Anatoly Karpov Quotes

My former coach, Simen Agdestein, used to be the best player in Norway.

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.

Chess is a matter of daily training.

Chess-players are so unsociable, they are no company for any but themselves.

Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.

I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.

My way of playing is very different and Karpov plays very differently as well.

My challenge when I came back was to face the young talent, dissect their games, and show them maybe that they needed to learn more about the game than just the money aspect.

It's a shame to be the face of chess and to play chess badly.

Recently I saw Kasparov and he looked to me as still young and potent champion.

I did take part in a couple of Vishy Anand's training camps. The experience has truly been invaluable. I saw from up close the level of preparation that I should be striving for.

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.

When I was a child I liked the games of Capablanca, and later I was captivated by Alekhine's play.

Furman astounded me with his chess depth, a depth which he revealed easily and naturally, as if all he were doing was establishing well-known truths.

His teaching became a turning point in chess history: it was from Steinitz that the era of modern chess began. The contribution of the first world champion to its development is comparable with the great scientific discoveries of the 19th century.

In general there is something puzzling about the fact that the most renowned figures in chess - Morphy, Pillsbury, Capablanca and Fischer - were born in America.

By this measure (on the gap between Fischer & his contemporaries), I consider him the greatest world champion

I study chess eight hours a day, on principle.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.

The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.

Americans really don't know much about chess. But I think when I beat Spassky, that Americans will take a greater interest in chess. Americans like winners.

Chess continues to advance over time, so the players of the future will inevitably surpass me in the quality of their play, assuming the rules and regulations allow them to play serious chess. But it will likely be a long time before anyone spends 20 consecutive years as number, one as I did.

The legend of the best player of chess has been destroyed.

For inspiration I look to those great players who consistently found original ways to shock their opponents. None did this better than the eighth world champion, Mikhail Tal. The "Magician of Riga" rose to become champion in 1960 at age twenty-three and became famous for his aggressive, volatile play.

In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn't do well. They'd get bad openings.