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All Experiments That Are Related To The Games When You Have Humans Versus Machines In The Games - Whether It's Chess Or "go" Or Any Other Game - Machines Will Prevail Not Because They Can Solve The Game. Chess Is Mathematically Unsolvable. But At The End Of The Day, The Machine Doesn't Have To Solve The Game. The Machine Has To Win The Game. And To Win The Game, It Just Has To Make Fewer Mistakes Than Humans. Which Is Not That Difficult Since Humans Are Humans And Vulnerable, And We Don't Have The Same Steady Hand As The Computer.

-Garry Kasparov

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All Experiments That Are

Garry Kasparov

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All Experiments That Are Related To The Games When You Have Humans Versus Machines In The Games - Whether It's Chess Or "go" Or Any Other Game - Machines Will Prevail Not Because They Can Solve The Game. Chess Is Mathematically Unsolvable. But At The End Of The Day, The Machine Doesn't Have To Solve The Game. The Machine Has To Win The Game. And To Win The Game, It Just Has To Make Fewer Mistakes Than Humans. Which Is Not That Difficult Since Humans Are Humans And Vulnerable, And We Don't Have The Same Steady Hand As The Computer.

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Dictators Are Not Strategists In The Way I Normally Use That Term. All The Dictator Cares About Is Survival. That Means Constantly Worrying About The Tactical Response, "what Do I Do Today, Tonight, Tomorrow Morning, To Stay Alive?" Vladimir Putin Doesn't Care What Happens A Year Or Five Years From Now. He Just Cares About Staying In The Game. That Is All He Needs To Survive.

The Ability To Work Hard For Days On End Without Losing Focus Is A Talent. The Ability To Keep Absorbing New Information After Many Hours Of Study Is A Talent.

Ukraine Had Quite Serious Impact On The Many Russians. They Could See That Ordinary People In Ukraine Which Is A Bordering State, Very Close To Russia, The People Of This State Are, They Didn't Want To Tolerate Anymore The Power Abuse By Ukrainian Officials.

I Try To Play, Always, Beautiful Games...always I Wanted To Create Masterpieces.

Throughout My Chess Career I Sought Out New Challenges, Looking For Things No One Had Done Before.

I Reckon That There Won't Be An Intervention In The Near Future, Because Georgia's Military Adventure Revealed The Weakness Of The Russian Army.

Back In The Days Of The Soviet Union, The Countries Of Eastern Europe, Being Under The Control Of The Ussr, Would Call Their States "people's Republics." The Sham That Is Currently Going On In The States Of The Former Soviet Union Is Due To The Fact That The Politicians In Power Are Eager To Polish Up Their Image Abroad.

I Have No Idea How Long Putin Will Last. The Good News Is, Putin Doesn't Know Either. It Will Be Sudden And It Won't Be Peaceful. He Has Burned His Bridges.

Though I Would Have Liked My Chances In A Rematch In 1998 If I Were Better Prepared, It Was Clear Then That Computer Superiority Over Humans In Chess Had Always Been Just A Matter Of Time.

It Could Truly Be The Case That Vladimir Putin Has Miscalculated In The Long Term With His Adventure In Syria.

The Handover Of Power To [dmitry] Medvedev Was Rather Painless, Everybody Thought That The Waves Would Calm Automatically. By Now, It's Quite Clear That [vladimir] Putin Doesn't Want To Relinquish The Levers Of Power.

My Mother Lives In Moscow, And I Would Like To Visit Her. Now She Always Has To Travel To Finland Or A Baltic Country To Meet Me. But I Have To Expect That My Papers Would Be Confiscated In Moscow Immediately, And That They Would Harass My Family. I Can Still Have More Impact In The West With My Books And Lectures.

We Think About Time As Something Not To Waste, Not As Something To Invest.

It's Interesting That The Greatest Minds Of Computer Science, The Founding Fathers, Like Alan Turing And Claude Shannon And Norbert Wiener, They All Looked At Chess As The Ultimate Test. So They Thought, "oh, If A Machine Can Play Chess, And Beat Strong Players, Set Aside A World Champion, That Would Be The Sign Of A Dawn Of The Ai Era." With All Due Respect, They Were Wrong.

Millions Like Me In Russia Want A Free Press, The Rule Of Law, Social Justice, And Free And Fair Elections. My New Job Is To Fight For Those People And To Fight For These Fundamental Rights.

[vladimir] Putin Intended To Provide For A Broad Safety Corridor [for The Olympic Games]. That's Why Abkhazia Was A More Important And Desired Goal Of Russian Aggression Against Georgia Than South Ossetia, Which Merely Served As A Pretext. Concerns Mainly Centered On The Crimea.

There Can Be No Finer Example Of The Inspiring Powers Of Competition To Shatter The Status Quo Than Hungary's Judit Polgar.

I May Play Some Exhibition Games So I Don't Want To Quit The Game Of Chess Completely. I Just Decided And It's A Firm Decision Not To Play Competitive Chess Anymore.

Revenge For A Terror Attack Is Ideal For Putin's Model. His Propaganda Machine Will Be Filled With Scenes Of Crash Victims If [vladimir] Putin Sees The Need For A Larger War To Stoke His Domestic Support Again As The Russian Economy Teeters.

If People Are Being Left Behind, Impoverished Economically Or Even Culturally, They Will Always Be Easily Targeted By Demagogues Of Any Stripe, Exploiting Their Hate And Fear And Making Impossible Promises. That Impoverishment Is More Likely If We Fight A Doomed Battle Against Automation And New Technology, When What Those People Need Most Is The Ambitious New Tech That Is The Only Proven Way To Create Sustainable Industries And Jobs.

