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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.

-Garry Kasparov

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For Inspiration I Look

Garry Kasparov

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Machines Taking Over Jobs - It's The History Of Civilization. Replacing Farm Animals, Old Forms Of Manual Labor, Now Taking Over Small, Menial Aspects Of Cognition. But There's Still Plenty Of Room For Creativity, For Curiosity - Many Things That Are Related To Passion, Like Art. But Also, Things About Human Communication And Challenges, Massive Challenges That We Left Behind Because We Didn't Want To Take So Much Risk, Such As Space Exploration, Deep Ocean Exploration.

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.

I Think We Have Very Steady Records Of President Putin, Who Inherited The Country With Democratic Values.

By Strictly Observing Botvinnik's Rule Regarding The Thorough Analysis Of One's Own Games, With The Years I Have Come To Realize That This Provides The Foundation For The Continuous Development Of Chess Mastery.

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.

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.

The Real Political Life In Russia Unfortunately Is Not In The Parliament But On The Streets And In The Media.

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.

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

In Conclusion, If You Want To Unravel The Multitude Of Secrets Of Chess Then Don't Begrudge The Time.

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.

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.

I Have Great Energy And I Have Great Tasks Ahead Of Me.

There Are Many Ways Of Showing Your Protest And Discontent Without The Actions Of Kremlin.

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.

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Chess Helps You To Concentrate, Improve Your Logic. It Teaches You To Play By The Rules And Take Responsibility For Your Actions, How To Problem Solve In An Uncertain Environment.

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

The Situation In The [north Caucasus ] Region Can Easily Get Out Of Control If The Capital Inflow Is Interrupted. It Is Apparent, Even When Leaving Democratic Institutions And Values Aside For A Moment, That [vladimir] Putin's Regime Has Led The Country Down A Blind Alley. Our Task Is To Usher In A Shift Of Paradigms, A New Foundation.

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

If We Look To The South, To Iran, Which Cannot Be "accused" Of Excess Democratic Zeal - It Goes Without Saying That The Unstable Situation Does Not Prepare The Ground For A Democratic Development.

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.

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

...comparing The Capacity Of Computers To The Capacity Of The Human Brain, I've Often Wondered, Where Does Our Success Come From? The Answer Is Synthesis, The Ability To Combine Creativity And Calculation, Art And Science, Into Whole That Is Much Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts.

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.

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

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.

Ultimately, What Separates A Winner From A Loser At The Grandmaster Level Is The Willingness To Do The Unthinkable. A Brilliant Strategy Is, Certainly, A Matter Of Intelligence, But Intelligence Without Audaciousness Is Not Enough. Given The Opportunity, I Must Have The Guts To Explode The Game, To Upend My Opponent's Thinking And, In So Doing, Unnerve Him. So It Is In Business: One Does Not Succeed By Sticking To Convention. When Your Opponent Can Easily Anticipate Every Move You Make, Your Strategy Deteriorates And Becomes Commoditized.

There Is No Doubt That [vladimir] Putin Is Responsible For This Crime, Whether Or Not He Gave The Order To Commit The Murder [of Boris Nemtsov] Himself. Putin Created The Conditions And Atmosphere That Have Made This Kind Of Thing Possible.

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

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.

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.

Few Things Are As Psychologically Brutal As Chess.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

One Lesson Is To Not To Play Desperately If Your Position Is Worse But Still Reasonable. Lashing Out Wildly In An Inferior Position Usually Only Hastens Defeat. Meanwhile, Solid, Stubborn Defense Can Demoralize The Attacker, Make Him Lose Confidence. When That Happens, The Tables Can Turn. Keep Fighting, Stay Steady, Keep Morale High - And Public Protests Are Good For All Of These Things.

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

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.

In Syria, Vladimir Putin Sees The Chance To Make Millions Of Refugees And Weaponise Them. The Us Has To Take A Lead In Defending The Values Of The Free World.

What I Am Trying To Figure Out In My Preface Is How Romans Could Operate Without The Simple Items - Maps - That Are Necessary For Running Such A Huge Empire.

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That Machines Will Surpass Us In Intelligence Is Inevitable. What It Means Is Unknowable. Will They Be Sentient? What Will They Care About In The Sense That Determines Our Human Motivations? All The Theorizing By The Experts And Non-experts Makes For Interesting Conversations And Dramatic Headlines, But It's More Likely We Will Be Surprised By How Our Technology Develops And How It Is Used, As We So Often Are.

