Chess QuoteMasters #1: Savielly Tartakower
I am one of those unlucky skeptics who never overlook the dark side of even the happiest experience. – Tartakower, Chess Review, June 1951, page 170 Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
We've reached the leader of the pack, the king of the hill, the #1 entrant into the Chess Quote Master (QM) Hall of Fame (HoF). If you missed any or all of numbers two through ten, don't worry. I provided links at the end of the post that allow you to jump to prior posts in this series.
In this post, you'll be reminded of/introduced to the QM candidates. You'll also find a table listing readers' guesses on who would slot in where in the Top Ten.
Questions for the Reader to Ponder
Reminder About Those "Questions for the Reader"
Why a QM HoF? Well, you can find multiple sites that list plenty of chess quotes (e.g., Chess Quotes - Wisdom and Interest). Some even let you find quotes by a specific individual or at least on a topic, e.g., tactics.
Heck, you might even have an opinion on the greatest chess quote! Certainly, it wouldn't surprise anyone if you have a favorite quote. For many of us there's some quote that has stuck with us through thick and thin, like a jingle we can't shake out of our head. Can anyone get "Rooks love open files" out of their head, no matter how often that turns out to be untrue? Or you may have switched your allegiance to some other quote over the weeks, months, years, or decades of your chess experience.
But have you ever spent some time speculating about who produced the best chess quotes and in the greatest quantity? Hey, it's no problem if you haven't considered the issue! I'm more than willing to fill that particular void in your thoughts with my opinions!!
What makes my opinions better than yours? Well, my opinion is informed by decades of chess and a (slowly shrinking) chess library that still occupies multiple shelves in my library [at the same time, my electronic chess library grows weekly and far more rapidly]. Primarily, though, I'm the one who took the time to put some thought into this sorely overlooked aspect of chess history, a Top Ten ranking of the greatest Chess QuoteMasters (QMs) of all time. NOTE: I'll offer a bevy of quotes by numbers 11 – 23 at a later date.
Still, it's just a set of my opinions. Besides, if you don't fully agree with my judgments, though I can hardly imagine such a contrary, confused, and contumacious state of mind, then chess.com generously provided a comments section so you can express your agreements, disagreements, quibbles, corrections, expansions, nominations, and questions. Some of which I will respond to!
Next, we quickly review the candidates.
The candidates, in alphabetical order starting from the top left corner, were Alekhine, Bronstein, Capablanca, Dvoretsky, Fischer, Kasparov, Kotov, Lakdawala, Emanuel Lasker, Mednis, Nimzowitsch, Nunn, Pachman, Romanovsky, Seirawan, Silman, Soltis, Spielmann, Steinitz, Tal, Tarrasch, Tartakower, and Znosko-Borovsky.
No, you can't add anyone. All the selecting has already been done, and that's that, so it's too late to nominate anyone else. Plus, the choices for #1 to #10 are now published in blogs. To the victor goes the spoils!
You may have noted there were more than ten candidates, twenty-three in point of fact! Well, of course there were! Otherwise, you could have started making some incredibly well-informed guesses after the first five were announced. By adding thirteen QM stalwarts who didn't make the Top Ten, I attempted to shroud the results in a bit of mystery as we counted down to numbers four, three, two, and one!
Thought I'd prompt you up front on some of the questions you might want to ponder while reading, and before commenting on the blog at the end.
| Based on the quotes you're about to read, already read for other QMs, or simply your ill-advised, preconceived notions, was Tartakower a good choice for the top spot? |
| Who would you have chosen as #1? |
Some Q&As from earlier blogs in this series.
