Daniel Naroditsky Quotes

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.

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.

I was world champion. For me, chess is my life. It is everything.

Whoever sees no other aim in the game than that of giving checkmate to one's opponent will never become a good Chess player.

Chess is ruthless: you've got to be prepared to kill people.

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

Chess, like other arts, must be practiced to be appreciated.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

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.

That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.

Chess will always be the master of us all.

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

These guys are playing checkers. I'm out here playing chess. When they figure it out, it's too late.

I think for me the main goal that I have, or at least what I really aspire to, is to raise the level of chess.

In poker, you want to play the weaker guys. In chess, it's the opposite.

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.

Well, I think, in large part, when I first began playing chess at seven years old, I was quite bad at it. I lost a lot of games when I first started.

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

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life.

It is impossible to win gracefully at chess.

You can become a big master in chess only if you see your mistakes and short-comings. Exactly the same as in life itself.

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.

What I admired most about him [Bobby Fischer] was his ability to make what was in fact so difficult look easy to us. I try to emulate him.

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