Great chess quotes

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

June 26, 2017

From: Reflections after Reykjavik by Gerald Abrahams on pages 84-90 of Encounter, March 1973:

• ‘Fischer’s play was described as “relentless” and “ruthless”. This is a splendid example of what Ruskin called “The Pathetic Fallacy”, as when the would-be poet speaks of the “cruel Sea” or the “kindly Vales”. Chess moves are effective or ineffective. A chess move is not cruel when it is good; nor is a bad move intended as an act of kindness.’

• As to practice, I only know one great player who behaved as if chess was completely “objective”. That was Akiva Rubinstein – a talmudist turned chessplayer. He was been called the “Spinoza of Chess”. But if you told this to the average super grandmaster (who has no metaphysics in his mind or music in his soul) he would ask “What tournaments did Spinoza win?” ...’

Quoted in Chess Notes by Edward Winter CN 10497, June 26, 2017

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/i...the_1972_v_Fis

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

July 1, 2017

From one of the kibitzers at chess.com commenting on the last round of rapids at Leuven 2017:

Being a chess professional is a tough profession. Since few win elite tournaments, the rest of them must play Open Tournaments to survive (with few if any guarantees.)

At the end of the rainbow there is no pension, no health plan, no nest egg to speak of; and looking for a job after 40+ yrs. and little job experience is daunting.

Cynn at chess.com, June 30, 2017

https://www.chess.com/news/view/2-po...ven-blitz-6730

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

July 12, 2017

“What do you know, you never played Kasparov”

Jul 10, 2017

Alexander Grischuk is always entertaining speaker in the press meetings. As he became co-leader in the Geneva Grand Prix, Grischuk was interviewed by WGM Anna Burtasova.

After explaining why it is good to be tempo down in the reversed Dragon Sicilian, and why do Russians swim in Wijk aan Zee in the middle of winter, Grischuk was asked about the upcoming Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis.

Q: What do you think about the announcement that Garry Kasparov will play in Saint Louis?

A: It is fantastic for me as a spectator. For me it is by far the most interesting event this year, obviously apart from the tournaments I play in. The only thing that I don’t like is that I can no longer say to Nepomniachtchi, Aronian and others “What do you know, you never played Kasparov”, as now this is going to change. So that’s the only thing that makes me unhappy.

http://www.chessdom.com/what-do-you-...ayed-kasparov/

__________

Why Russians swim in the cold ocean in the middle of winter is answered in the summary of Round Five of The Geneva Grand Prix 2017

http://forum.chesstalk.com/showthrea...327#post115327

[Hans Jung]

Re: Great chess quotes

Why Russians swim in the cold ocean in the middle of the winter - its an epiphany to me

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

August 2, 2017

In Round One of the Sinquefield Cup 2017, four of the five games began with 1.e4 e5 (the other was an English). This caused Teymur Rajabov to tweet:

I feel soon there will be only 1.e4-e5 games everywhere.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

August 2, 2017

In Round One of the Sinquefield Cup 2017, four of the five games began with 1.e4 e5 (the other was an English). This caused Teymur Rajabov to tweet:

I feel soon there will be only 1.e4-e5 games everywhere.

I'm always amazed when I see top GMs (and patzers, for that matters) following opening trends.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

August 2, 2017

In Round One of the Sinquefield Cup 2017, four of the five games began with 1.e4 e5 (the other was an English). This caused Teymur Rajabov to tweet:

I feel soon there will be only 1.e4-e5 games everywhere.

If that's the case, I'm surprised it took so long for 1.e4 e5 to become fashionable at the elite level in a big way once again.

After 1.e4, 1...e5 is a man's move.

[Hans Jung]

Re: Great chess quotes

Well then you man it and I'll manhandle your position.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Great chess quotes

Fwiw Hans, I recall a game you played long ago against Robert Morrison. You played 1.e4 e5 2.g3, and he replied 2...b6. Not sure if you won that game. :)

[Hans Jung]

Re: Great chess quotes

Yes Kevin youre a strong chessplayer. You immediately spotted my weakness. I tend to play too creatively at times.

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great chess quotes

"The opening is the hardest phase of the game, because it is very hard then to know what is going on."
(Richard Reti, 1889-1929). Reti was a world-class player, one of the most profound opening theorists and original players in chess history, and a key member of the hypermoderns, along with Alexander Alekhine, Aaron Nimzowitsch, Efim Bogolyubov, Ernst Grunfeld, and Gyula Breyer.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

September 19, 2017

From Edward Winter’s chesshistory.com

Chess Note 10592

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/i...Bardeleben_C.N.