| Question | Current Votes (last updated: 07192025: 5:32 PM EST) |
| Who do you think was left out? | Philidor (1), Morphy (1), Giri (1), Grischuk (1), Rozman (1), Tony Miles (1) |
| Who do you think won't make the QM Top Ten at all? | Capablanca (1), @DocSimoo's Grandma (1), Alekhine (1), Lakdawala (1), Znosko-Borovsky (1) ALL CORRECT!! |
| Who did people think would take the number ten spot? |
Bronstein (1), Nimzowitsch (1), Spassky (1), Tarrasch (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number nine spot? | Pachman (1), Lasker (1), Steinitz (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number eight spot? | Lasker (1), Nimzowitsch (1), Steinitz (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number seven spot? | Lasker (1), Lakdawala (1), Tartakower (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number six spot? | Lasker (1), Lakdawala (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number five spot? | Lasker (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number four spot? | Tal (1) 👍🏻Congrats to @PokeGirl93, Lasker (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number three spot? | Lasker (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number two spot? | Nimzowitsch (1) 👍🏻Congrats to @PokeGirl93, Lasker (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number one spot? | Nimzowitsch (2), Fischer (½*), Tal (½*), Tarrasch (1)***, Kasparov (1), Lasker (1), end of list |
* @DocSimoo split their vote for #1 between Fischer and Tal. Oops, after seeing QMs four and five that guess is crossed and tossed.
** It's clear we had a vociferous Lasker fan, but I won't mention the kiwi girl's name. Initially, she never specified which of the three Laskers she meant, but Berthold and Edward aren't among the nominees, so I assumed she meant Emanuel, the former World CC and noted scribe. [We both knew that @VOB96 knew that I knew that she meant him, but I digress.]
*** Our participating titled player, NMChessToImpress, got convinced by a friend of theirs to change their vote for #1 from Nimzo to Tarrasch. Both votes were overcome by events (OBE), but he still selected folks who took two of the top three slots!
Savielly Tartakower (also known as Xavier or Ksawery Tartakower, less often Tartacover or Tartakover; 21 February 1887 – 4 February 1956) was a Polish GM and author/journalist in the 1920s and 1930. ChessMetrics estimates his peak rating at 2719 in January 1921 and ranked him #3 globally for the March 1921 list. Twice the Polish CC he represented the nation in seven Olympiads winning one gold and two bronze individual medals to go with a team medal count that included one gold, two silvers, and two bronzes. In the 1950s Tartakower relocated to France where he won the 1953 French CC.
A significant contributor to opening theory, there are variations named after him in the Dutch, QGD, Torre Attack, Caro-Kann, and he may have originated the Catalan Opening in 1929.
What others had to say about Tartakower:
Few people knew how much he liked poetry – poetry in all the three languages of which he had perfect command: Russian, German and French, to say nothing of Latin and Greek. Translating poems was his secret hobby. – Hans Kmoch’s obituary of Tartakower on pages 123-125 of Chess Review, April 1956 Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
Probably no-one can play more strongly than Tartakower. There are better players, more perfect masters. Tartakower has faults, and the greatest of them is that he does not care to avoid getting into difficult positions. Sometimes his ability enables him to extricate himself safely, other times he is left without recourse. Nobody can handle such positions more cleverly, no matter how they may have happened to come about. If he would put forth such efforts in more suitable positions, he would hardly know his superior. But either he cannot succeed in eliminating this fault (it is very difficult to eliminate fundamental faults) or he does not care to – which amounts to the same thing in the end. – Lajos Steiner on pages 212-213 of Chess Review, September 1938 Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
Tartakower is truly the grand (not old, as he is fresh, virile and very active) man of chess. He was always a symbol to me. I never knew an intrinsically stronger chess master. There were better players, as Tartakower deliberately chose inferior openings – for pure devilment at first and later as a habit. But, when he got into the inevitable jam, Tartakower played with the strength of steel, often extricating himself. – Lajos Steiner in Kings of the Chess Board, page 30 Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
He was the wittiest man I ever met. – Harry Golombek on page 65 of Chess Treasury of the Air by Terence Tiller Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
Tartakower wrote many well-regarded books. Studded with brilliant insights and witty observations, they are nevertheless marred by a loquacity which often degenerates into mere chattiness and verbiage. In reading these books, it is therefore always necessary to separate the gold from the dross, a task that calls for patience. – Capablanca, Source: Great Moments in Chess by Fred Reinfeld (New York, 1963), page 102, Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
Some Selected Tartakower Writings
His books included 500 Master Games of Chess, 100 Master Games of Modern Chess, and My Best Games of Chess 1905 – 1954.