We Should Simply Accept The Fact That The Way Machines Make Decisions Is Different, And Rather Look At The Result. If Machines Are Providing Results That We Are Looking For, You Would Mind How Much Human Understanding Was Used In The Process. And More Likely We Should Look For The Way Of Combining Human Skills And Machine Skills. And That, I Believe, Is The Future Role Of Humanity, Is Just To Make Sure It Will Be Using This Immense Power Of Brute Force Of Calculation For Our Benefit.

Everyone Is Concerned About His Niche, His Name, And Wants To Adapt The Concept To So-called National Characteristics. But At The End Of The Day, It's All The Same.

The End Of The Day

Moscow Is Simply Unwilling To Recognize The Right Of Self-determination Of Nations.

I Learned That Fighting On The Chess Board Could Also Have An Impact On The Political Climate In The Country.

We Must Be Optimistic About The Future Because It's A Self-fulfilling Prophecy. If We Are Creative And Ambitious, Intelligent Machines Will Liberate Us And Be As Profound A Boon To Our Prosperity As Electricity. If We Are Fearful, And Fail To Press Ahead, We Could Be Overwhelmed By Automation And Inequality.

A Very Strong Player Can Manage And Can Just Know How To Manage A Thousand Positions. I Get It; It's A Very Arbitrary Number. So Then You Have The World Champion Who Could Do More. But, Again, Any Increase In Numbers Creates, Sort Of, A New Level Of Playing. And Then You Go To The Very Top, And The Difference Is So Minimal, But It Does Exist. So Even A Few Players Who Never Became World Champion, Like Vassily Ivanchuk, For Instance, I Think They Belong To The Same Category.

My Life Is Split In Three Parts; I Don't Know The Percentage. One Could Be Called "chess" - The Kasparov Chess Foundation, Promoting The Game, Training Young Players, Playing On The Internet, Sometimes Exhibitions. The Second Area Would Be "writing" - Books, Articles, Twitter, Facebook. And Then "political Activity" - Fighting For Human Rights And Democracy, So Tv, Interviews, Speeches.

Karabakh Conflict Has A Strong Influence On The Political Climate Both In Azerbaijan And Armenia. It Is Obvious, Too, That The Azerbaijani Leadership Can Capitalize Indefinitely On This Topic To Underpin Its Legitimacy Even In A Situation In Which Democratic Institutions Are Virtually Eliminated.

We've Been Saying Putin Is A Dictator For Years Who Doesn't Care About The Law.

Chess Is Not Dominoes

Right, Left, Greens, Baathists, Whatever: It Comes Down To Grabbing And Holding Power And Using Ideology - Or Religion, Race - As A Justification.

As For The Eastern Part Of The Former Soviet Union, The Picture Is Rather Uniform. Authoritarian Structures Prevail To Differing Extents. But We Can Still Determine Certain Regularities, And The Role Of Russia Is Not To Be Underestimated. It Is Clear That We Would Have The Same Situation In Tajikistan And, Let's Say, Uzbekistan Without The Direct Influence Of Russia.

A Grandmaster Needs To Retain Thousands Of Games In His Head, For Games Are To Him What The Words Of Their Mother Tongue Are To Ordinary People, Or Notes Or Scores To Musicians.

Tactics Involve Calculations That Can Tax The Human Brain, But When You Boil Them Down, They Are Actually The Simplest Part Of Chess And Are Almost Trivial Compared To Strategy.

It Is Better To Have A Bad Plan Than No Plan.

Furthermore, The Situation In The North Caucasus Is Rather Unstable. Mutual Relations And The Cooperation Between [vladimir] Putin And [ramzan] Kadyrov, The High Price That Has Been Paid To Buy The Loyalty Of The Local Elite Through An Enormous Tribute Of Multibillion[-ruble] Investments, All This Cannot Be An Arrangement For Good.

The International Repercussions Were Shattering To Some Extent - There Is No Intention To Repeat Operations Of Such Kind In The Future.[viktor] Yanukovych's Electoral Victory Clearly Demonstrated That There Are No Pro-russian Politicians In The Ukraine, Just Ukrainian Politicians.

The Sanctions And Travel Restrictions Would Have To Be Far More Comprehensive To Be Truly Painful For [vladimir] Putin And His Inner Circle. And The New Middle Class Should Also Feel The Effects Of What He Is Doing. For Instance, We Should Ask Those Who Wish To Enter The Eu Whether They Have Visited Illegally Occupied Crimea In The Last Few Months And, If The Answer Is "yes," Deny Them A Visa.

You're Always Going To Have Dangerous, Disaffected People In Any Society, And Some Will Be Violent. Increasing Prosperity And Reducing Inequality Won't Solve That Completely. But Having Big, Positive Dreams And A Society That Makes It Possible To Achieve Those Dreams Is What We Must Strive For.

Recognise That The Free World Is At War With Putin, And America Is The Leader Of The Free World And Should Build The Coalition Against Him. It Is Similar To What Harry Truman Did In The Forties. They Have To Oppose The Threat That Comes From Putin And Other Dictators.

You Know, If I'm In A Bad Mood, I Always Look At The Chessboard, Just To Find Something That Can Cheer Me Up.

