Chess Culture Quotes

There are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely. That's what I don't like.

Chess is not a game, but a disease.

When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties - before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since.

My mother is Russian and father Nepalese, so we always had a chess board at home. Chess is part of the culture in both Russia and Nepal.

In chess, everyone's accepted. That's what's great about it. You can be a little bit different. You can be an oddball.

Chess is changing. I hope chess is getting more popular, more spectacular.

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.

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.

I think chess players are not always what you think them to be. Or maybe it's our job to appear serious.

Once you're a chess player, you spend a lot of time thinking about the game and you can't get it completely out of your head.

It's the fault of the chess players themselves. I don't know what they used to be, but now they're not the most gentlemanly group. When it was a game played by the aristocrats it had more like you know dignity to it. When they used to have the clubs, like no women were allowed and everybody went in dressed in a suit, a tie, like gentlemen, you know. Now, kids come running in their sneakers. Even in the best chess club-and they got women in there. It's a social place and people are making noise, it's a madhouse.

Like dogs who sniff each other when meeting, chess players have a ritual at first acquaintance: they sit down to play speed chess.

I go to bed at 4 a. m. Almost all chessplayers do.

After that, Kasparov stepped back from chess which is, and I want this to be clear, not good for chess in general at all. As a whole, the current situation in the chess world leaves a lot to be desired.

I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future.

If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.

The place of chess in the society is closely related to the attitude of young people towards our game.

It is impossible to win gracefully at chess.

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

It's very encouraging that the game of chess is growing in the U.S. and is becoming more popular.

It might sound a little weird that, you know, chess streaming has a community, but really it does.

I was very lucky that while I was a chess player in a country where chess was not a big deal, I happened to be in the one city where there was a sprouting chess team: Chennai.

The image that everyone has of a chess player is not necessarily positive. I think it's partly due to Bobby Fischer - his rise to fame and then his descent into madness. That left a lot of people with negative stereotypes, of nerds who aren't interesting.

I want to serve chess through games, books that are works of art. I would like to bring the game closer to many people all over the world.

Seville never had a rich chess tradition. Valencia is entirely different, it is enough to say that one of the city squares is named after me.