Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, which has a more or less superficial similarity to warfare. Intellectual productivity is one of the greatest joys, if not the greatest one of human existence. However, Chess was created by man and not by nature, and so we cannot be "born" with a special ability for playing Chess. The chessmaster must have a mind capable of scientific analysis, just as the mathematician. Scientific reasoning rests not merely on logical reflection. It also requires that inexplicable faculty which we call intuition, without which no inductive thinking is possible. Being able to force a move on the other player is key in getting to the end result of capturing the other player's king.

The chessmaster may hail from any country and any stock as where individual genius will come from is totally unpredictable. The chessmaster usually begins young. Earlier many of the great players were unknown before they hit their thirties. Today, almost every prominent grandmaster scores some notable success in his twenties. In fact, one could safely assume that if a chess player does not reaches the national championship in his early twenties he will never become a world champion and probably will never even become a grandmaster. Although there is no general consensus on who is the greatest chess player, some of the greatest grandmasters of all-time include Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Bobby Fischer, Vladimir Kramnik, Anatoly Karpov, Mikhail Botvinnik, and Emanuel Lasker.

Improvement in Chess comes partly from gaining a better perspective of what makes for a strong chess position. Unlike the majority of chess players who rely solely on experience, first-rate chess players are able to recognize general laws to which all their combinations are secondary. Imagination surely is one of the most important prerequisites of a chessmaster. He must be able to envisage positions in his mind before they actually transpire, and he must be able to conceive combinations he has never seen before. Finally, the chessmaster should realize that to avoid making mistakes is the beginning, as it is the end, of mastery in Chess. If the chess player makes no mistakes he can be certain of never losing a game, and very constantly win it.

The chessmasters are very special people that can "see" the game many steps ahead of the current move. Each move is cleverly planned as only one step towards victory. Chessmasters excel at this sixth sense of playing the game many moves ahead in their mind.