I Started Playing Chess When I Was Five Years Old. I Learned The Moves From My Mother, Then Worked With My Father - And Later Trainers. My Style Became Very Technical. I Sacrificed A Lot Of Things. I Was Always Hunting For The King, For The Mate. I'd Forget About My Other Pieces.

Russian Parliament Today Is A Bunch Of Puppets That Just Fall In With The Instructions From Kremlin.

I Think Russians Today Have A Distorted Picture Of Capitalism, Liberal Democracy And Market Economy.

Russia Is A Mafia State Today, And Putin Is Its Top Godfather.

The Only Way To Fail For Me Is Just Not To Try.

A Master Looks At Every Move He Would Like To Make, Especially The Impossible Ones

It Is Quite Difficult To Establish A Clear-cut Cause-and-effect Relationship, As The Causes Are Manifold And Closely Connected. It Is Simply Not Correct To Link The Level Of Democracy To Prosperity. It Is Absolutely Clear That The Economic Wealth Of Saudi Arabia Exceeds The Performance Of The Czech Republic. But Apparently Democracy Is Quite Stable In The Czech Republic, Which Cannot Be Said About Saudi Arabia. As We Delve Into The Past, We Must Not Forget About The Existing Model Of Society.

More And More People In My Country Recognise The Dangers Of Having Their Governors Appointed By Putin And Having No Influence In Parliament Because Parliament Today Is Also Following Instructions From Kremlin And No Longer Represents Its People.

Following Instructions

Chess Is One Of The Few Arts Where Composition Takes Place Simultaneously With Performance

There Are Many Facts Showing That Putin's People Enriched Themselves By Using Power Mechanisms So That's Why For Them Losing Power Means Losing Their Fortunes.

Alexei Navalny, The Opposition Politician Who Has Led Anti-corruption Protests, Had A Blog About A Credit Line To A Company Owned By Vladimir Putin's Son-in-law, $1.75 Billion From Russian State Funds; This Is One Transaction. Putin Controls More Money Directly And Indirectly Than Any Individual In Human History.

In The Event That We Don't Want To Lose The Far East And Siberia, We Need A United Europe.

A Grandmaster Must Memorize Thousands Of Chess Duels In His Head, As These Are For Him What Words Of The Mother Tongue Are To The Ordinary People And What Notes Are To A Musician.

So Many Dictators Trying To Blackmail The Free World Because They Have No Way To Compete On Ideas, Innovation Or Creativity. The Cold War Was Two Competing Visions Of The Future. I Was Always Anti-communist But It Was An Idea At Least, An Alternative Idea. We Do Not Have A Competing Vision For The Future Because The Ideals Of These Dictators Are In The Past. They Are Time Travellers. They Need Confrontation And Destruction To Survive. The Problem Is, Many People In The Free World Are Sympathetic To Vladimir Putin.

For Us To Make Sure That We Have Full Lives, Meaningful Lives, We Will Have To Elevate Our Unique Human Qualities. And I Think We Know Now, We Can See Clearly What Makes Us Different From Machines. And That's Why The Future Is Enhanced Humanity.

I Would Like To Travel To My Country Again, To A Country Without A Dictatorship, To A Post-putin Russia.

One Does Not Succeed By Sticking To Convention.

The Stock Market And The Gridiron And The Battlefield Aren't As Tidy As The Chessboard, But In All Of Them, A Single, Simple Rule Holds True: Make Good Decisions And You'll Succeed; Make Bad Ones And You'll Fail.

Kortchnoi's Heritage Is Many-faceted - Over The Decades He Has Several Times Corrected And Changed His Style. But The Main Thing Has Invariably Remained His Search For Chess Truth.

Capablanca Possessed An Amazing Ability To Quickly See Into A Position And Intuitively Grasp Its Main Features. His Style, One Of The Purest, Most Crystal-clear In The Entire History Of Chess, Astonishes One With His Logic.

The Legend Of The Best Player Of Chess Has Been Destroyed.

Results Show That Just One Year Of Chess Tuition Will Improve A Student's Learning Abilities, Concentration, Application, Sense Of Logic, Self-discipline, Respect, Behavior And The Ability To Take Responsibility For His/her Own Actions.

I Think Russian People Are Learning That Democracy Is Not An Alien Thing; It's Not A Western Invention.

It Was Not About Losing My Mental Power; It's About Not Feeling Good About My Contribution To The Game.

Rhetoric Matters, But At The End Of The Day Policy Matters More.

By This Measure (on The Gap Between Fischer & His Contemporaries), I Consider Him The Greatest World Champion

I Certainly Want To Be Involved In Politics And Help Shape The Transition. I Am In Contact With Regime Critics Who Had To Leave For The West. One Of Them Is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, The Former Businessman, Who Had To Endure 10 Years In A Prison Camp.

I See My Own Style As Being A Symbiosis Of The Styles Of Alekhine, Tal And Fischer.

At Any Time The Atmosphere In The West Could Change, For Which Determined Political Will I Do Not See At The Moment Is A Necessary Prerequisite. From The Sidelines, It Seems That He's Caught Up In His Own Exorbitant Ambitions.

Inevitably The Machines Must Win, But There Is Still A Long Way To Go Before A Human On His Or Her Best Day Is Unable To Defeat The Best Computer.

One Does Not Succeed By Sticking To Convention. When Your Opponent Can Easily Anticipate Every Move You Make, Your Strategy Deteriorates And Becomes Commoditized.

I Don't Have Enough Information, And Enough Courage, To Come Up With A Definite Version Of Events. And I Think It Is Too Dangerous For Me To Do So.

