Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn’t just “trusting in God” to give me the moves.
When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties – before he died in the early forties.
The main idea behind any opening is to get a strong pawn center and give your pieces a lot of scope so that you cramp your opponent’s position and can attack weaknesses in his game.
I object to being called a chess genius because I consider myself to be an all around genius who just happens to play chess, which is rather different.
