Chess QuoteMaster #10: GM Andrew Soltis
If drink is the curse of the working classes and work is the curse of the drinking classes, then chess is the curse of the thinking classes. J Ross
So, who are the GOATs of chess quotes? Do you have an opinion?
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 (diminished) chess library that takes up multiple shelves in my library. 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.
Still, it's just a set of opinions. Besides, if you don't fully agree with my judgments, though I can hardly imagine such a contrary and confused 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!
In this blog, you can quickly review the candidates and then read what I wrote about QM #10 Andrew (Andy) Soltis.
Questions for the Reader to Ponder
GM/QM Andrew (Andy) Soltis Bio
Reminder About "Questions for the Reader"
The candidates, in alphabetical order, are Alekhine, Bronstein, Capablanca, Dvoretsky, Fischer, Kasparov, Kotov, Lakdawala, Emanuel Lasker, Mednis, Nimzowitsch, Nunn, Pachman, Romanovsky, Seirawan, Silman, Soltis, Spielmann, Steinitz, Tal, Tarrasch, Tartakower, and Znovosko-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. And the choices for #1 to #10 are also locked in the electrons orbiting inside my computer. So there!
You'll have noted there are more than ten candidates, twenty-three in point of fact! Well, of course there are! Otherwise, you could start making some well-informed guesses after the first five were announced. Now there's at least an attempt to shroud the results in a bit of mystery as we count down to numbers three, two, and one!
Thought I'd prompt you up front on some of the questions you might want to ponder when commenting about the blog.
| Based on the quotes you're about to read, consider whether Andy Soltis was a good choice for the number ten spot? |
| Who do you think will take the number nine spot? |
| Who do you think will take the number one spot? |
Some Q&As from earlier in this series ANNOUNCMENT! The Top Ten Chess Quotemasters (QMs).
| Question | Current Votes (last updated: 23 May 6 A.M. EDT) |
| Who do you think was left out and why should they have been included? | 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) |
| 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 one spot? | Nimzowitsch (1), Fischer (½*), Tal (½*), Kasparov (1) |
*@DocSimoo split his vote between Fischer and Tal.
Andrew (Andy) Eden Soltis (born May 28, 1947) is an American GM, US Chess Hall of Fame inductee and author. His peak world ranking was #74 in January 1971. FIDE lists his peak rating at 2480 and he has been inactive in tournaments since 2002, finishing with a 2407 rating. ChessMetrics offers a better estimate of his peak rating, placing him at 2596 in January 1971.
Andy earned a team gold and two team silvers in three World Student Team CCs. He also won the Marshall Chess Club CC a record nine times.
The author of a weekly chess column in the New York Post for over fifty years he has also published a monthly column in Chess Life beginning in 1979. The author or co-author of over a hundred chess books, Soltis has seen his works translated into Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Polish.
He has received numerous writing awards, including Book of the Year by the Chess Journalists of America in 2014 and the British Chess Federation for his book on Botvinnik, another British Chess Federation Award for his 1994 book on Frank Marshall, and he is a two-time winner of the Cramer Award, for Soviet Chess 1917–1991 and for Why Lasker Matters.
Okay, let's get to the heart of the matter, the ten quotes allowed to each candidate for the QM Top Ten.
You'll observe Quote #1 in the image above. As explained in Criteria, it's important to me to be able to visualize at least one quote.
Let's move on to the remaining nine quotes. I might have been able to create images for several of these, but the minimal goal for each of the Top Ten QMs was simply be to demonstrate that one of their quotes was readily converted to an image that resonates.
Most chess games are not won; they are lost. [The Art of Defense in Chess, Introduction, p.viii]
...defense pays off repeatedly because it is difficult to master. [Ibid, p.xiv]
...counterplay is the No. 1 priority of defense–even at the expense of other values such as king safety, pawn structure, material, and development. [Ibid, p.6]
Most players don't know why they lost a particular game. We blame an oversight, a surprise move, a misconception, when the real culprit is a series of errors–some mistakes of attitude, some of strategy, and some of tactics. [Ibid, p.viii]
When you can't change the pawn structure favorably, you should make the most of your pieces. [What it Takes to Become a Chess Master, p. 23]
A master makes his pieces work harder. A master isn't satisfied with a bishop that controls a nice diagonal or a rook that dominates an open file or a knight that occupies a central outpost. There pieces have to do something, not just look good. [Ibid, p.36]
Bad pawns can support a good center. [What it Takes to Become a GrandMaster, p.18]
In "the tree of analysis" you don't need to scan for the longest branches. You need to look at one of the lowest branches. The best branch to look at is often an alternative at the third move. [Ibid, p.40]
In general, middlegame attacks with bishop of opposite color are more likely to succeed than attacks with bishops of the same color. This is particularly true when the bishops are the only minor pieces. [Ibid, p.48]
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 and who didn't? You asked for it, you got it! Right here, and right now. [The table hasn't changed from the first post.]
| #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 will be adding my take on why #9 was better than #10, and so forth, with every post. That's found at Why Soltis Ended at #10.
