A gambit never becomes sheer routine as long as you fear you may lose the king and pawn ending!

Chess is my profession. I am my own boss I am free. I like literature and music, classical especially. I am in fact quite normal I have a Bohemian profession without being myself a Bohemian. I am neither a conformist nor a great revolutionary.

Lack of patience is probably the most common reason for losing a game, or drawing games that should have been won.

All chess masters have on occasion played a magnificent game and then lost it by a stupid mistake, perhaps in time pressure and it may perhaps seem unjust that all their beautiful ideas get no other recognition than a zero on the tournament table.

The books say that it is not so serious to lose time in a closed position I am lucky, since these comments have not harmed me too much.

Nimzovitch became then for me more or less the author of the only book which could help me get away from these Euwe books, which, I admit, are very good for the ordinary club player. But once you've reached a certain strength you get the impression that everything that Euwe writes is a lie.

Among top grandmasters the Dutch is a rare defense, which is good reason to play it! It has not been studied very deeply by many opponents, and theory, based on a small number of 'reliable' games, must be rather unreliable.

In my opinion the Open variation is absolutely correct - and more interesting than the Closed.

I often play a move I know how to refute.