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[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.

-Garry Kasparov

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[romans] Never Made Any

Garry Kasparov

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[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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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

My Opponent Is Short And The Match Will Be Short.

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

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

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

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

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

We 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.

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

[vladimir] Putin Needs Wars To Legitimize His Position.

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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.

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

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.

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[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.

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

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Perfectly Correct Chess Exists Only In Theory.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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Self Confidence

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Chess Is An Art And Not A Spectator Sport.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The End Of The Day

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

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

All Women Are Inferior To Men.

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

Looking Forward

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

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

[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.

Putin Is Like Al Capone.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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