Though I never finished toiling through 500 Master Games of Chess, I thoroughly appreciated the layout. There are three major sections for open, semi-open, and closed games. Within each of those sections Tartakower and his co-author, Du Mont, separated games by the opening so at the time of publication this would have served as an opening treatise of sorts for those interested only in specific lines. Finally, there is a fun Appendix that provides games at odds, blindfold chess, lightning chess (played at ten seconds per move), and living chess that used humans as the pieces but only allowed the players five minutes per side for the game. A feature I particularly enjoyed for each and every game, including the variants, is a short introductory paragraph or three for every game in the book that summarizes the most salient game aspects before you dive in!
I've borrowed that feature for three books on analysis. Those are not yet published, but IM Attila Turzo and I are close to seeing the release of Part One on chessable.com. He may also provide instructional videos to accompany each of the three planned books.
QM Tartakower's Top Twenty Quotes
Okay, let's get to the heart of the matter, the ten quotes allowed to each candidate for the QM Top Ten. Presciently, I realized I'd need more than ten quotes to decide who was #2 and who was #1.
You'll observe Quote #1 in the image above. As I explained in Criteria, it's important to me to be able to visualize at least one quote. In this case, my thoughts first went to Arabian Knights, but I used that imagery for an Arabian Mates blog. So, I went to my roots: fables, tales, and wails.
Moving on to the remaining nine quotes. I could have created images for several of these, but the ample goal for each of the QMs will simply be to demonstrate that one of their quotes was readily converted to an image that resonates.
Stalemate is the tragicomedy of chess.
Some part of a mistake is always correct. Chess Mistakes
The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made. Chess Mistakes (image below)
The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. Chess Mistakes
It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men. Chess Quotes - Sacrifices
To avoid losing a piece, many a person has lost the game. Chess Quotes - Sacrifices
A draw can be obtained normally by repeating three moves, but also by playing one bad move. Chess Quotes - Draws
The tactician must know what to do whenever something needs doing; the strategist must know what to do when nothing needs doing. Chess Quotes - Strategy
A game of chess has three phases: the opening, where you hope you stand better; the middlegame, where you think you stand better; and the ending, where you know you stand to lose. Humourous Chess Quotes
As indicated throughout this series, the sheer quality of great quotes by Nimzowitsch and Tartakower required a 'quote-off'. I would have shirked my obligations as an analyst had I stopped at their first ten. If you read this series in sequence, you already enjoyed Nimzo's Top Twenty. Now, it's time for ten more Tartakower-isms! Perhaps then you'll agree that these two topple the rest.
Played 'a la Morphy'. What greater praise can be given? Chess Quotes by Savielly Tartakower
Moral victories do not count.
Chess is a struggle against one's own errors.
Every chessplayer should have a hobby. TOP 25 QUOTES BY SAVIELLY TARTAKOWER | A-Z Quotes (image below)
No game was ever won by resigning. Chess Quotes On Losing
I never defeated a healthy opponent.
A Queen's sacrifice, even when fairly obvious, always rejoices the heart of the chess-lover. Chess Quotes - Sacrifices
The first essential for an attack is the will to attack. Chess Quotes - Strategy
It is well known that Capablanca was very popular in Buenos Aires; and, after I visited that city in 1931, my name often appeared in the newspapers there. Later on, we each had a racehorse named after us. It was gratifying to learn that “Tartakower” (the racehorse) chalked up more victories than his equine rival, “Capablanca”. (per Yasser Seirawan, as found in an Edward Winter article)
A thorough understanding of the typical mating continuations makes the most complicated sacrificial combinations leading up to them not only not difficult, but almost a matter of course. Chess Quotes - Sacrifices
I would hope some sharp-eyed critic out there would ask this critical question: What criteria did I use to determine who made the QM Top Ten List and who didn't? You asked for it, you got it! Right here, and right now.
