The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquire… - Caryl Chessman

I don’t mind smoking interfering with my play. Some folks say it takes the sharp edge from one’s intellect, and spoils one’s memory. I haven’t found it so. I’ve smoked since I was 14, and I can play better when I have a cigar in my mouth – only a cigar, never anything else. When I play a lot of games at the same time, I must be keyed up to it, as it were. I practise what you call self-hypnotism. It is largely will-power. You see, it’s just this way. When it becomes my turn to make a move at one of the chess boards, my mental powers are concentrated severely on the one move. All the other chess boards, the checkers and whist are obliterated from my mind. It is as though I had never started playing those games at all. I seem to remember nothing of them. I come to a decision, the move is made, and I turn again to the cards in my hand. Quick as lightning the game of chess vanishes from my mind. Now it is nothing but whist with me. I seem never to have had a thought of anything but the game of cards. I play one. Then I move one of the checkers. These transitions of mind take place so quickly that I seem to be playing chess, checkers and whist all at once, and to be thinking of all the games at once. But it is as I explained. The only thing I really need for the ordeal is my cigar.

In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn't do well. They'd get bad openings. You cannot compare the playing strength, you can only talk about natural ability. Memorization is enormously powerful. Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca, and especially against the players of the previous century, like Morphy and Steinitz. Maybe they would still be able to outplay the young kid of today. Or maybe not, because nowadays when you get the opening advantage not only do you get the opening advantage, you know how to play, they have so many examples of what to do from this position. It is really deadly, and that is why I don't like chess any more.

My life was in crisis. All my values were becoming meaningless. I was discovering that my chosen profession was empty, foolish, as useless as—as playing chess.