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I Don't Make Any Secret Of The Fact That I'm Closer To The Republicans Than To The Democrats. But Even Under A President Hillary Clinton, Us Foreign Policy Toward Moscow Would Probably Be More Critical And Confrontational. I Hope It Isn't Too Late For That.

-Garry Kasparov

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I Don't Make Any

Garry Kasparov

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I Don't Make Any Secret Of The Fact That I'm Closer To The Republicans Than To The Democrats. But Even Under A President Hillary Clinton, Us Foreign Policy Toward Moscow Would Probably Be More Critical And Confrontational. I Hope It Isn't Too Late For That.

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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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

[vladimir] Putin Wants To Keep [bashar] Assad In Power And Expand His Own Military Base In Syria, Whatever The Cost. I Even Believe He Has An Interest In More And More People Fleeing The Country. The Flow Of Refugees Improves His Negotiating Position Toward The West, Including The German Chancellor.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

With This Mistake I Deprived Myself Of The Possibility To Make A Contribution To The Treasury Of Chess Art.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Growth Of Violent Extremism Is Partly A Consequence Of How The Developed World Has Become Complacent And Defensive About Its Own Greatness And Ambition.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There Is A Good Chance Donald Trump Won't Survive Four Years. Conflict Of Interest Is The Biggest Danger For Trump. He Is Destroying One Of The Pillars Of The Free World. He Is Seeking To Eliminate The Very Concept Of Conflict Of Interest. A Lot Of Things In America Were Built On A Code Of Honour. I Am Confident The Damage Done By Ruling Through Family And Friends Will Be Made Impossible By Future Regulation.

Family And Friends

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

My Opponent Is Short And The Match Will Be Short.

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.

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

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

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

Bad Experiences

[vladimir] Putin Is More Of A Poker Player. In Poker, Unlike Chess, You Can Effectively Compensate For A Very Weak Hand By Bluffing. There Are Fixed Rules In Chess, And No One Knows How The Game Will End. Things Are Currently The Other Way Around In Putin's Realm. But It Won't Stay That Way Forever.

Ironically, The Main Task Of Chess Software Companies Today Is To Find Ways To Make The Program Weaker, Not Stronger, And To Provide Enough Options That Any User Can Pick From Different Levels And The Machine Will Try To Make Enough Mistakes To Give Him A Chance.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

With Some Reservation, It Can Be Said That Certain Democratic Elements Are Present In Georgia As Well; But It Is Very Clear That The Government Has To Pronounce Its Explicit Wish To Resign Before Something Is Going To Happen. On The Western Front, Only Belarus Is An Exception.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

...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.

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 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.

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.

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.

I Don't Make Any Secret Of The Fact That I'm Closer To The Republicans Than To The Democrats. But Even Under A President Hillary Clinton, Us Foreign Policy Toward Moscow Would Probably Be More Critical And Confrontational. I Hope It Isn't Too Late For That.

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

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.

Chess Is An Art And Not A Spectator Sport.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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».

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.

[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.

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.

Besides Problems Of Traditional Societies, The Caucasus Has To Cope With Quite A Few Unsettled Territorial Conflicts That Also Nurture Authoritarian Governmental Structures.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Have Some Strategical Vision, I Could Calculate Some Few Moves Ahead And I Have An Intellect That Is Badly Missed In The Country Which Is Run By Generals And Colonels.

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.

People's Minds Are Polluted By These Dark Pictures Of The Future From Hollywood: "the Terminator," The Skynet, "the Matrix." It's World Where There's No Room For Humans, Or They Have To Fight Against The Machines. I Think It's Just A Way, Way, Way, Way In The Future. Is It Going To Happen? I Don't Know. For Me, These Debates Are Not Similar, But They Resemble Debates About How The Sun Will Turn Into A Supernova In 4 To 5 Billion Years. Frankly, I Don't Care.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Vladimir Putin Likes Donald Trump Because He Supports This View Of The World, That The Big Guys Can Carve It Up, Sit And Talk About The World, Carve Up The Countries, Shape Borders. For Putin, Treaties, Alliances, Nato, The Eu Are Stumbling Blocks.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Chess Is Mental Torture.

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.

All Women Are Inferior To Men.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Chess Is Not Dominoes

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.

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

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.

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

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

You Can't Overestimate The Importance Of Psychology In Chess, And As Much As Some Players Try To Downplay It, I Believe That Winning Requires A Constant And Strong Psychology Not Just At The Board But In Every Aspect Of Your Life.

I’ve Seen - Both In Myself And My Competitors - How Satisfaction Can Lead To A Lack Of Vigilance, Then To Mistakes And Missed Opportunities.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

[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.

But We Must Not Forget The Effort Undertaken By The Ruling Elite In Russia To Manipulate Western Politicians, Businessmen As Well As Journalists. That's Why [vladimir] Putin's "fifth Column" Is That Powerful In The West.

Putin Is Like Al Capone.

One Does Not Succeed By Sticking To Convention.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

With Each Success The Ability To Change Is Reduced. My Longtime Friend And Coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, Aptly Compared It To Being Dipped In Bronze. Each Victory Added Another Coat.

When Your House Is On Fire, You Cant Be Bothered With The Neighbors. Or, As We Say In Chess, If Your King Is Under Attack You Don't Worry About Losing A Pawn On The Queen's Side

Chess Is A Unique Cognitive Nexus, A Place Where Art And Science Come Together In The Human Mind And Are Then Refined And Improved By Experience.

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.

The Highest Art Of The Chess Player Lies In Not Allowing Your Opponent To Show You What He Can Do.

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

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

Perfectly Correct Chess Exists Only In Theory.

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

[vladimir] Putin Needs Wars To Legitimize His Position.

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

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

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.

If You Don't Take Risks, You Don't Drink Champagne.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Biggest Problem I See Among People Who Want To Excel In Chess – And In Business And In Life In General – Is Not Trusting Their Instincts Enough.

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.

Values-oriented Foreign Policy Of The Free World Would Be Much Better, Supported By The Self-awareness Of Being On The Right Side Of History.

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

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.

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

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

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 Would Say, You Have A Unique Chance Of Learning More About The Game Of Chess With Your Computer Than Bobby Fischer, Or Even Myself, Could Manage Throughout Our Entire Lives. What Is Very Important Is That You Will Use This Power Productively And You Will Not Be Hijacked By The Computer Screen. Always Keep Your Personality Intact.

The Only Successor To President Putin Is President Putin Himself And We Could Of Course Dream About President Putin Stepping Down Voluntarily And Picking Out Successor Which Would Be Probably As Bad As Him.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Wouldn't Place Much Stock In Numbers. I Don't Believe That They Reflect Putin's True Popularity. Just Think About How The Pollsters Proceed. They Call People And They Ask Them Questions On The Street. In Today's Russia, It Takes A Lot Of Courage To Tell A Stranger Something Critical About The Head Of The Kremlin. And Yet More Than 20 Percent Do So Nonetheless.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Young People, Especially Young Men Due To Culture And Perhaps Testosterone, Dream About Changing The World, Making An Impact, Doing Big Things. Now Our Young People Are Told Life Was Better In The Past, That We Should Be Less Ambitious And Hold On To What We Have. The Grand Narratives Of Exploration And Change That Drove The World Forward For A Century Have Been Tamed.

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.

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