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

The Public Must Come To See That Chess Is A Violent Sport. Chess Is Mental Torture.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

The Most Hopeful Approach To Peace In Ukraine Is The Minsk Agreement, Which Includes Moscow.

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

All That Now Seems To Stand Between Nigel And The Prospect Of The World Crown Is The Unfortunate Fact That Fate Brought Him Into This World Only Two Years After Kasparov.

Nowadays Games Immediately Appear On The Internet And Thus The Life Of Novelties Is Measured In Hours. Modern Professionals Do Not Have The Right To Be Forgetful - It Is 'life Threatening'.

In Chess The Rules Are Fixed And The Outcome Is Unpredictable, Whereas In Putin's Russia The Rules Are Unpredictable And The Outcome Is Fixed.

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

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

Any Experienced Player Knows How A Change In The Character Of The Play Influences Your Psychological Mood.

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.

To Play Chess On A Truly High Level Requires A Constant Stream Of Exact, Informed Decisions, Made In Real Time And Under Pressure From Your Opponent. What's More, It Requires A Synthesis Of Some Very Different Virtues, All Of Which Are Necessary To Good Decisions: Calculatioñ, Creativity And A Desire For Results. If You Ask A Grandmaster, An Artist And A Computer Scientist What Makes A Good Chess Player, You'll Get A Glimpse Of These Different Strengths In Action.

[vladimir] Putin Needs Wars To Legitimize His Position.

Many Politicians In The West Cling To The Notion Of A Partnership With Russia. They Want To Include [vladimir] Putin, Make Compromises And Constantly Negotiate New Deals With Him. But History Has Taught Us That The Longer We Pursue Appeasement And Do Nothing, The Higher The Price Will Be Later On. Dictators Don't Ask "why?" Before They Seize Even More Power. They Ask: "why Not?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Perfectly Correct Chess Exists Only In Theory.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The West Can't Come Up With Anything To Deal With Moscow, Except Appeasement.

In Armenia, The Power De Facto Belongs To Those Who Opted To Take Violent Action In Karabakh. We Are Dealing With A Military Dictatorship That Utilizes Some Kind Of Democratic Procedures.

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 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.

Rosneft, For Instance, Was Mainly Built Upon Capital Stolen From [jailed Oligarch Mikhail] Khodorkovsky's Company, But The Ipo Was Successful With Many Western Corporations Investing In It. This Means That It Is Extremely Difficult To Detect These Assets In Their Pure Form.

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.

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.

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.

The Soviet Union Tried To Sell A Set Of Ideas, Very Left Wing, And Focus On So-called Peace. Vladimir Putin Doesn't Care Who Helps Him To Push His Agenda. He Is Equally Comfortable With The Politics Of Nigel Farage And Corbyn In Britain, Le Pen And Jean-luc Mélenchon In France. Whether Far Left Or Nationalist, He Doesn't Care, As Long As They Support Chaos And Destruction And The Undermining Of Existing Institutions.

Learning From Our Mistakes Is Critical For Improving, But Even I Don't Have Patience For Ranking My Regrets. Regret Is A Negative Emotion That Inhibits The Optimism Required To Take On New Challenges. You Risk Living In An Alternative Universe, Where If Only You Had Done This Or That Differently, Things Would Be Better. That's A Poor Substitute For Making Your Actual Life Better, Or Improving The Lives Of Others. Regret Briefly, Analyze And Understand, And Then Move On, Improving The Only Life You Have.

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.

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.

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

Bad Experiences

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

Looking Forward

Energy Is Connected To Physical Fitness. One Of The Reasons I Stayed At The Top So Long Is That I Was Tremendously Fit. At 36, I Was Fitter Than Most Opponents Ten Years Younger.

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.

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.

It Is Rather Difficult To Envisage A Scenario That Could Change The Domestic Situation In The Countries Of The South Caucasus Without Solving The Problems Constantly Hindering Normal Cooperation In The Region.

The Regime Is In Trouble Economically And Can No Longer Offer Anything To Its Citizens. That's Why [vladimir] Putin Has To Pursue An Aggressive Foreign Policy, So He Can Serve His People The Fairy Tale Of Russian Pride And Regaining Its Strength As A Major Power.