Perfectly Correct Chess Exists Only In Theory.

I'm Not Paranoid, But I Am Cautious. I Don't Drink Tea With Strangers, I Don't Fly Aeroflot And I Avoid Certain Countries With Close Ties To Russia.

It's Quite Difficult For Me To Imagine My Life Without Chess.

I Have Some Security That Could Protect Me Against Provocations But Of Course There Are More Terrible Actions That Could Not Be Stopped By Any Security.

There Are Fixed Rules In Chess, And No One Knows How The Game Will End.

At The Northern Border Of Azerbaijan, Daghestan By No Means Contributes To The Democratization Of The Caucasus.

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.

If We Keep An Optimistic View About The Future, We Definitely Have To Look For Our Place. Not To Be Redundant. And That Means We Have To Emphasize What Makes Us Unique.

Sometimes The Hardest Thing To Do In A Pressure Situation Is To Allow The Tension To Persist. The Temptation Is To Make A Decision, Any Decision, Even If It Is An Inferior Choice.

When Considering The Islamic World, Turkey Is The Best Example Of A Country Where Democracy Irreversibly Gained A Foothold Despite Religious And Cultural Traditions Still Respected Today. With Some Reservation, This Can Be Said About Pakistan, Too, Where We Can Observe Dynamic Political Processes Going On [and] Governments Change As A Result Of Elections. In My Opinion, It Is Up To The Ruling Elite To Initiate Cardinal Changes.

We Have A Saying That A Stranger's Soul Is Like A Black Box. Which Is Why I Would Not Want To Analyze [vladimir] Putin's Psychological Motivations.

My Love Of Dynamic Complications Often Led Me To Avoid Simplicity When Perhaps It Was The Wisest Choice.

Quite Frankly, I Have To Admit That With Regard To The Enormous Financial Assets And Funds Of Russian Leaders In Western Banks And On Stock Markets, The Chances For The West To Exert Influence On Russia Are Quite Low. I Doubt That Western Leaders Are Willing To Exert Pressure. I Would Not Exclude An Intervention In Case Of A Crisis.

It Is Quite Clear, However, That There Won't Be Any Real Changes With The Current Clan Structure Having Seized Power In The Course Of The Karabakh Conflict.

There Is No One That Can Share Your Responsibility. It It Is Your Responsibility You Must Carry It On And You Must Be Responsible For Your Actions. At The End Of The Day We All Are Being Challenged, Sooner Or Later, By Our Destiny. And It's Up To Us To Make All The Difference In This Life. If Not You, Who Else?

[vladimir] Putin Spoke Unabashedly About The Importance Of National Sovereignty In Syria, A Concept Apparently Near And Dear To His Heart, Unless It Comes To The Sovereignty Of Georgia, Ukraine Or Any Other Country In Which He Intervenes. Then He Offered His Cooperation, But Without Making Any Concrete Concessions At All. And He Didn't Have To, Either. He Knows What He Can Rely On. He Has Assets That Are More Valuable Than Words: He Has Tanks In Ukraine, Fighter Jets In Syria - And Barack Obama In The White House.

Chess Is Mental Torture.

I Would Say That When You Go To The Very, Very Top, It's An Ability To Come Up With New Ideas, With Something New, To Make The Difference. Every World Champion, Every Player Who Was Traversing This Universe, Managed To Bring Something New To The Game. This Ability To Always Find Some Unconventional Ways. That Makes The Final Difference.

Many Republicans Who Traditionally Were For A Positive Role In The World, Anti-russian, Now They Want To Defend Their Party And Leader, And They Don't Care About Real Arguments. The Paradox Is The Democrats Were So Timid In Criticising Vladimir Putin. Barack Obama Appeased Him And Now They Are Criticising Putin's Interference In American Democracy. It Is A Strange Reversal Of The Roles.

Weaknesses Of Character Are Normally Shown In A Game Of Chess.

The Russian Dept Of Tourism Has Declared Ukraine Its Most Dangerous Destination. Many Russian Tourists Have Disappeared There.

The Situation In Georgia Is Determined By The Breakaway Regions Abkhazia And South Ossetia. While We Must Acknowledge The Reforms Initiated By Mikheil Saakashvili That Drastically Lowered The Level Of Corruption And Authoritarian Structures In The Georgian State, Under The Above-mentioned Circumstances, The Ruling Elite Must Keep A Firm Grip On The Country.

The Far East And Eastern Siberia Are Already Developing According To A Chinese Scenario, The Full Scope Of Which Will Be Revealed In The Near Future. In The Next 10 To 15 Years, A Lot Of Russian Territories Will Become At Least De Facto Chinese. This Will Change The Situation In Russia Fundamentally.

Vladimir Putin Mainly Has Friends In Europe Among The Extreme Right, Such As Marine Le Pen's Front National In France.

When I Was Preparing For One Term's Work In The Botvinnik School I Had To Spend A Lot Of Time On King And Pawn Endings. So When I Came To A Tricky Position In My Own Games I Knew The Winning Method.

I Wouldn't Overestimate The Importance Of My Popularity In The Country And Abroad But At The End Of The Day It's Not As Important Because I Believe That My Presence Here Could Make Some Difference And It Could Encourage People.

I Believe More Than Ever, Machines Will Put New Challenges, And That Means We'll Have To Be More Creative And More Human, Because That's The Way To Make The Difference.