There might be a "quote shootout", with five to ten additional quotes, if two QM candidates are 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 can be no ties, but if it comes 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 wield the scythe that separates and slots the candidates. [Tiebreaks will usually occur behind the scenes.]
Are there any flaws in your approach?
Heretic!
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.)
For those whose quotes have not yet infiltrated every nook and cranny of the chess echosystem, I was forced to do page-by-page research of books they had written...though only after first filtering through Chess Notes by Edward Winter regarding chess notables, starting with Alekhine and closing with Zukertort.
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 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 change my approach. As a character said in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, "So it goes."
Many of his quotable lines contained ground truths that were both clear and concise, not falling prey to expounding for five pages on a topic that did not deserve such ill treatment. Nor did any of his Top Ten lead me to respond, "Thanks, Obvious Man. Duh." I did struggle a bit in visualizing most of his quotes. On the other hand, a few of his lines brought a faint smile to my face. Given I am a restrained character in general, that's high praise. 🙃
Given his extensive writing career, I initially expected Soltis to place higher. You'd think there would be hundreds of memorable quotes when you wrote tens of millions of words. Then I remembered the quality versus quantity conundrum. He wrote so frequently that there was occasionally less rigor in the research and the editing, let alone creativity in the writing.
However, as my dad used to put it, "The faster I go, the behinder I get." His point? Something has to be dropped, and in this case, it appears to have been quotolgy. (Yes, "quotology" is one of my made-up words. I'll consider submitting it to The Urban Dictionary...if I find the time.)
My take? A publish or perish ("gotta keep food on the table!") mindset doesn't necessarily make for generating memorable quotes. Or memes in our times.
Bottom line: I spent hours going through websites and multiple Soltis books looking for quotes that might elevate him further in the QM Top Ten list...and didn't find them. But he came in ahead of thirteen other candidates, which ain't nothing to complain about!
Many of these questions will change with every entry in the QM Top Ten. But that seems kind of obvious, man.🤣
| Q1: Based on the quotes you read, do you think Andy Soltis was a good choice for the number ten spot? |
| Q2: Who do you think will take the number nine spot? |
| Q3: Who do you think will take the number one spot? |
| Q4: Who do you think won't make the QM Top Ten at all? |
I'll track responses below.
| Question | Your Votes (23 May 7:28 AM EDT) |
| Q1 | Yes, but... (2) |
| Q2 | Pachman (1), Lasker (1) |
| Q3 | Nimzowitsch (1), Fischer (½*), Tal (½*), Seirawan (1) |
| Q4 | Capablanca (1), Fischer (1), @DocSimoo's Grandma (1) |
*@DocSimoo effectively split his vote between Fischer and Tal.
Some Q&A vote tallies from the first blog in this series ANNOUNCMENT! The Top Ten Chess Quotemasters (QMs). Obviously, I no longer accepted votes once the post announcing Soltis as QM #10 went live.
| Question | Current Votes (last updated: 23 May 6 A.M. EDT) |
| Who do you think was left out and why should they have been included? | 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) |
| Who did people think would take the number ten spot? | Bronstein (1), Nimzowitsch (1) |
| Who did people think would take the number one spot? | Nimzowitsch (1), Fischer (½*), Tal (½*), Kasparov (1) |
Short, sweet, surely spellbinding! Well, that's the goal. Ultimately, if someone besides me reads these, I'll consider the success box checked.😉😎
If you enjoyed this, please come back to see who was ranked #9 all the way through #1...and then a special edition with quotes from all the contenders who didn't make my Top Ten, but about whom you might have your own opinions on where they should have fallen. These will generally be posted every two weeks, with occasional three-week gaps to accomadate other blog series schedules.
Stay tuned for QM #9! Who will it be and why? I guarantee my guess is better than yours, because I've already written that draft blog! No fair hacking my draft blogs to obtain that information prior to me hitting the Publish button.
Cheers!
Kevin
You may knock your opponent down with the chessboard, but that does not prove you the better player (English Proverb). Norman Knight, Chess Pieces (London, 1949)
Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink, and an elephant may bathe (Indian Proverb) Norman Knight, Chess Pieces (London, 1949)
A man must be a very clever fellow and a fool to make a really good chessplayer. Brisbane Courier, 21 April 1884, page 3