| #1 | Gut feel. Darned if what they said doesn't resonate somewhere in my chess soul. |
| #2 | Must have ten quotable quotes that I could find without too much painful research on my part. |
| #3 | It must have been written or translated into English. I leave it to others to manage their linguistic chess QMs. |
| #4 | If it's a full paragraph...it isn't a quote. |
| #5 |
If it made me laugh it's probably a winner. |
| #6 | If it made me laugh and cry it's almost definitely a winner. |
| #7 | If it seemed glaringly obvious, I tried to consider when it was said. Sometimes that works, sometimes...not. |
| #8 | Can I visualize at least one quote? Can I create a picture that captures the essence of a quote? |
For each QM, I provided my take on why QM #9 was better than QM #10, and #8 was better than #9, and so forth, with every post. In this post, that's found at Why Tartakower Earned the #1 Spot.
For Nimzowitsch and Tartakower, I felt both were evenly matched after their first ten quotes. This is unlike the 2024 World Blitz CC, and more like a golf tournament with a sudden death playoff. There could be no ties, so if it came down to a coin flip, a spin of the roulette wheel, a random dart toss, or a roll of the dice to decide, so be it. Ultimately, I wielded the scythe that separated and slotted the candidates.
I considered posting twenty quotes each from #1 and #2 simultaneously and deciding the winner based on a reader's poll. Considering the lackadaisical voting patterns throughout this series, that approach would have resulted in an epic fail.
Are there any flaws in your approach?
Gosh, why didn't I consider that!
Sigh, of course there are. For instance, for most of the potential QMs I relied on quotes easily found in the wild, sayings that were gyrating around the meme-verse, t-shirts, and on the lips of players and coaches everywhere and everywhen. However, some of these folks wrote very quotable material, but for some reason their quotes have not spread broadly across the chess echosystem. ("Echosystem" is my second-newest contribution to the Urban Dictionary: Hello KevinSmithIdiot; echoverse is my most recent entry, comprising a system of echosystems.) [I need to change that to KevinChessSmith, given my new username here and on Chessable.]
Okay, what's your point? You did a lot of research, so what?
In my circular way of getting to the point, I found that I turned up a lot of very quotable material going through a book for those whose sayings did not yet appear widely across the chess quote echosystem. I harbor hope these twelve posts will alleviate some of that lack of respect for people who are eminently quotable.
Still, the process left me to ponder whether an in-depth look into only some candidate's published works was an injustice to those who had plenty of quotes already bouncing around the echoverse. Bottom line, I chose not to do a page-by-page review of every candidate's works. One, I don't have books by all of them. Two, I don't have an infinite amount of time and energy.
To double down, I'm not going to change my approach. As a character said in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, "So it goes."
How deep did you dig during your research?
Deep enough to discover that the below quote was probably never uttered by Tartakower.
Multiple grains of salt adhere to any sourcing of quotes. The image above is but one example. This quote has also been attributed to Tarrasch at various times. That happened with a lot of their quotes. Maybe because their last names both started with "Tar"? Did people really get stuck on that impecunious note? (Yes, that's supposed to be a bad pun. It was Abet and Aid Punsters Day when I edited this paragraph.)
It appears nobody has found a good source for this supposed quote. Based on Predicaments for Chess Writers by Edward Winter, the quote seems to appear first in Harry Golombek's report in the April 1953 BCM report on a tournament in Bucharest, in which Golombek offered his excuse for a poor spell in a tournament by "quoting" Dr Tartakower.
What's ground truth? Well, to paraphrase the Edward Winter site, good luck finding a tournament in which Tartakower lost five consecutive games.
Why Tartakower Earned the #1 Spot
But the question I must answer to be consistent (and despite the fact that Emerson wrote "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.") is why Tartakower enters the QM HoF at a higher position than Nimzowitsch. Will it suffice to say that the quote regarding '1001 blunders' overwhelmed me with its sagacity? Rats. Okay, how about I loved the image for that quote? No? I suspected not.
