Jose Raul Capablanca Quotes

In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else; for, whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame.

You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.

People who want to improve should take their defeats as lessons, and endeavor to learn what to avoid in the future. You must also have the courage of your convictions. If you think your move is good, make it.

Most players ... do not like losing, and consider defeat as something shameful. This is a wrong attitude. Those who wish to perfect themselves must regard their losses as lessons and learn from them what sorts of things to avoid in the future.

A good player is always lucky.

Chess is more than a game or a mental training. It is a distinct attainment. I have always regarded the playing of chess and the accomplishment of a good game as an art, and something to be admired no less than an artist's canvas or the product of a sculptor's chisel. Chess is a mental diversion rather than a game. It is both artistic and scientific.

Chess books should be used as we use glasses: to assist the sight, although some players make use of them as if they thought they conferred sight

In chess, as played by a good player, logic and imagination must go hand in hand, compensating each other.

In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else.

The great World Champions Morphy, Steinitz, and Lasker were past masters in the art of Pawn play; they had no superiors in their handling of endgames. The present World Champion has not the strength of the other three as an endgame player, and is therefore inferior to them.

Chess is a very logical game and it is the man who can reason most logically and profoundly in it that ought to win.

When you sit down to play a game you should think only about the position, but not about the opponent. Whether chess is regarded as a science, or an art, or a sport, all the same psychology bears no relation to it and only stands in the way of real chess.

None of the great players has been so incomprehensible to the majority of amateurs and even masters, as Emanuel Lasker.

The best way to learn endings, as well as openings, is from the games of the masters.

An hour's history of two minds is well told in a game of chess.

There was a time in my life when I almost thought I could never lose a single duel of chess.

Ninety percent of the book variations have no great value, because either they contain mistakes or they are based on fallacious assumptions; just forget about the openings and spend all that time on the endings.

The king, which during the opening and middlegame stage is often a burden because it has to be defended, becomes in the endgame a very important and aggressive piece, and the beginner should realize this, and utilize his king as much as possible.

A passed pawn increase in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes.

Chess is something more than a game. It is an intellectual diversion which has certain artistic qualities and many scientific elements.

Sultan Khan had become champion of India at Indian chess and he learned the rules of our form of chess at a later date. The fact that even under such conditions he succeeded in becoming champion reveals a genius for chess which is nothing short of extraordinary.

The winning of a pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game.

To improve at chess you should in the first instance study the endgame.

Excellent! I will still be in time for the ballet!

Your Soviet players are cheating, losing the games on purpose to my rival, Botvinnik, in order to increase his points on the score. - (to Stalin in Moscow 1936 where he finished in 1st place, 1 point ahead of Botvinnik)