Max Euwe Quotes

Modern Chess is too much concerned with things like Pawn structure. Forget it, Checkmate ends the game

My very first book was a games collection of Anatoly Karpov. On the whole I was attracted by positonal play with some tactics, and already then I was aiming for universality.

My forte was the middlegame. I had a good feeling for the critical moments of the play. This undoubtedly compensated for my lack of opening preparation and, possibly, not altogether perfect play in the endgame. In my games things often did not reach the endgame!

Combination is a soul of chess.

Nowadays the dynamic element is more important in chess - players more often sacrifice material to obtain dynamic compensation.

Capablanca was among the greatest of chess players, but not because of his endgame. His trick was to keep his openings simple, and then play with such brilliance in the middlegame that the game was decided - even though his ooponent didn't always know it - before they arrived at the ending.

I honestly feel very humble when I study Capablanca's games.

I do not play chess – I fight at chess. Therefore, I willingly combine the tactical with the strategic, the fantastic with the scientific, the combinative with the positional, and I aim to respond to the demands of each given position.

Often, in the Ruy Lopez, one must be patient, wait and carry on a lengthy and wearisome struggle.

Every time I win a tournament I have to think that there is something wrong with modern chess.

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.

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.

All that matters on the chessboard is good moves.

I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings.

Chess is an infinitely complex game, which one can play in infinitely numerous and varied ways.

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.

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.

The very idea of how chess players manipulate their game excites me.

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.

No matter how badly you play, unless you make a flat-out blunder, there's always going to be some narrow path to being able to save the game and draw instead of losing.

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

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

Alekhine's real genius is in the preparation and construction of a position, long before combinations or mating attacks come into consideration at all.

Chess is a matter of daily training.

Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.