A quote from Richard RETI's Masters of the Chessboard(p 395):"In general, it can be established that there are two defenses against 1. e4, which make it absolutely impossible for the first player to take any initiative, and which give Black such an even game, without any difficulties at all, that it has now become useless in practice, since these defenses are generally known. They are the Caro-Kann Defense and the variation of the French Game: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 dxe4."Glad that's settled! :-)
Quotes
"A discussion between the top management of the firm Audi and grandmasters Darga, Schmid and Pfleger dealt with the similarities and differences between chess-oriented thinking and the thinking processes required in business, and in particular whether one can benefit from the other. The question arose as to how a chess master actually discovers his moves. Dr. Pfleger was of the opinion that in the last analysis nobody fully knows the reasoning by which he arrives at a certain move. |
PFLEGER and TREPPNER, Chess: the mechanics of the mind |