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.

There's The Blazing Russian Caucasus, With An Ongoing War All Against All, Which Is Not To Be Neglected.

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.

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

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.

Russia's Inclination Toward Authoritarianism Undoubtedly Strengthened The Leaders In Azerbaijan, Armenia, And Kazakhstan, As They Are Afraid Of Normal Democratic Procedures.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Most Likely, The System Of Mutual Relations That Has Evolved In Eastern Europe And Asia Corresponds To Another Level Of Governance.

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

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.

When [vladimir] Putin, A Former Lieutenant-colonel In The Kgb, Became Russia's President On December 31, 1999 - Eight Years After The Failed Coup Attempt Against (then Soviet Leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, And Eight Years After The People Had Torn Down The Statue Of Felix Dzerzhinsky, The Hated Founder Of The Kgb, In Moscow - It Was Admittedly A Shock. Nevertheless, I Decided To Give Putin A Chance. He Seemed Dynamic And Capable Of Learning. But I Had To Bury My Hopes After Just A Few Months. He Proved To Be An Autocrat - And, Because The West Let Him Do As He Pleased, He Became A Dictator.

Chess Is Life In Miniature. Chess Is Struggle, Chess Is Battles

Chess Is Far Too Complex To Be Definitively Solved With Any Technology We Can Conceive Of Today. However, Our Looked-down-upon Cousin, Checkers, Or Draughts, Suffered This Fate Quite Recently Thanks To The Work Of Jonathan Schaeffer At The University Of Alberta And His Unbeatable Program Chinook.

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.

This Traditionally Happens In Russia And In Every Other Undemocratic Country As Well - The Quest For A Scapegoat Won't Be Long, Either. The Easiest Way To Find A Scapegoat Is To Ascribe That Role To Former Governments.

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.

Losing Can Persuade You To Change What Doesn't Need To Be Changed, And Winning Can Convince You Everything Is Fine Even If You Are On The Brink Of Disaster.

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

Setbacks And Losses Are Both Inevitable And Essential If You're Going To Improve And Become A Good, Even Great, Competitor. The Art Is In Avoiding Catastrophic Losses In The Key Battles.

Vladimir Putin Is The Wealthiest Man On The Planet, For Sure. But This Is Different To The Wealth Of A Bill Gates Or A Warren Buffett, A Carlos Slim Or A Sergey Brin. They Stay Wealthy Whether It Is Barack Obama Or Donald Trump In Power. Putin's Wealth Depends On Him Staying In Power. It Is All About Controlling The Budget, The Hard Currency Reserves And Keeping Under His Thumb The Oligarchs Who Cannot Move Their Money Without His Permission. It Is Something Close To A Trillion Dollars That He Can Control And Move.

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.

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.

Many So-called Pragmatists Want Nothing To Do With Space Exploration Or Other Kinds Of Ambitious Endeavours That Don't Have A Clear Payoff. This Mentality Is Hugely Damaging To Our Success As A Civilization. Our Desire To Understand The Universe Is Kindled By Curiosity And Wonder, And This Has Fuelled Countless Scientific Breakthroughs.

We Can't Attribute A Long History Of Democratic Traditions To Japan, Either, But Today Japan Boasts A Fully-fledged Democracy In Which Governments Change According To Democratic Procedures. It's No Coincidence That The Taiwanese, Japanese, And South Korean Economies Are Among The Most Innovative In Asia.

I've Met Enough Kgb Colonels In My Life.

In Chess, Bigamy Is Acceptable But Monarchy Is Absolute.

I Now Have Croatian Citizenship, But I Only Accepted It Because Croatia Allowed Me To Keep My Russian Passport.

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.

At A Certain Point, The Atmosphere In The West Could Change. But I Don't See Determined Political Will [for That] At The Moment.

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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.

Everyone, At Any Age, Has Talents That Aren't Fully Developed-even Those Who Reach The Top Of Their Profession.

I'm Not In Favour Of A Regulation-free World. I Align Myself With Teddy Roosevelt, Who Broke Up The Trusts. Regulation Is Necessary, But It Should Be In Favour Of The Consumer, The Citizen, And Freedom.

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.

