Viktor Korchnoi Quotes

Why, then, do you think the white player might have done it?" Reynie considered. He imagined himself moving out his knight only to bring it right back to where it started. Why would he ever do such a thing? At last he said,"Perhaps because he doubted himself.

The point system certainly governs a Grandmaster's decisions, but it can be outweighed in any given position by more important factors.

By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.

A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.

A master looks at every move he would like to make, especially the impossible ones

The game of chess is a metaphor for life... it teaches you strategy and it teaches you the value of knowing where you are, where you want to get to and what obstacles are in the way that you need to navigate in order to get there.

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.

But the enemy has the move, and he is about to open his full game. And pawns are as likely to see as much of it as any. Sharpen your blade!

One day, when I was doing well in class and had finished my lessons, I was sitting there trying to analyze the game of tic-tac-toe... The teacher came along and snatched my papers on which I had been doodling... She did not realize that analyzing tic-tac-toe can lead into dozens of non-trivial mathematical questions.

All that matters on the chessboard is good moves.

People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.

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.

I knew becoming an analyst would allow me to see the game from a new perspective.

I'm someone who really thinks the game through, who has an IQ about the game, who studies the game, who knows a lot more than just running and jumping.

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.

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.

Kids love games and chess is a game where you have to sit down and concentrate and it just helps in every way.

Tactics involve calculations that can tax the human brain, but when you boil them down, they are actually the simplest part of chess and are almost trivial compared to strategy.

Today, chess programs have become so good that even grandmasters sometimes struggle to understand the logic behind some of their moves.

The next move is always the test.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you: 'Do you want to pick door #2?' Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

In chess there can never be a favorite move. I can probably pinpoint in a specific game, there might be a move that was like, "Oh, that was a good move." And maybe certain moves turned the whole game around, but there's not one special move that does that, unless it's checkmate because that's when the game is over.

I still remember Botvinnik's reaction to each of my games, right from the opening moves. At first he would express amazement, then annoyance, and, finally irritation.

The first move of leadership is learning to think for yourself.