"Chess first of all teaches you to be objective"
About this Quote
Objectivity sounds like a virtue you can download. Alekhine’s line insists it’s a skill you grind for, and chess is the gym.
As a world champion forged in an era that treated chess less like a hobby and more like intellectual combat, Alekhine is selling a hard, almost moral discipline: the board doesn’t care about your self-image. Every blunder is documented. Every “I meant to” becomes irrelevant once the clock runs and the position is what it is. That’s the first lesson in objectivity: separating intention from outcome, ego from evidence.
The subtext is also a warning about the seductions of subjectivity. In chess, the easiest way to lose is to fall in love with your own idea, to see what you want to see, to mistake momentum for advantage. Alekhine’s phrasing - “first of all” - isn’t casual; it elevates clear-eyed evaluation above creativity, bravado, even “genius.” He’s pushing back against the romantic myth of the visionary player by arguing that greatness begins with sober accounting.
There’s a cultural context here, too. Alekhine’s fame made him a kind of early 20th-century mind celebrity, and his era was obsessed with systems, rationality, and the promise that disciplined thinking could tame chaos. Chess becomes a miniature world where you practice that promise. The irony, of course, is that Alekhine’s own life and politics were messy, which only sharpens the quote’s appeal: objectivity is aspirational, not automatic. The board teaches it because life rarely does.
As a world champion forged in an era that treated chess less like a hobby and more like intellectual combat, Alekhine is selling a hard, almost moral discipline: the board doesn’t care about your self-image. Every blunder is documented. Every “I meant to” becomes irrelevant once the clock runs and the position is what it is. That’s the first lesson in objectivity: separating intention from outcome, ego from evidence.
The subtext is also a warning about the seductions of subjectivity. In chess, the easiest way to lose is to fall in love with your own idea, to see what you want to see, to mistake momentum for advantage. Alekhine’s phrasing - “first of all” - isn’t casual; it elevates clear-eyed evaluation above creativity, bravado, even “genius.” He’s pushing back against the romantic myth of the visionary player by arguing that greatness begins with sober accounting.
There’s a cultural context here, too. Alekhine’s fame made him a kind of early 20th-century mind celebrity, and his era was obsessed with systems, rationality, and the promise that disciplined thinking could tame chaos. Chess becomes a miniature world where you practice that promise. The irony, of course, is that Alekhine’s own life and politics were messy, which only sharpens the quote’s appeal: objectivity is aspirational, not automatic. The board teaches it because life rarely does.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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