[romans] Never Made Any Improvements On The Cavalry. And Amazingly, When You Read The Sources, They Couldn't Make It Because Stirrups Were Not Known In Europe. For Hundreds Of Years, The Romans Couldn't Make A Cavalry Which Proved To Be Extremely Effective.

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

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

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.

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.

Once I Spoke About This Subject Among A Group Of English Intellectuals. One Of Them Was A Professor On Roman Law At One Of The Leading British Universities. I Asked Him,what Was The Official Language Of The Byzantine Empire? He Said, Maybe Sometime In The Sixth Or The Seventh Century.the Justinian Codex, The Rule Of Law In The Byzantine Empire Which Was Produced By Emperor Justinian, It Was Written In Latin.and He Looked At Me ,he Knew That I Knew Already That The Only Original Copy Was Found In The Beginning Of The Sixteenth Century.

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.

Chess Is Mental Torture.

Without A Goal [maneuvering Is] Aimless. You Might Be A Master Tactician, But You'll Have No Sense Of Strategy.

A Machine Helps Us To Annihilate Our Weaknesses. We Don't Have A Steady Hand. We Can Lose All Vigilance. We Can Be Distracted By Something That Is Not That Relevant. But We Have Intuition. We Can Feel Certain Things. And With A Machine You Can Check Whether It's Right Or Wrong. That's Why By Bringing The Two Together, You Create A Very, Very Powerful Combination.

To My Surprise I Found That When Other Top Players In The Precomputer Age (before 1995, Roughly) Wrote About Games In Magazines And Newspaper Columns, They Often Made More Mistakes In Their Annotations Than The Players Had Made At The Board.

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.

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.

Attackers May Sometimes Regret Bad Moves, But It Is Much Worse To Forever Regret An Opportunity You Allowed To Pass You By.

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.

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

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.

Chess - It's A Nonmainstream Game. And The Irony Is That When You Look At Hollywood, It Kept Using Chess As The Symbol Of Intelligence For Its Heroes, For Its Top Characters, All The Time. So It's From "casablanca" To "harry Potter." You Always Have Chess As A Very Important Element To Demonstrate Intelligence, While In Normal Life People Think It's Just A Weird Intelligence - Like Ai.

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.

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

We Know That The Governments In Most Of The Successor States Formed After The Collapse Of The Soviet Union Are Replaced Through A Process Of Regular Elections.

Vladimir Putin Is The Bigger Danger Than Donald Trump Because Trump Can Be Dealt With Within American Democracy. There Is An Independent Judiciary. He Cannot Overrule American Courts. He Will Have To Play By Some Rules. He Will Do Damage Certainly, But To Do Real Damage I Think He Is Too Weak. Putin Is Aggressive Wherever He Can Be. In Europe, In Germany, Putin Will Not Stop.

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

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.

When You Say Politics, You Conjure A Whole Bunch Of Associations: Elections, Campaigning, Debates, Fundraising. None Of This Exists In Russia! We Are Still Fighting Not For Election Victories But For Having Elections At All.

I Say We Should Praise Donald Trump For Existing And For Winning, Because It Has Woken People Up. For Many Years, I Have Been Trying To Say To Europeans, And Especially To Americans, That Vladimir Putin Is A Problem For The World. And They Have Swatted Me Away. "it's Your Problem, We Have Our Democracy." Suddenly, Because Of Trump, They Are Learning About Separation Of Powers, Independence Of The Judiciary And That Ronald Reagan Was Right When He Said, «freedom Is Never More Than One Generation Away From Extinction».

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

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.

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.

If Critics And Competitors Can't Match Your Results, They Will Often Denigrate The Way You Achieve Them. Fast, Intuitive Types Are Called Lazy. Dedicated Burners Of The Midnight Oil Are Called Obsessed. And While It's Obviously Not A Bad Idea To Hear And Consider The Opinions Of Others, You Should Be Suspicious When These Criticisms Emerge Right On The Heels Of Success.

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.

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.

This Obligation To Move Can Be A Burden To A Player Without Strategic Vision.

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

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.

The Worst Enemy Of The Strategist Is The Clock. Time Trouble... Reduces Us All To Pure Reflex And Reaction, Tactical Play. Emotion And Instinct Cloud Our Strategic Vision When There Is No Time For Proper Evaluation.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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