Critical thinking is the most important factor with chess. As it is in life, you need to think before you make decisions.
Hikaru Nakamura
In poker, you want to play the weaker guys. In chess, it's the opposite.
Chess is a game where all different sorts of people can come together, not a game in which people are divided because of their religion or country of origin.
I like the feeling when you don't have much time and you have to think fast.
No, I've never had a job other than being a chess player.
I had been playing a lot of chess and I wasn't really enjoying it, so I decided to go to college to see what else is out there for me. But after about six or seven months away from the game, I just decided that the whole college life wasn't for me and that's why I decided to come back.
In chess you try to do your best, but there are instances where you make mistakes or you try and take risks that you shouldn't. And I think losing games is a good thing, because you learn more from when you lose than when you win.
I will say there have been occasional times - not when I'm playing, but when I'm studying - that I have found a little bit of alcohol has been good for the creative process.
I play quite a bit of tennis on the side.
No matter how badly you play, unless you make a flat-out blunder, there's always going to be some narrow path to being able to save the game and draw instead of losing.
Life is very much about making the best decisions you can. So I think chess is very valuable.
I would say out of all the things I studied growing up, math was probably one of the things that I liked the least.
You can't follow or understand the game unless you play chess yourself, unlike poker which you can pick up in five minutes.
The image that everyone has of a chess player is not necessarily positive. I think it's partly due to Bobby Fischer - his rise to fame and then his descent into madness. That left a lot of people with negative stereotypes, of nerds who aren't interesting.
I think for me the main goal that I have, or at least what I really aspire to, is to raise the level of chess.
I don't consider myself a nerd.
I've found for playing that it's generally not a good thing to be drinking.
Well, I think, in large part, when I first began playing chess at seven years old, I was quite bad at it. I lost a lot of games when I first started.
In chess, everyone's accepted. That's what's great about it. You can be a little bit different. You can be an oddball.
It's certainly an honor to have kids who are looking up to me, but at the same time, I'm just trying to do what I can to raise the profile of chess.
I've had to grow up pretty fast, which is not a good thing.
I'm into hiking and mountains and I follow hockey and basketball pretty avidly.
What was great about Fischer is that when he became world champion is that chess was being covered everywhere. It was in all the major newspapers, it was on TV.
I've won the U.S. Championship. I've won a lot of tournaments.
It's good to win. Losses aren't good, and draws are O.K.
Because of the Internet, chess is not about your nationality or your background. Anyone can get good now.
There is a perspective out there that I'm very much all about myself... I just live with it.
I love the game. I love everything that it can do for people. It's not all about me.
Everybody uses computers to train so much now that the first nine or 10 moves of a match are made without thinking.
I want to be ranked in the top 100 players. If I can achieve that, I'll think about the world championship.
There aren't really any 'American' grandmasters that are higher rated than me.
I'm not a mad genius.
It's easy to become angry, but when you get better, you channel your energy into the game.
If you're not at the elite levels there are a lot more opportunities to play tournaments.
When you watch chess, you don't see the four hours that the player spends preparing for a match ahead of time.
A lot of people see a future where you could make a living as a chess player.
I get tired of the traveling.
I'd rather play for the Yankees. You get more money.
Chess.com is my home turf.
As you get stronger, you learn to maintain the position against higher rated players. This comes with experience.
The way I play is very unique.
The way I play is not like most people. The moves are more computeresque. They're not the moves that most humans are going to play.
I was rather nervous when I was 10 years old.
If you talk to some of the older players, they definitely say they see beauty in certain games. In my case, there are certain times when I think, 'Wow, that's so amazing, chess is so full of ideas.' But most of the time I tend to be much more pragmatic about it, as opposed to thinking about it as art or something exquisite.
There are so many strong players that everything has to go right for you to win.
It's very encouraging that the game of chess is growing in the U.S. and is becoming more popular.
The first championship in 2005 will always be the most special but winning this fifth one was by far my best performance because of the strength of the field.
Definitely, some of the artistry and poetry has been lost in modern chess. It's very rare that I play a game where I'm like, 'Wow, this is really interesting. There were so many possibilities! It was such a rich game.'
When I was younger, I would look at a game with computers and still be fascinated by the possibilities.
Everyone is using the same programs, everyone is looking at the same opening ideas. I wouldn't say everyone is necessarily the same in terms of talent or ability, but when you're able to prepare games that go so deep that you don't have to think, really, it balances out the field.
