyk

‘Football and chess can seem like sporting polar opposites, but there are so many similarities with the modern game.’ – Trent Alexander-Arnold

‘Here in Italy, football is more like a chess game. You have to think about every move.’ – Patrice Evra

‘Making the AI better in a video game is not like making the AI better in, say, a chess game. Making it better in terms of acting ability – we’re basically improving its acting so that the user can have more fun.’ – Hideaki Itsuno

‘I love the chess game that I do on ‘Suits.’ I just love every bit of it and that I get to do it.’ – Gina Torres

‘The playoffs are a chess match, with adjustments every game.’ – Kyle Korver

‘In my free time, I love to catch up with tennis, swimming, travelling, and chess.’ – Namrata Shirodkar

‘Actually, one of the fascinating things that I’ve learned playing chess is that the way you play chess is kind of like the way you live your life.’ – Anthony Carrigan

‘In both games, you have to think fast. In chess you tend to know all the patterns already, just like in football.’ – Edgar Davids

‘You can’t win the chess match if you don’t have enough pieces.’ – Stephon Marbury

‘Chess is a great training ground for poker players because it’s a math-based game, much like backgammon is.’ – Daniel Negreanu

‘Playing chess can make you a better poker player because it forces you to think several moves ahead. That kind of intense mental exercise develops a deeper level of thinking than is typically encountered when playing poker.’ – Daniel Negreanu

‘I am most challenged by playing cash games against the world’s top players. These games force me to think several moves in advance, like in a game of chess. And though I also find tournaments fun to play, they just don’t provide the constant brain buzz that cash game players crave.’ – Daniel Negreanu

‘I do a mind game every day. I play chess, sudoku. I learn something different: a language, a few words of a different language.’ – John Layfield

‘We are studying the opponent all the time and it is maybe about chess and finding the right move at the right moment and that makes this so interesting.’ – Ralph Hasenhuttl

‘When teachers would say, ‘When you all graduate, you won’t have anywhere to go’ – I’m the type of person playing chess and thinking ahead. I thought that was a good question. Am I going to be winging it? I didn’t want to be in that position, so I set myself up to go to college.’ – Tee Grizzley

‘In chess, you gotta come up with a strategy. I made a lot of plans in my life. ‘I’ma do this, I’ma do that, this is gonna happen, that’s gonna happen.’ And a lot of stuff don’t go as planned. You really gotta act on events as they unfold. That’s how I compare chess to life.’ – Tee Grizzley

‘My grandfather, or Nana Ji, as we called him, was a family legend. Amarnath Vidyalankar spent his life fighting for India’s independence, which included spending four years in prison in Mahatma Gandhi’s movement. I still remember the conversations we had together, many of them while playing chess.’ – Ro Khanna

‘When we were playing chess in the house, she would never let me win until I was good enough to beat her. It was always a competition. She was also always there for me. She was a very caring, loving mom, and the sacrifices she made to allow me to get to where I am today, I’ll be forever in debt.’ – Alex Bregman

‘I grew up with ‘Chess’ and the music from the show.’ – Craig Revel Horwood

‘I play chess with the computer when I feel dull in my mind and after two games – ‘out or win’, I feel sharp again.’ – Ronnie Screwvala

‘When you’re actually boxing, unless it’s a proper grudge match, it’s less about beating the person up and more about being better within yourself. Being patient, timing things, like chess, so really, it’s as much down to you as what the other person does – and that’s life.’ – Dizzee Rascal

‘Someone once described being a Housewife to me as being one big chess game, and in many ways, I guess it is for some people, but not for me.’ – Teresa Giudice

‘No, I’ve never had a job other than being a chess player.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘I had been playing a lot of chess and I wasn’t really enjoying it, so I decided to go to college to see what else is out there for me. But after about six or seven months away from the game, I just decided that the whole college life wasn’t for me and that’s why I decided to come back.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘What was great about Fischer is that when he became world champion is that chess was being covered everywhere. It was in all the major newspapers, it was on TV.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘Well, I think, in large part, when I first began playing chess at seven years old, I was quite bad at it. I lost a lot of games when I first started.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘It’s certainly an honor to have kids who are looking up to me, but at the same time, I’m just trying to do what I can to raise the profile of chess.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘Because of the Internet, chess is not about your nationality or your background. Anyone can get good now.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘In chess, everyone’s accepted. That’s what’s great about it. You can be a little bit different. You can be an oddball.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘When you watch chess, you don’t see the four hours that the player spends preparing for a match ahead of time.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘A lot of people see a future where you could make a living as a chess player.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘If you talk to some of the older players, they definitely say they see beauty in certain games. In my case, there are certain times when I think, ‘Wow, that’s so amazing, chess is so full of ideas.’ But most of the time I tend to be much more pragmatic about it, as opposed to thinking about it as art or something exquisite.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘It’s very encouraging that the game of chess is growing in the U.S. and is becoming more popular.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘You can’t follow or understand the game unless you play chess yourself, unlike poker which you can pick up in five minutes.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘Definitely, some of the artistry and poetry has been lost in modern chess. It’s very rare that I play a game where I’m like, ‘Wow, this is really interesting. There were so many possibilities! It was such a rich game.” – Hikaru Nakamura

