Great chess quotes

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

June 6, 2016

RIP Viktor Korchnoi, who died today.

An anecdote from Genna Sosonko:

"When Korchnoi plays chess he forgets about everything. Tal once told me that before a simultaneous display in Havana, Victor was asked (by an official): 'You will be playing Che Guevara. He is a rather weak player, but he loves chess passionately. He would be happy, if he were able to gain a draw...'

Korchnoi understandingly nodded his head.

A few hours later he returned to the hotel. 'Well?' 'I crushed them all, all without exception!' 'And Che Guevara?' 'Che Guevara?' 'I also crushed Che Guevara -- he hasn't a clue about the Catalan Opening!'”

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/che...ss-most?page=1

[Hans Jung]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

I wasnt going to comment on GM Reshevsky but then I thought why not? (typical of chesstalk). I was at the Ontario Open in Brantford last year and between rounds was having lunch at Tim's when GM John Fedorowicz approached me and asked me if he could join me. My response: Are you kidding? Of course - please! It was a big thrill for me. Ive always admired John from a distance but I didnt realize how refreshingly down to earth he was and he'll tell it like it is. He regaled me with many anecdotes from the chessworld prompted by my pointed questions. Amongst many others: playing in a round robin tournament at the Marshall Club, last round game which he needed to win to win the tournament - in the game after getting into a losing position Gm Reshevsky had a heart attack and the para meds were called and he was taken away. TD's decision: game remains undecided and stayed that way. The Fed never forgot that - however his lifetime score against Reshevsky 8 wins (or was it nine?) and one loss (and thats with all of Reshevskys shenanigans). Admittedly Reshevsky was older but still very impressive. My question: why did GM Reshevsky get so much favoritism and support from TD's? As far as the anecdote about the heart attack goes you would be better to hear it from John - his description was priceless but Im afraid I would not do much credit to the nuances.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

A bit of a disappointment, for me, finding out that Reshevsky may have been a sleazebag.

"Sammy Reshevsky was another who engaged in this practice on numerous occasions. Reshevsky’s variation on Gufeld’s theme was to offer a draw when both players were low on time. When the opponent accepted, after using almost every last second of thinking time, he would deny never having made the offer. This left the opponent flustered and with no time to think. This tactic backfired on at least one occasion. At Lone Pine 1981 Reshevsky tried his trick on John Fedorowicz who accepted the draw which Sammy then claimed to have never made. Several witnesses supported Fedorowicz but the Chief Arbiter, Isaac Kashdan, supported Reshevsky ruling that since they were all young they were likely friends of Fedorowicz. Play resumed and this time it was Reshevsky who lost on time, failing to make the last move of the time control before his flag*fell."

- John Donaldson in a review of Tukmakov's 'Risk & Bluff.in Chess' at jeremysilman.com

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

May 22, 2016

Lucky Pens

A recent interview with Israel Gelfer talked about security measures for the coming Olympiad:

During the forthcoming Olympiad we will make some precautionary measures. Of course, there will be gates for security. It's mainly for security but it will also produce a sound if someone has anything small in the pocket. The players will be not allowed to bring mobiles, watches and pens. The organizers will provide pens for every player.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/anti-ch...-baku-olympiad

This engendered a spirited conversation among members of the English Chess Forum:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8383

Premise 1: If you are given a ballpoint pen, it usually doesn’t work

Premise 2: If you buy a ballpoint yourself, it always works. If you start to win when using it to write down your moves, it is your lucky, lucky pen.

Quotes

- It seems safe to bet that they won't work.

- No way can I play without my transparent black Bic.

- Don't see anything wrong with the principle of provided pens only for a much smaller event. Slightly paranoid but minimal harm.

For an entire olympiad? That could make for quite an impressive mess. That and arbiters being rushed off their feet providing pens that work

- One practical difference with the organisers providing pens instead of the players bringing theirs is if it stops working.

If my own pen stops working it's my problem to find another one to write down my last move before making another one.

If a pen supplied by the organisers stops working I'd be entitled to stop the clock and report the faulty pen to the arbiter for them to deal with.

- They will need to rush through an amendment to the FIDE Laws of Chess allowing a player to stop the clock and call the arbiter if they have any difficulties with the pen.

- I can guarantee that around move 30, it will stop working. I realise you mentioned that point yourself.

I always take a pencil, which is less likely to fail.

- I inadvertently gave the solution to the problem in my edit to my previous post. Players should, of course, 'accidentally' snap their competition supplied pens until they run out.

- If somebody has a lucky pen, surely that must contravene the Laws? But which one? Perhaps 11.3a or 12.2a.

Player is thinking. Opponent approaches the arbiter away from the board and says, 'My opponent has a lucky pen.' Arbiter, 'I don't believe in luck in chess'. Opponent, 'But I do'.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

May 15, 2016

On the Jeopardy! show of May 13, 2016, five quotes by Benjamin Franklin were to be guessed in part:

Time is money

In this world nothing can be certain except death and taxes

There never was a good war or a bad peace

Fish and visitors stink in three days

And a quote, from his Morals of Chess, which has been reduced to this modern paraphrase:

"Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-90)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morals_of_Chess
________

By the way, an American professor posted this comment on chess.com on that quote:

Thank you for sharing. I will use the quote in my freshman English class. I will have to inform them, however, who Ben Franklin was.

