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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.

-Garry Kasparov

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Like Dvoretsky, I Think

Garry Kasparov

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Cannot Say, 'go! Go! Rah! Rah! Good Move!' People Want Some Emotion. Chess Is An Art And Not A Spectator Sport.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

I've Met Enough Kgb Colonels In My Life.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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'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.

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.

Perfectly Correct Chess Exists Only In Theory.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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

The End Of The Day

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Few Things Are As Psychologically Brutal As Chess.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Is Mental Torture.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Where Do Poor Young People Turn? Isis Has A Mission For You To Change The World! It's A Horrific Vision, But It's A Vision. Perhaps For White Supremacists, You Can Add The Additional Storyline That They Believe That They Are Having Something Taken From Them By Outsiders, By Immigrants. Not Only Are They Losing Out And Bored, But They Think They Are Victims And That They Know Who Is Responsible.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

In An Age When Schools Are Facing Significant Budgetary Restraints, There Is A Greater Need Than Ever To Make Chess Available To As Many Students As Possible. We've Assembled The Very Best In Chess Education To Develop A Complete Chess Curriculum - K Through 12. We've Designed A Program That Encourages Creativity, Instills Self-discipline And Offers Hope And A Feeling Of Accomplishment To Millions Of Children.

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

Bad Experiences

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.

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

Nowadays, A 13-year-old Would Probably Know More Than Bobby Fischer Knew When He Retired. They Analyse All The Moves And Prepare Themselves On Their Computers. But That Doesn’t Mean They Are Special.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

[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.

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

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.

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.

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

Looking Forward

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

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.

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

[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.

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.

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

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.

Many People Think They Are Too Refined, Or Too Rational, To Entertain A Real Sense Of Wonder In Themselves Or In Others. This Is Preposterous To Me, Since The Natural World Is Full Of Endless Wonders, Both On Earth And Especially In Space, No Matter How You Think It Was Created.

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.

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.

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 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».

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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.

In My Opinion, This Vicious Circle Will Be Broken By History Itself. Because Sticking To The Current Form Of Governance, Which Is To Say Guaranteeing The Survival Of [vladimir] Putin's Regime, Will Necessarily Lead To The Demise Of Russia Within Its Present Borders.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

My Opponent Is Short And The Match Will Be Short.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We Don't Have A Choice. A United Democratic Eurasian Continent Welded Together By Common Economic Interests Is Our Only Hope And Contribution To Stability In The World. If We Fail, I Fear That Russia In Its Present Form Is In For The Most Serious Of Upheavals - The Outcome Of Which Is Extremely Unpredictable.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?"

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.

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

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

Putin Is Like Al Capone.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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