17 Great Chess Quotes from Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer is one of the greatest and probably the most controversial chess player of all times. At age 13 he won a brilliancy award for a game that became known as the Game of the Century.

Fischer became 11th World Chess Champion defeating Boris Spassky. But then, he refused to defend his title and lost it without a fight. Fischer dominated the chess scene for about a year (1970-1971) in “extent never seen before”.

His greatest games are outlined and analyzed in the book My 60 Memorable Games, which remains one of the greatest chess books ever written.

All that matters on the chessboard is good moves.

Chess is life.

I add status to any tournament I attend.

I like the moment I break a man’s ego.

Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.

It’s just you and your opponent at the board and you’re trying to prove something.

You can only get good at Chess if you love the game.

All I ever want to do is just play chess.

Don’t even mention losing to me. I can’t stand to think of it.

I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.

If you don’t win, it’s not a great tragedy – the worst that happens is that you lose a game.

Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact.

That’s what chess is all about. One day you give your opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one.

The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black should play to win instead of just steering for equality.

Chess is a matter of delicate judgement, knowing when to punch and how to duck.

Alekhine developed as a player much more slowly than most. In his twenties, he was an atrocious chessplayer, and didn’t mature until he was well into his thirties.

In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn’t do well. They’d get bad openings.

Buy the My 60 Memorable Games from Amazon – Recommended
Read more great quotes:

• 10 Great Quotes To Inspire You To Be a Better Chess Player
• 31 Great Chess Quotes from Garry Kasparov
• 27 Great Chess Quotes from Magnus Carlsen

Credits:
images used in this article are taken from wikipedia and from the public domain.