A Quote by Michael Stean

The most important feature of the Chess position is the activity of the pieces. This is absolutely fundamental in all phases of the game: Opening, Middlegame and especially Endgame. The primary constraint on a piece's activity is the Pawn structure

Michael Stean

Quote Topics

Absolutely Activity Chess Constraint Endgame Feature Fundamental Game Important Most Opening Pawn Phases Piece Pieces Position Primary Structure The Most Important

Quote Author

Michael Stean
English - Author
Born: September 4, 1953

The King plays a most important part in the endgame, and gains in power and activity as the number of pieces on the board diminishes. Acting in eight different directions, he becomes, instead of the weakest piece, one of the most formidable units.

Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame.

Steve Carell

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.

Jose Raul Capablanca

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.

Jose Raul Capablanca

Even in the King's Gambit ... White is no longer trying to attack at all costs. He has had to adapt his approach and look for moves with a solid positional foundation ... As often as not, his strategy consists of stifling Black's activity and then winning in an endgame thanks to his superior pawn structure.

Neil McDonald

My forte was the middlegame. I had a good feeling for the critical moments of the play. This undoubtedly compensated for my lack of opening preparation and, possibly, not altogether perfect play in the endgame. In my games things often did not reach the endgame!

Boris Spassky

A player can sometimes afford the luxury of an inaccurate move, or even a definite error, in the opening or middlegame without necessarily obtaining a lost position. In the endgame ... an error can be decisive, and we are rarely presented with a second chance.

Paul Keres

I don't recommend trying to cram a lot of long opening-move variations into your head. The main idea behind any opening is to get a strong pawn center and give your pieces a lot of scope so that you cramp your opponent's position and can attack weaknesses in his game.

Bobby Fischer

My first pieces, in an art context, were ways to get myself off the page and into real space. These photographic pieces were ways to, literally, throw myself into my environment. They were photographs not of an activity, but through an activity; the activity (once I planted a camera in the instrument of that activity - once I, simply, held a camera in my hands) could produce a picture.

Vito Acconci

Capablanca was among the greatest of chess players, but not because of his endgame. His trick was to keep his openings simple, and then play with such brilliance in the middlegame that the game was decided - even though his ooponent didn't always know it - before they arrived at the ending.

Bobby Fischer

Modern Chess is too much concerned with things like Pawn structure. Forget it, Checkmate ends the game

Nigel Short

I detest the endgame. A well-played game should be practically decided in the middlegame.

Dawid Janowski

The animal is one with its life activity. It does not distinguish the activity from itself. It is its activity. But man makes hislife activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has a conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely identified.

Karl Marx

Jesus didn't come to earth to establish a new religion. He came to restore a broken relationship. He came to make the primary, primary again. The secondary activity of obedience to the law of God was always intended to serve the primary activity: to love God and enjoy Him forever. When that is primary, the secondary becomes a labor of love, a joyful, and "easy" burden to bear. (Matthew 11:28-30

Charles R. Swindoll

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.