Alexander Alekhine Quotes

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 could think six shots ahead. It's no different to playing chess.

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 demands total concentration

Capablanca did not apply himself to opening theory (in which he never therefore achieved much), but delved deeply into the study of end-games and other simple positions which respond to technique rather than to imagination.

Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family. (in a letter to his wife)

I love the game - and I hate the Russians because they've almost ruined it. They only risk the title when they have to, every three years. They play for draws with each other but play to win against the Western masters. Draws make for dull chess, wins make for fighting chess.

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.

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.

I'm a pretty good chess player.

The most interesting thing to me in chess are not the gambits. Or the moves. It's the mental toughness.

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.

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.

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.

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

When you play chess alone it's always your move.

The way that I like to fight is I like to paint myself into a corner and so the only way is for me to win.

I know people who have all the will in the world, but still can't play good Chess

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.

Blitz chess kills your ideas.

Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance

The worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble... Reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.

I am acutely conscious, from vast experience in opens, that guys around, say 2100 or more can definitely play chess and that one often has to work very hard to beat them.

It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my opponent over the board and against myself on the clock.

In my experience, when I went to school, and especially in after-school, and during breaks, a lot of people wanted to sit down and play chess up till a certain age when it was not supposed to be cool anymore and people wanted to do other things.