Dictatorships Can Exist With Free Markets - Not That China Is Really A Free Market - Especially In Poor Countries Where The Regime Insists That It's A Choice Between Food And Liberty, A False Choice. But Increasing Affluence Will Inevitably Result In Political Pressure.

Putin Recognized That If He Could Get Enough Money, Everything Would Be Under Control.

Solving New Problems Is What Keeps Us Moving Forward As Individuals And As A Society, So Don't Back Down.

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.

Dictatorships Sometimes Fall Unexpectedly And Quickly. And [vladimir] Putin Knows That For Him, The Loss Of Power Doesn't Mean A Comfortable Retirement, But Something Completely Different.

Thanks To The Polgars The Adjective 'men's' Before Events And The 'affirmative Action' Women's Titles Such As Woman Grandmaster Have Become Anachronisms.

Putin Can't Afford To Leave The Office Because He Will Be In Real Danger Of Being Prosecuted For Things He And His People Did During Their Stay In Power.

Winning Is Not A Secret That Belongs To A Very Few, Winning Is Something That We Can Learn By Studying Ourselves, Studying The Environment And Making Ourselves Ready For Any Challenge That Is In Front Of Us.

[vladimir] Putin's Russia Is Only Indirectly Concerned With The Conflict Between Armenia And Azerbaijan As A Means Of Maintaining Its Sphere Of Influence. I Doubt That Russia Will Meddle. Moreover, I'm Quite Sure That Ilham Aliyev Won't Decide To Carry Out Any Serious Action - It's Not In His Interest. He's Learned His Lesson Very Well - Threaten To Take Action But Never Act On Such Words.

If You Wish To Succeed, You Must Brave The Risk Of Failure.

For Young Players, Their Minds Are Not Overloaded. I Am 54 With Four Kids And I Do Many Other Things. Even If I Stopped Everything Else, Spent Months Working Just On Chess, For A Long Match Against Most Of The Top Players, A Classical Match, Six Hours, Say, I Don't Stand A Chance. I Have A Better Chance In Shorter Matches. Rapid Is 25 Minutes, Or Blitz Events Where You Have Five Minutes To Make A Move, Or Bullet Games, Where It Is One Minute. For Blitz, Five-minutes Chess, I Would Be Top Ten, Top Five. But Longer Games, No Chance.

The Technical Phase Can Be Boring Because There Is Little Opportunity For Creavivity, For Art. Boredom Leads To Complacency And Mistakes.

In Chess, Bigamy Is Acceptable But Monarchy Is Absolute.

This Is The Essential Element That Cannot Be Measured By Any Analysis Or Device, And I Believe It's At The Heart Of Success In All Things: The Power Of Intuition And The Ability To Harness And Use It Like A Master.

Barack Obama Took Over After Vladimir Putin's First Aggression, In Georgia. In 2009, He Did The Reset Policy Because They Had These Stupid Ideas About Former President Dmitry Medvedev. They Thought He Would Be The Leader, Not Putin. Everyone Played This Game With Medvedev As Their Bet, Berlin, Paris, London, The Idea Of Smoothly Transferring To Something More Acceptable. It Was Always A Charade, A Putin Project To Solidify His Power And Come Back After Four Years Of Nominal Occupation Of The Office By Medvedev.

I'm Looking Forward To The Day When My Country Is Saved - And The Current Winner Becomes A Loser.

Looking Forward

Vladimir Putin Has This Animalistic Instinct Of All Dictators: He Smells Weakness. To Quote Winston Churchill's Definition Of Appeasement: "an Appeaser Is One Who Feeds A Crocodile, Hoping It Will Eat Him Last."

Tarrasch's 'dogmas' Are Not Eternal Truisms, But Merely Instructional Material Presented In An Accessible And Witty Form, Those Necessary Rudiments From Which One Can Begin To Grasp The Secrets Of Chess.

Chess Is A Unique Battlefield For Human Minds And Computers - Human Intuition, Our Creativity, Fantasy, Our Logic, Versus The Brute Force Of Calculation And A Very Small Portion Of Accumulated Knowledge Infused By Other Human Beings. So In Chess We Can Compare These Two Incompatible Things And Probably Make Projections Into Our Future. Is There Danger That The Human Mind Will Be Overshadowed By The Power Of Computers, Or We Can Still Survive?

We See Threats To Liberal Democracy Coming From Lots Of Directions. We Have To Create Something New, A Common Response, Because In So Many Places - The Uk, France, Germany - Ultranationalists And The Far Left Threaten The Free Market And Liberal Democracy.

We Have To Stop The Propaganda, The Shameful Propaganda Used By Kremlin To Rehabilitate These Old Types.

My Nature Is That I Have To Excite Myself With A Big Challenge.

There Is No Democracy In Russia. Dictators Do Not Go Away Through The Vote. Putin Relies On Riot Police, Thousands Of Them, With Heavy Equipment, Fighting Russian Youngsters From Opposition.

The Only Game [vladimir] Putin Can Play Is To Establish A Lifelong Dictatorship In The Country, At First De Facto And Finally Also De Jure. In This Case, [dmitri] Medvedev Is An Interim Figure Bound To Assist Putin In His Plan To Guarantee A Smooth Transition To A New Term In Office.

If You Make A Decision To Fight For Future Of Your Own Country You Have To Consider All The Consequences.

