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"You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player"
José Raul Capablanca
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"When you see a good move, look for a better one"
Emanuel Lasker
"Even a poor plan is better than no plan"
Mikhail Chigorin
"One bad move nullifies forty good ones"
Bernhard Horwitz
"I am going to lose two World Champion titles. Just because I decided not to go to Saudi Arabia. Not to play by someone's rules, not to wear abaya and altogether not to feel myself a secondary creature"
Anna Muzychuk
"Before I was born, my parents decided I was going to be a genius"
Judit Polgar
Quotes from the Greats
The Origin of Chess
For almost a thousand years, Chess has been a favorite pastime among scholars, courtiers, nobility and commoner alike.
Legend has it that in the 1200s, a courtier brought the game of chess to a great King. The King loved the game, particularly that the Queen was the most powerful piece on the board, and so the King offered the courtier a prize of his choice for teaching him Chess. The courtier responded by saying "The prize I desire is simple. For the next 64 days, you will pay me in grain, doubling each square until the board is finished."
The King laughed and gladly accepted the terms.
On the first day, the courtier showed up demanding his 1 piece of grain. The king laughed, and gave him the single grain.
On the second day, the courtier demanded 2 pieces of grain. The king laughed once again.
On the third day, the courtier asked for 4 pieces, and for 8 pieces the next day, and for 16 pieces the next day, and for 32 pieces the following day. The king was getting tired of doing this daily.
After a week, the King offered to give the Courtier 10 barrels of wheat to pay the rest of the debt, but the Courtier declined, asking for 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and 2048 pieces of grain. And then 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536. Only 10 days had passed... By now, the King was beginning to worry. In less than a month, the king would already paying the courtier over 1 billion grains of rice!
The king acquiesced, telling the courtier that there was not enough grain in the whole world to pay back his debt. The courtier laughed, knowing this day would come, and the king anointed him as the new bishop.
Despite there being only 64 squares on the board, there are more game possibilities than there are atoms in the universe. This endless complexity known as the 'Wheat and Chessboard Problem' is one of many reasons why mastery of chess is considered to be a sign of intelligence, judgment and sophistication.