'Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don’t have this when you play a computer. I can’t confuse it.'

Judit Polgar

'Without the element of enjoyment, it is not worth trying to excel at anything.'

Magnus Carlsen

'If you don’t win, it’s not a great tragedy – the worst that happens is that you lose a game.'

Bobby Fischer

'Chess is a fairy tale of 1,001 blunders.'

Savielly Tartakower

'When you see a good move, look for a better one.'

Emanuel Lasker

'There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine.'

Mikhail Tal

'Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.'

Garry Kasparov

'A good player is always lucky.'

José Raúl Capablanca

'Planning anything is hopeless.'

Mikhail Tal

'I get more upset at losing at other things than chess. I always get upset when I lose at Monopoly.'

Magnus Carlsen

'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.'

Hikaru Nakamura

'A sound plan makes us all heroes, the absence of a plan, idiots.'

Alexander Kotov