All Experiments That Are Related To The Games When You Have Humans Versus Machines In The Games - Whether It's Chess Or "go" Or Any Other Game - Machines Will Prevail Not Because They Can Solve The Game. Chess Is Mathematically Unsolvable. But At The End Of The Day, The Machine Doesn't Have To Solve The Game. The Machine Has To Win The Game. And To Win The Game, It Just Has To Make Fewer Mistakes Than Humans. Which Is Not That Difficult Since Humans Are Humans And Vulnerable, And We Don't Have The Same Steady Hand As The Computer.

A Championship Contender In The Early Twentieth Century Needed Charisma And A Knack For Cultivating Sponsorship, And Rubinstein Was The Epitome Of The Shy And Unsocial Chess Player. Now Matter How Great His Chess Skills, He Lacked The People Skills To Be A Self-promoter And Fund-raiser.

Botvinnik Tried To Take The Mystery Out Of Chess, Always Relating It To Situations In Ordinary Life. He Used To Call Chess A Typical Inexact Problem Similar To Those Which People Are Always Having To Solve In Everyday Life.

In My Opinion, Using Different Kinds Of Epithets And Adjectives In Connection With The Word Democracy Is A Sign Of Mere Hypocrisy, To Put It Mildly. Either There's Democracy, Or There Isn't.

Ultimately, What Separates A Winner From A Loser At The Grandmaster Level Is The Willingness To Do The Unthinkable.

It's Not Enough To Be Talented. It's Not Enough To Work Hard And To Study Late Into The Night. You Must Also Become Intimately Aware Of The Methods You Use To Reach Your Decisions.

For Me, Chess Is A Language, And If It's Not My Native Tongue, It Is One I Learned Via The Immersion Method At A Young Age.

Even Well-known Historians Like Edward Gibbon Are Talking About How The Soldiers Of The 18th Century Were Not Able To Do The Same Type Of Exercise [like Romans].

Ratings Are King And The Money Keeps Flowing, And Partisanship Is So Strong Today That People Rely On A Few Sources Absolutely Instead Of Thinking Critically. So Even Being A Cheerleader For A Gameshow-host President With No Respect For The Rule Of Law Or America's Reputation In The World May Not Be A Career-ending Move.

We Shouldn't Forget That In The Case Of Georgia, A Problem Was Done Away With That Bothered [vladimir] Putin Personally - That Is, The Security During The Winter Olympics In Sochi In 2014. Security Not In The Sense Of A Guaranteed Absence Of A Terror Attack, But In Pursuing The Aim Of Moving Hot Spots Of Possible Conflict Farther From The Site Of The Olympic Games, Which Are To Be Held A Stone's Throw From Abkhazia - That Is, In De Jure Georgia.

A Brilliant Strategy Is, Certainly, A Matter Of Intelligence, But Intelligence Without Audaciousness Is Not Enough.

The Downfall Of Democratic Institutions In Russia Doesn't Add To The Self-confidence Of Either [vladimir] Putin Or His Friends, As The Loss Of Power Could Lead To Repercussions In Russian Society.

Self Confidence

I Tried To Come Up With A Definition Of This New Paradigm In Six Articles Entitled "russia After Putin." I Would Consider Russia's Integration Into Europe The Most Important Element Of This Strategy.

When You Put Party Over Principles, You Can't Avoid Tripping Over Your Own Hypocrisy And Contradictions Eventually. The Gop Establishment Refused To Stand Up To Trump During The Primary Because They Wanted His Voters In Order To Beat Hillary Clinton. Then He Won The Primary, And Then The General, And The Gop Both Times Decided It Was Better To Cling To Their Grasp At Power, To Cling To Trump And All He Stands For, A Decision That Should Destroy The Party Or Drag It Down For A Generation.

Somehow, Ai Is Playing An Important Role Of Breaking Up The Ice Of Complacency. We Have A Comfortable Life, We Just Don't Want To Take Risks. Ai Is Threatening Too Many Comfortable Jobs To Make People Think About Taking Risks Again.

Like Dvoretsky, I Think That (all Other Things Being Equal), The Analytical Method Of Studying Chess Must Give You A Colossal Advantage Over The Chess Pragmatist, And That There Can Be No Certainty In Chess Without Analysis. I Personally Acquired These Views From My Sessions With Mikhail Botvinnik, And They Laid The Foundations Of My Chess-playing Life.

All Women Are Inferior To Men.

By The Time A Player Becomes A Grandmaster, Almost All Of His Training Time Is Dedicated To Work On This First Phase. The Opening Is The Only Phase That Holds Out The Potential For True Creativity And Doing Something Entirely New.

There Are Exceptions Of Course, Like For Instance The Baltic States, Which Are Members Of The European Union, Together With Ukraine And Moldova, As Well. In Those Countries, The Governments Have Been Reformed As A Result Of Elections.

Intelligent Machines Will Continue That Mechanization Process, Taking Over The More Menial Aspects Of Cognition And Elevating Our Mental Lives Towards Creativity, Curiosity, Beauty, And Joy. These Are What Truly Makes Us Human.

Nervous Energy Is The Ammunition We Take Into Any Mental Battle. If You Don't Have Enough Of It, Your Concentration Will Fade. If You Have A Surplus, The Results Will Explode.

We Are Living In A New Ice Age, And We Need To Apply The Recipes Of The Cold War To The Kremlin. That Means Isolation Instead Of Offers Of Negotiation. And Ukraine Should Have Been Supplied With Weapons Long Ago.

It Didn't Take Long To Recognise The Shortcomings Of The Soviet Regime And To See The Values Of The Free World.

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.