Okay, despite my contention that logic is how we rationalize decisions already made, I'll press ahead with some "reasoning", which is like seasoning in that it should add flavor that covers up any flaws in an otherwise brilliant masterpiece of baking. (Heaven forfend that I should cook the books, but there are limits to my ability to persuade with my opinions, however noble my inspiration.)
Point one to Tartakower because many of Nimzo's quotes come across as didactic, even slipping into condescension. A second point to the victor because many of his near-peer's best quotes verge on slipping into full paragraph form, which would have violated the fourth grading criteria found in How Were the Quotes Graded?. The third and final point I'll offer is that Tartakower offered more wry humor than Nimzowitsch, though the margin was small, and some would assert nebulous.
In the end, there could be only one. I think I chose wisely.
Reminder About Reader Questions
Last chance to mess with my head!🤣
| Do you think Tartakower was a good choice for the top spot? |
| Who would you have placed as #1 instead? |
In the table below I'll track responses.
| Question | Your Votes (last updated day-time-group) |
| 1 | Yes (#), No (#), Maybe (#), huh? (#) |
| 2 | Lasker (pre-publication, I'm guessing at least one TB will vote for him despite all the overwhelming evidence presented. After all, there was no forum provided for viewing Lasker's quotes. Well...next blog.), other(#) |
Ich weiß es nicht, aber ich kann nicht anders, als mich zu fragen, welche dunkle Seite Tartakower in seiner Aufnahme in diese Ruhmeshalle gefunden hätte. (I offer this online translation because of his roots)
(No, I speak neither Scottish brogue, nor German, but it seemed like fun.)
Short, sweet, surely spellbinding! Well, that's the goal. Ultimately, if someone besides me reads these, I'll consider the success box checked. [I'm also waiting for the first person to let me know which blog in the series used a different word in the first sentence of this paragraph.😉😎]
If you enjoyed this, please come back to see quotes from all 23 QMs! That special edition will deliver quotes from all the QMs, including those who didn't make my Top Ten (especially Emanuel Lasker), but about whom you might have your own opinions on where they should have fallen.
Cheers!
Kevin
Final thoughts: Tartakower did not write in English. All translations should be treated circumspectly. But in many cases, I suspect the intent was accurately conveyed.
Some chess knights do not leap, but limp. (Manches schachpferd springt nicht, sondern hinkt.) –– Tartakower in his book Das entfesselte Schach (Kecskemét, 1926), page 186 Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
Here Black missed a suitable opportunity to resign. (Hier mist zwart een geschikte gelegenheid om op te geven.) –– Tartakower in the newspaper De Telegraaf, page 9, 30 October 1935, regarding a game of the World CC match Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
I regard my openings not so much “bizarre” as psychological, for there is much more risk of going wrong when one adopts a well-known and hackneyed opening than when one succeeds in putting one’s opponent off his balance at the very outset by some totally unexpected coup. The worse a move seems at first sight, the more effective it may be. I refuse to admit that chance does not enter into chess; chance is the measure of human ignorance, and an opponent who, through over-confidence or alarm – two emotions commonly engendered by an apparently “bad” move in the opening – allows his perception of the possibilities and therefore his knowledge of them to be lessened is allowing the chances to pile up against him. –– Tartakower, CHESS, 14 August 1938, pages 414-415 Savielly Tartakower by Edward Winter
Prior Blogs in the Quote Master Series
ANNOUNCMENT! The Top Ten Chess Quotemasters (QMs)
Chess QuoteMaster #10: GM Andrew Soltis
Chess QuoteMaster #9: GM Rudolf Spielmann
Chess QuoteMaster #8: GM Garry Kasparov
Chess QuoteMasters #7: GM David Bronstein
Chess QuoteMasters #6: IM Jeremy Silman
Chess Quotemasters #5: GM Robert (Bobby) James Fischer
Chess QuoteMasters #4: GM Mikhail Tal
Chess QuoteMasters #3: Siegbert Tarrasch
Chess QuoteMasters #2: Nimzowitsch