Edward Lasker about Curt von Bardeleben in Chess Secrets I Learned from the Masters (1951):

‘He always wore a black cut-away suit of dubious vintage. Apparently he could never spare enough money to buy a new suit, although I learned one day that at fairly regular intervals he received comparatively large sums – from one to several thousand marks – through the simple expedient of marrying, and shortly after divorcing, some lady who craved the distinction of his noble name and was willing to pay for it. Unfortunately, when he received his reward, it was usually far exceeded by the amount of the debts he had accumulated since his last divorce. Evil tongues had it that the number of the ladies involved in these brief marital interludes had grown so alarmingly that they could easily have made up a Sultan’s harem.’

Richard Forster from Zurich writes that records confirm, at least partly, Edward Lasker’s story, as they show that Curt von Bardeleben married ten times between 1902 and 1919 and he gives the names and birthdates of the ten ladies!

______

For two quotes on the subject of chess and marriage, see post #94 in this thread (Jerry Seinfeld and Henri Grob)

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

September 19, 2017

In the introduction to Richard Reti’s Modern Ideas in Chess Golombek says that “the four famous hypermodern chess founders are Breyer, Reti, Nimzowitsch and Tartakower”.

In Chapter V of the book Reti writes this:

30. A COMPLICATED POSITION



“Under the above title Breyer some years ago published an article in which he tried to prove that 1 d4 was better than e4.

Among the moves with which the old masters were in the habit of imitating each other were the opening moves. They began the game with 1 e4 e5: not after individual mature reflection but simply because so many hundreds before them had without considering made the same moves following in the footsteps of hundreds of others

It was that which engendered mistrust in the younger generation of masters and they criticized accordingly.”

Edward Winter has a long article on Breyer quotes:

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/breyer.html
________

Rightly or wrongly, the statement

After 1 e4 White’s game is in the last throes

is attributed to Breyer.

I mention all this because as a teenager, I played chess with a friend with a literary turn of mind. We both read of Breyer and when my friend annotated our chess games, he made a point of using the “last throes” comment liberally.

Also, more importantly, a book on Breyer in English, has recently appeared:

Gyula Breyer
The Chess Revolutionary
Jimmy Adams
New in Chess (2017)
880 pages 1770 grams

It contains 242 of Breyer’s games and a large number of articles from newspapers, magazines and archives.

The “complicated position” article appeared in Magyar Sakkvilag, 6 May 1917

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

September 22, 2017

Readers with a mathematical bent know of G. H. Hardy, the mathematician, famous for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis.

Further, he fostered the talents of the great Indian mathematician S. Ramanujan from 1913.

Anyway, Hardy once said:

Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics

(A Mathematician’s Apology, 1941 – see also http://izquotes.com/quote/234922)
______

In an English Chess magazine I once read a letter from a reader, who said that he had once been walking through the halls of an Oxford College and he saw pinned up on a bulletin board this notice:

Essay Contest

“Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics”

Discuss in 1000 words or more

£10 for the best entry

(Details for submission)

And he often wondered what the students wrote in their essays. And that letter appeared almost sixty years ago and I have been wondering about that all that time too!

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great chess quotes

Great Chess Quotes

September 28, 2017

Peter Svidler to Jan Gustafsson on his matches in the 2017 Chess World Cup in Tbilisi:

His first opponent was Jakhongir Vakhidov.

In the second round he played Viktor Erdos and offered a draw in their second game:

Peter: It wasn’t a large factor but I managed to injure myself before the tournament started so I didn’t mind (the draw).

Jan: Why do you keep getting injured? Every other tournament I hear you’ve got injured again. How do you do that?

Peter: It really requires skill and dedication to your craft. By this point there is no other way to describe it. This time I managed to tear some ankle ligaments getting on a bus. This I think really shows tremendous dedication to the idea of getting injured before important tournaments.

I actually work out these days and am possibly in the best shape of my life. Getting on a bus should be within my capabilities. But, no. Buses are tricky bits right now.
________

Peter reached the quarterfinals where he was beaten by MVL.

Readers may remember Peter breaking his arm during a soccer game at the Gashimov Memorial in 2015. See Quote # 96 in this series (April 21, 2015)