You Cannot Say, 'go! Go! Rah! Rah!

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.

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.

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.

Rhetoric Matters, But At The End Of The Day Policy Matters More.

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