‘When you’re 17 and 18 is when you get really good, and in college, you have to put the chess aside.’ – Hikaru Nakamura

‘I picked it up just for relaxation. I can sit down and get into the game and escape that it’s a big game tomorrow, escape that we need a win, or whatever. My wife knows, after a game I get home at 12:30, I’m playing chess till 3 o’clock in the morning.’ – Larry Johnson

‘I think death is the aesthetic part of chess, seeing your opponent’s army fall. Producing a sacrifice in order to mate is the aesthetic part of it. It’s a beautiful, bloodless war.’ – Daniel Naroditsky

‘It might sound a little weird that, you know, chess streaming has a community, but really it does.’ – Daniel Naroditsky

‘With chess it was almost this palpable electricity that I felt. You’re totally in control of your own fate. There’s no luck factor. It’s you and the pieces.’ – Daniel Naroditsky

‘Poker isn’t the roulette wheel of pure chance, nor is it the chess of mathematical elegance and perfect information. Apart from the underlying mathematics, poker depends on the nuanced reading of human intention, interactions, and deceptions.’ – Maria Konnikova

‘Man, jiu-jitsu is such a chess match.’ – Charles Oliveira

‘My life story is very special. I was raised with a special family as both my parents are teachers. They decided before I was born that I was going to be a chess champion.’ – Judit Polgar

‘I had a gold medal in olympics at 12. At 14 or 15 I had my career set before me. Because I started so early, I had this daily training. It developed a focus. It became so natural that it was like a native language for me to play chess. That’s why I didn’t feel pressure.’ – Judit Polgar

‘I love chess very much. I love the game, the challenges. I could motivate myself as I was curious about how to improve every game. In chess, it’s very clear that if you make a mistake you are punished. If you play well, you win.’ – Judit Polgar

‘I was happy that at home we were a closed circle and then we went out playing chess and saw the world. It’s a very difficult life and you have to be very careful, especially the parents, who need to know the limits of what you can and can’t do with your child.’ – Judit Polgar

‘Being professional means 100% is not enough. Number one, two and three in my life was chess. The reality for women is, when a child comes into the picture, priorities change.’ – Judit Polgar

‘And maybe some people do it too much, are too selfish and concentrated on chess. But I think that in all professions you can find a lot of people like that.’ – Judit Polgar

‘My sister Susan, who was the first one, was pretty good in mathematics and then chess, and my father chose chess because it was easier to measure the results.’ – Judit Polgar

‘You see, in chess we have styles – like in any other field. There are also fashions in the kinds of systems that people play. So I’m trying to know my opponent as much as possible.’ – Judit Polgar

‘Chess can open up a kid’s brain, and develop it in a playful creative way. They can learn playfully about creative, strategic, and logical thinking, and quick problem-solving.’ – Judit Polgar

‘I want to show how rich chess is and what kind of history it has, through culture, literature, and education.’ – Judit Polgar

‘For me, learning chess was natural; with my sisters around me, I wanted to play.’ – Judit Polgar

‘When the Ladies Chess Club was founded in London in 1895 and the first international women-only competition took place two years later, most clubs and competitions didn’t accept women at all.’ – Judit Polgar

‘Since retiring from competitive chess, my focus is on education and organising children’s tournaments: I make a point of never separating girls and boys, nor awarding special prizes for girls.’ – Judit Polgar

‘From the moment of my birth on 23 July 1976, I became involved f in an educational research project. Even before I came into the world, my parents had already decided: I would be a chess champion.’ – Judit Polgar

‘There is no better training for chess than swimming. On a Friday evening I like to put in a good long session of breaststroke at the pool near where I live in Budapest with my husband, Gusztav, and my two children.’ – Judit Polgar

‘I started playing chess in the Eighties, but it is only recently that people have begun to appreciate the importance of physical exercise for chess players. You really need to be in good condition to be able to sit for four to six hours and still maintain your concentration.’ – Judit Polgar

‘Being a professional chess player is not very family-friendly and I am away quite often playing tournaments, sometimes for 12 days at a time. I catch up with Gusztav every day on Skype and email but even though I miss them, I don’t make a point of ringing the children every night.’ – Judit Polgar

‘There are two ways to have educational chess in schools, either through after school programs or using chess as a tool in classrooms to improve children’s thinking.’ – Judit Polgar

‘I do hope in Ireland children in schools can experience the richness of chess and it’s positive effects.’ – Judit Polgar

‘When I was born, I lived with my dad for two years. I was always watching him on a tennis court as a kid, he was a fanatic. Boris Becker would come to the house and play chess.’ – Redfoo

‘Political analysis is full of chess metaphors, reflecting an old tradition of seeing games as models of physical and social reality.’ – Dominic Cummings

‘I learnt not to trust people easily and also learnt that Indians are not really used to reality TV. They will forgive people playing games in monopoly or chess but not on reality show. Come on, lets grow up.’ – Kashmira Shah

‘I play a lot of chess, just to a bog-average level. But I find it stimulates your mind with all the combinations of different moves.’ – Kurt Maflin

‘I learned very early on once I started boxing as a kid that if you go into the ring emotionally charged you make mistakes. It’s a mental game, it’s a chess match, you’ve got to think, you’ve got to strategise and make tactical decisions.’ – Chris Eubank Jr.