Anything That We Know How We Do, Machines Will Do Better. Now, The Key Element Of This Phrase Is, "we Know How We Do It." Because We Do Many Things Without Knowing Exactly How We Do Them. So This Is The Area Where Machines Are Vulnerable, Because It Still Has To Learn From Some Kind Of Experience. It Needs Something - At Least The Rules Of The Game. You Have To Bring In Something That Will Help The Machine To Start Learning. It's Like Square One. If There's Nothing There, If You Can't Explain It, That's A Problem.

Caissa, The Goddess Of Chess, Had Punished Me For My Conservative Play, For Betraying My Nature.

I Am Lucky, .. That The Popular Sport In The Soviet Union Was Chess And Not Baseball.

One Of My Optimistic Prophecies Is Based On The Assumption That Machines Could Have The Best Algorithms In The Universe, But It Will Never Have Purpose. And The Problem For Us To Explain Purpose To A Machine Is Because We Don't Know What Our Purpose Is. We Have The Purpose, But We Still ... When We Look At This Global Picture, A Universal Picture, To Understand What Is Our Purpose Being Here On This Planet? We Don't Know.

I'm Not Trying To Give Any Definite Answer. What I'm Trying To Prove Is That We Have Enough Gaps, Enough Discrepancies, Enough Simple Falsifications To Conclude That Probably This History Was An Invention Of A Later Time.

If You're Already In A Fight, You Want The First Blow To Be The Last And You Had Better Be The One To Throw It.

From Ukraine To Syria, He [vladimir Putin] Is Behaving Like The World's New General And Celebrating Victories, While The American President Sits On The Sidelines And Europe Sleeps. The West's Behavior Toward Putin Is Political And Moral Capitulation.

At The End Of The Day, It's All About Money.

The End Of The Day

Boris Nemtsov And I Began To Argue After Putin's Return To The Presidency In 2012. In My Opinion, There Was No Longer A Realistic Chance To Achieve Regime Change Through Peaceful Political Means, Or Real Elections. Boris, On The Other Hand, Never Lost This Hope. He Felt That My Assessment Was Premature And Said: "you Have To Live A Long Time To See Changes In Russia." He Was Deprived Of That Opportunity.

When I Was On An American Show In 2015, I Tried To Talk About The Threat Vladimir Putin Posed To The Free World. The Interviewer Said, "wake Me Up When He Takes Over Poland." We Heard Something Similar From Years Ago And We Ended Up With World War Two. Putin Decided To Skip Poland And Went Straight To Wisconsin. Putin Is At War, A Hybrid War, With The Free World. His Domestic Propaganda Is Based Entirely On A Strong Man Challenging The Free World. When The Demonstrations Around Russia Began, The Harsh Response Was Because It Was More Important To Show Strength.

I Don't Think That Nature Envisaged An Insurmountable Mechanism That Would Hinder Any Country From Taking The Path Of Democratic Development.

Few Things Are As Psychologically Brutal As Chess.

Do As Little As Necessary To Appear To Be Doing Something Without Actually Committing To A Cause Or Course Of Action.

We Know That For The Last 300 Or 400 Years, The Size Of Human Bodies Is Growing. Now What Happened Is That We Suddenly, In History, Have The Backward Process. We Have These Great Greek Athletes, We Have Ultra-powerful Roman Soldiers. You Look At The Size Of The Roman Soldier Who Has To Carry All This Ammunition. You're Talking About 300,000 Arnold Schwartzeneggers.

Constructs Like Race Will Decline In Relevance In A Roboticized World. That How Well One Human Subset Or Community - A Race, A Nationality, A Religion - Is Doing Will Be Secondary To How Well Humanity In General Is Doing In Face Of The Robot Revolution.

I'm Not Saying That George W. Bush Did Everything Right. But Even If You Take A Skeptical View Of His Iraq War, [barack] Obama Made The More Serious Error Of Withdrawing His Troops From Iraq Early.

It Was An Impressive Achievement, Of Course, And A Human Achievement By The Members Of The Ibm Team, But Deep Blue Was Only Intelligent The Way Your Programmable Alarm Clock Is Intelligent. Not That Losing To A $10 Million Alarm Clock Made Me Feel Any Better.

I Am Between The Tories And The Lib Dems. I Am Fiscally Conservative. I'm For Strong Foreign Policy, But Socially Very Liberal. I Am Not Religious. That Makes Me Feel Uncomfortable With American Republicans. I Don't Feel At Home Anywhere, Really. Labour Under Tony Blair Was Not Something I Would Associate Myself With, But I Didn't Have A Big Problem With It. I Have To Make A Choice Between Fiscal And The Role Of The State And Social Freedom.

Donald Trump Is A Catalyst. People Care Now In A Way They Didn't. The American Institutions Were Rusting; Now They Are Being Revitalised. Trump Is A Lightning Rod. They Are Getting Engaged And The American Liberal Media That Spent Too Much Time On Pc Issues Can Focus On Vladimir Putin And Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Chess Strength In General And Chess Strength In A Specific Match Are By No Means One And The Same Thing.

History Tells You If Dictators Are Not Stopped In Time, They Cause More Damage.

[vladimir] Putin Needs Wars To Legitimize His Position.

Enormous Self-belief, Intuition, The Ability To Take A Risk At A Critical Moment And Go In For A Very Dangerous Play With Counter-chances For The Opponent - It Is Precisely These Qualities That Distinguish Great Players.

The Loss Of My Childhood Was The Price For Becoming The Youngest World Champion In History. When You Have To Fight Every Day From A Young Age, Your Soul Can Be Contaminated. I Lost My Childhood. I Never Really Had It. Today I Have To Be Careful Not To Become Cruel, Because I Became A Soldier Too Early.