[Wayne Komer]

Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

May 13, 2016

What is the best book on endgames?

For years the two classics were Reuben Fine’s Basic Chess Endings (1941) and Ilya Rabinovich’s Endspil (1927).

In the 70s the English translation of Yuri Averbakh’s Comprehensive Chess Endings five volumes appeared published by Batsford. These were more reference books than manuals.

Other good guides appearing later were Karsten Muller’s Fundamental Chess Endings (2001), Paul Keres’ Practical Chess Endings (1974) and van Perlo’s Endgames Tactics (2006).

One could easily come up with a dozen other good guides.

The one that now stands above the others is Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual. The first edition came out in 2003.

Three early reviews:

Lubomir Kavalek – Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual comes close to an ultimate one-volume manual on the endgame.

John Watson – DEM is quite simply a masterpiece of research and insight. Most of all, Dvoretsky’s analysis is staggering in its depth and accuracy.

Erik Sobjerg – to call this the best book on endgames ever written seems to be an opinion shared by almost all reviewers and commentators.
_______

I have the first edition and lately wondered if I should buy the 4th edition that had just appeared (2014). How can you improve on what is already arguably the best?

Well, I did buy the fourth edition and for my chess quote, I give the introduction to that volume which supplies an answer to the question I just posed:

From the Author (Fourth Edition)

Readers familiar with previous editions of the Manual have probably noticed that the new edition is larger than the previous one. But it is not because its content has been significantly increased or is more complicated – it is not. On the contrary, I have tried to make it more accessible to study, adding about 200 new diagrams to the text. Those who read the book without a board (there are many players who are able to do this) will find it easier to follow complex examples. In addition, the new diagrams will draw your attention to many interesting and instructive moments previously buried in the text and variations.

As always with new editions, I have revised the text with clarifications and corrections which were found since the release of the previous edition. Significant revisions have been made in some aspects of the theory of rook endings. For that, I would like first and foremost to thank the analyst Vardan Pogosyan. In 2011-2012, I actively corresponded with Pogosyan, and he showed me many of the discoveries he had made, leading me to rethink some important theoretical concepts.

Relatively recently, the computer database “Lomonosov” was created; it accurately evaluates seven-piece endings (previously only six-figure endings were available.) Naturally, I checked the book’s seven-piece examples with “Lomonosov” database and corrected any errors found.

Mark Dvoretsky
Moscow
September 2014

[Peter McKillop]

Re: "...the most significant contribution to civilization since the ... wheel."

"...there are none so virtuous as a reformed King's Gambit player."

- GM John Shaw, 'The King's Gambit', p. 5

[Nigel Hanrahan]

"...the most significant contribution to civilization since the ... wheel."

"This remarkable coup, by means of which the King is spirited away to safety while the Rook magically appears on the scene, is probably the most significant contribution to civilization since the discovery of the wheel."

Irving Chernev's (mock) view of castling in chess, from Logical Chess: Move by Move, 1957, p. 132.

[Frank Dixon]

Re: "It makes my brain hurt."

"You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela."
Dr. Ernesto (Che) Guevara {1928-1967}, speaking to Czechoslovakian GM Ludek Pachman {1924-2003}, likely at Prague 1966, where Guevara was living secretly for a time. Che, born in Argentina, was a competitive chess player from age 12. Later, he was a medical doctor, very close associate of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and served as Cuban Minister of Finance. By 1966, he was a full-blown international revolutionary. The quote is from "Checkmate in Prague: Memoirs of Ludek Pachman", London 1975, publishers Faber and Faber. Pachman had been an ardent Communist himself, but that changed with the Prague Spring of 1968, which was crushed by the Soviets; Pachman was later imprisoned, before being allowed to emigrate to West Germany in 1972.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: "It makes my brain hurt."

"I am not a rook."

- Richard Nixon

[Frank Dixon]

Re: "It makes my brain hurt."

Writing about chess, American writer Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), in his work 'The Long Goodbye' (1953), penned
"As elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency."

[Nigel Hanrahan]

"It makes my brain hurt."

"St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Stephen Piscotty, a Stanford graduate. "It makes my brain hurt," he explained."

St. Louis Cardinals' latest training technique: chess

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

May 6, 2016

Now Why Didn’t I Think of That?

A kibitzer comment during the game Karjakin-Svidler, Russian Teams Rd6, on chessbomb today:

cycledan: The candidates tournament is a good idea but I think we should have a selection committee to choose the challenger next time made up of ChessBomb commenters.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

"So a good book helps you to focus on really the important points. Because there are many databases like Correspondence, Computer, Mega Database, etc. You can easily get lost. So the importance of books suddenly grows. Earlier books were the main source of information. Then they were replaced by databases, but now we have so much material available that one needs to be guided through this."

- Boris Gelfand on the importance of books in a chessplayer's education

http://en.chessbase.com/post/improve...is-gelfand-1-2

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

"Life's too short for chess."
English writer Henry James Byron, from his 1880 work 'Our Boys'.