‘I could think six shots ahead. It’s no different to playing chess.’ – Alex Higgins

‘The very idea of how chess players manipulate their game excites me.’ – Kay Kay Menon

‘As a chess player I learn to adapt to new situations and always try to make the best move without looking back or asking why and how I ended up in a situation I ended up in.’ – Anish Giri

‘Being one of the lucky ones I shouldn’t be complaining, but for the chess world in general it would be good to find a structure in which chess professionals of lower levels would make a good living as well.’ – Anish Giri

‘I started chess around the age of seven. I was inspired by the game, but soon legends like Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, Anand and many other world champions captivated me.’ – Anish Giri

‘Spending most of my time on chess there is not much else I can be much good at but I enjoy spending time with my wife, parents, siblings and friends, listening to music, some sports, the Web and well… the usual stuff.’ – Anish Giri

‘I barely know what my plans are for tomorrow, but I hope chess will remain a major part of my life.’ – Anish Giri

‘For the moment, I am more focused on classical chess rather than rapid and blitz, as I am hoping to make my move in the classical World championship cycle.’ – Anish Giri

‘No, playing online is an entirely different experience and classical chess events never happen online.’ – Anish Giri

‘Online chess is very popular and cool, don’t get me wrong, but it is a different discipline.’ – Anish Giri

‘I think chess players are not always what you think them to be. Or maybe it’s our job to appear serious.’ – Anish Giri

‘Yes, I think I have some good knowledge of India. I have lots of Indian friends in the chess fraternity.’ – Anish Giri

‘If you are serious about being a professional chess player, do know what your parents think and what their expectations are from you.’ – Anish Giri

‘Playoff basketball isn’t about who scores, stats or putting numbers up on the board. It’s just about winning at the end of the day. When you play a game in a series, it becomes chess. It becomes who can outsmart the other team.’ – Lou Williams

‘I find the game mentally challenging and really enjoy the chess match that occurs every week between the offense and the opposing defense.’ – Ryan Fitzpatrick

‘I see myself used in terms of reading mismatches. If it’s small, go inside. If it’s big, come outside. And if it’s in between, then work him, make him think you’re going outside, go back inside. Just play chess.’ – Thon Maker

‘It’s easy to reach a certain level with chess, but it’s very hard to reach the next level.’ – Jan Vertonghen

‘Obviously, in football you can study somebody, but at the same time, once you get out there, I think there’s just a natural kind of feel for where you think guys might be or where they’re going to go and knowing beforehand what’s going to happen. It’s just like chess.’ – Kyler Murray

‘If we are running sprints, I want to beat everybody by 10 yards. If we are playing checkers, I want to win: I’m pretty good at checkers, and I’m trying to get on chess.’ – Davis Webb

‘Fighting Manny Pacquiao is like playing a very fast game of chess. He was very fast and sharp. You have to be alert at all times and on your toes. There was a lot of incoming.’ – Jessie Vargas

‘We’re going to go back to the drawing board and see what we can correct. But at the end of the day, we fought Manny Pacquiao in a chess match, we did well and what doesn’t kill us will make us stronger.’ – Jessie Vargas

‘My five-year-old, before the quarantine, joined a chess class in our neighborhood in Brooklyn, and my husband was learning to play so that they could play against each other.’ – Marielle Heller

‘Chess taught me patience.’ – Yuzvendra Chahal

‘I had to chose between chess and cricket.’ – Yuzvendra Chahal

‘I just love fighting. You lock me in there with another guy – that strategy, that game of chess – I’m in love with it. I’ll be in love with it until the day I die. Now, if you want to strap a belt on me at the end of it? That’s cool, my kids can brag about it.’ – Frank Mir

‘I like all sorts of games that make you think. Chess is one of the games I play a lot, read a lot of books.’ – Ricky Rubio

‘I started going to chess clubs when I was in fourth grade. From fourth grade to seventh grade, I was in chess club.’ – Michelle Zauner

‘So chess is kind of this nice thing that I have no real aspiration for. It’s just a frivolous thing I can enjoy.’ – Michelle Zauner

‘The instances of English prime ministers going out to do sport and embarrassing themselves are plentiful. But with Obama you can actually imagine him shooting hoops and not looking out of place. The average English MP would be more comfortable playing chess.’ – David James

‘I love to dress for the occasion. I played in an online chess tournament, so for every single day of that, I created some outfits inspired by Beth Harmon from ‘The Queen’s Gambit.” – Pokimane