I Can't Think Of A Scenario Under Which [vladimir Putin] Would Gradually Resign From Power. For Him And Those Around Him, Power Became A Source Of Unlimited Enrichment. A Loss Of Power Would Be Tantamount To An Annihilation Of The Economic Success That Has Been Achieved So Far.

Our Skin, Our Borders, All Seem Petty Compared To Alien Races And The Scale Of Galaxies. Nobody In The Star Wars Universe Cares About White Or Black Humans, It Seems, And What Meaning Could Physical Appearance Possibly Have When There Are Sentient Beings That Look Like Lobsters Or Like Jabba The Hutt? Unfortunately, In The Real World, Such Hopeful Sentiments Are Regularly Refuted By Our Stubborn Insistence On Always Finding Someone To Discriminate Against.

If We Look At Everybody's Darling, China, There Is An Analogue Called Taiwan That Is Inhabited By The Chinese As Well. But The Standard Of Living And Of Innovation Of The Taiwanese Economy Cannot Be Compared With The Chinese Growth Rate.

We Have Again A Strange Gap. We Have The Big Scientific Discoveries Around The Second, Third Century Bc. Then We Have An Invention Of The So-called Arab System, The Positional System Of Counting With Zero Dated To The Eighth Or Ninth Century.

I've Seen Up Close The Benefits And Drawbacks Of Kids Working With Super-strong Chess Programs In Their Training, And They Definitely Think Differently Than Past Generations Thanks To This Alien Influence. While We Are Making Our Machines More Intelligent, They Are Also Changing How We Think.

The Greeks According To Official History Used Letters For Hundreds, For Tens, And Ones.it Was Extremely Complicated. If You Talk About Archimedes, You Should Use Greek Letters.

Remember That The Machine Is There To Help You, Because At The End Of The Day, You're Not Playing Freestyle Chess, Advanced Chess, Human-plus-machine. If You Are Playing Against Other Humans, It's About Winning The Game. The Machine Will Not Be Assisting You, Unless You Are Cheating Of Course. And Since The Machine Is Not There, You Have To Make Sure That Everything You Learn From The Computer Will Not Badly Affect The Way You Play The Real Game.

Women, By Their Nature, Are Not Exceptional Chess Players: They Are Not Great Fighters.

I'm Still Number One And I Just Recently Won A Major Tournament Ahead Of My Toughest Rivals So I Think I Had A Few Years Ahead Of Me If I Decided To Stay.

I Feel That My Chess Strengths Are Still Here, .. I Believe I Can Still Improve.

I Don't Really Like Discussions About A Supposed Russian National Character.

We Are Living In A World Where Major States And Large Geopolitical Projects Have To Prove Their Competitive Edge. It Is Clear, As Well, That With Regard To The Intensifying American-chinese Confrontation And The Inert Power Of A United Europe, Russia Has To Make Up Its Mind - Because It Is Losing Ground As An Independent Center Of Power.

Next To The Intellectual Stimulation Of Chess, The Educational Value Is Of Great Importance. Chess Teaches Logic, Imagination, Self-discipline, And Determination.

We Have To Always Look Ahead Enough Moves To Be Well Prepared, Even For Victory!

Question The Status Quo At All Times, Especially When Things Are Going Well.

Of Course, If People Do Not Want To Do Any Work Then It Is Better To Start The Game From A Random Position.

Unfortunately, In Russia This "asian Mentality,"still Comes To The Fore. But At The Same Time, It Is Obvious That There Is A Certain Orientation Toward The West. In The End, This Is A Fragile Balancing Act Between The Asian Manner Of Governance And High Living Standards That Are Guaranteed Through Western Technology.

I Would Not Draw Definitive Conclusions From That. If We Look At South And North Korea, It Is Pretty Hard To Believe That We're Dealing With The Same People. Half Of The People Are Forced To Live In A Concentration Camp; The Other Have Created One Of The Most Dynamic Economies In The World.

It's True That In Chess As In Politics, Fund-raising And Glad-handing Matter.

Donald Trump Envies Anyone Who Can Do Things He Can't.

Furthermore, A Large Portion Of The Assets Of Leading Russian Figures Is Mixed, Meaning That It Is Not Quite Clear How To Counter This Development.

If We Look At Statistical Data, We See That Protestant Countries In Terms Of Economic Development Are More Successful Than Those Observing Catholicism.

The Kremlin Is Constantly Changing The Rules Of The Game To Suit Its Purposes. We Are Not Playing Chess, We're Playing Roulette.

Boris Vasilievich Was The Only Top-class Player Of His Generation Who Played Gambits Regularly And Without Fear ... Over A Period Of 30 Years He Did Not Lose A Single Game With The King's Gambit, And Among Those Defeated Were Numerous Strong Players Of All Generations, From Averbakh, Bronstein And Fischer, To Seirawan.

I Dropped The King's Indian In 1997 After One Too Many Bad Experiences Against Kramnik.

Bad Experiences

The Slightest Sign Of Stability Is Used By Local Authoritarian Leaders To Bargain For The Sympathies Of Western Countries That Are, For The Sake Of A Balanced Relationship, Bound To Turn A Blind Eye To Obvious, Blatant Violations Of Human Rights And The Deconstruction Of Democratic Institutions In These Countries.

Violation Of Human Rights

I Like To Say That The Attacker Always Has The Advantage.

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