The Eight

by Katherine Neville

The Queen Pawn openings—those which start with PQ4—are “close” openings. This means that the tactical contact between the opposing forces develops very slowly. There is room for a great deal of maneuvering, and it takes time to come to grips in fierce hand-to-hand fighting with the enemy.… Positional chess is of the essence here. —Complete Book of Chess Openings Fred Reinfeld

Positional: relating to a move, manoeuvre or style of play governed by strategic rather than tactical considerations. Thus a positional move is also likely to be a quiet move. Quiet Move: a move that neither checks nor captures and which does not contain any direct threats.… This apparently gives Black the greatest freedom of action. —An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess Edward R. Brace

“Just as these lines that merge to form a key are as chess squares, when month and day are four, don’t risk another chance to move to mate. One game is real, and one’s a metaphor. Untold times, this wisdom has come too late. Battle of white has raged on endlessly. Everywhere black will strive to seal his fate. Continue a search for thirty-three and three. Veiled forever is the secret door.”

But we shall play a game of Chess, Pressing lidless eyes and Waiting for a knock upon the door. —T. S. Eliot

Caissa, the muse of chess, was no less ruthless than the muse of poetry. Muses had a way of killing those whom they inspired.

All chess players are tottering on the brink. They say Paul Morphy, the first U.S. champion, died sitting up fully clothed in a bathtub floating with women’s shoes. Madness is the occupational hazard of chess, but you won’t find me going nuts. It only happens to men.”

Queens never make bargains. —Through the Looking-Glass Lewis Carroll

Remember that God is the greatest chess master of all.”

‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,’”

Death: Yes, in fact I am quite a good chess player.

Do you know what a Knight’s Tour is?” he added, seeing my confusion. I shook my head in the negative. “It’s a mathematical puzzle. You move the Knight to every square of the chessboard without landing on the same square twice, using regular Knight moves: two squares horizontal and one vertical or the reverse. Through the ages, mathematicians have tried to come up with formulas to do it. Euler had a new one. So did Benjamin Franklin. A Closed Tour would be one in which you wound up on the same square you started from.”

the Café de la Régence.

“I call God the Great Architect, because the first thing He designed was sound,” Bach replied. “‘In the Beginning was the Word,’ you remember? Who knows? Perhaps it was not only a word. Perhaps it was music. Maybe God sang an endless canon of His own invention, and through it, the universe was wrought.”

Music, you see, has a logic of its own. It is similar to mathematical logic, but in some ways different. For music does not merely communicate with our minds, but in fact changes our thought in some imperceptible fashion.”

He who understands the architecture of music will understand the power of the Montglane Service. For the two are one.”

Skeletons of mice are often to be found in coconuts, for it is easier to get in, slim and greedy, than to get out, appeased but fat. —Chess Is My Life Viktor Korchnoi (Russian GM)

Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do. —Savielly Tartakover (Polish GM)

Tactics were short-term moves to position yourself. But strategy was how you won the game.

Simply put, the golden mean describes any point on a line where the ratio of the smaller part to the larger part is the same as the ratio of the larger part to the whole line.

It was Pythagoras who discovered that the base of the Western music scale was the octave because a plucked string divided in half would give the same sound exactly eight tones higher than one twice as long. The frequency of vibration of a string is inversely proportional to its length.

We live and die in the midst of marvels. —Napoleon Bonaparte

It is always better to sacrifice your opponent’s men. —Savielly Tartakover Polish GM

Reason was invented by man only to help decipher the formulas created by God.

With few exceptions the Americans were savages and criminals, cast out by the civilized countries of Europe.

“A pretty woman may not always be smart,” Napoleon agreed, “but a smart woman is always pretty.”

God moves the player, and he, the piece.

—Chess Jorge Luis Borges