Women, by their nature, are not exceptional chess players: they are not great fighters.
The first great chess players, including the world champion, got by perfectly well without constant coaches.
When I was a child I liked the games of Capablanca, and later I was captivated by Alekhine's play.
One of the things that first attracted me to chess is that it brings you into contact with intelligent, civilized people - men of the stature of Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, who was my part-time coach.
The best chess masters of every epoch have been closely linked with the values of the society in which they lived and worked. All the changes of a cultural, political, and psychological background are reflected in the style and ideas of their play.
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.
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.
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.
Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they've beaten our top human chess champions.
[Garry] Kasparov and [Anatoly] Karpov have something in common. They both want to become deputies of the Russian State Duma.
