Garry Kasparov said,
The stock market and the gridiron and the battlefield aren’t as tidy as the chessboard, but in all of them, a single, simple rule holds true: make good decisions and you’ll succeed; make bad ones and you’ll fail.
It is that simple. Stop your immediate human reaction of searching for qualifiers to reject this statement. That is your ego.
Sometimes a decision seems good at the time and turns out to be bad. So define decisions as good or bad based on ultimate outcome, not on present circumstances. This leaves less room for excuses. But Kasparov’s logic is not about ego, it’s formulaic. We only read into it from an ego perspective when we have failed.
You have to operationally define good and bad for yourself. If you don’t consider it failure to make decisions that seem good at the time but are bad in the end, you will be forgiving of yourself and others forever. It is the sting of a really bad decision that incites true investment in making the next right decision at the moment with what information is available. It makes you look harder for the answer. Otherwise, you never fail; you are a victim of circumstance. Nothing is risked. Material may be gained, but the outcome of the game cannot be interpreted as anything but a loss, strictly speaking.
I have found no way to casually play chess. It either informs and colors a great deal of even my most quotidian thought processes, or I have to remove myself from it for awhile to wear other glasses until my perspective becomes controllably rubbery again. Maybe this began with my epiphany upon reading Borovsky’s rules (for chess, and in my opinion, for life.)
I recently heard a super episode of Six Pixels of Separation featuring Jonathan Salem Baskin, a man who studies the connections between history and marketing. Baskin explained that the rules of social have never changed. There are no new rules, as has become a popular title of advice blogs on getting more followers by tweaking your Twettiquette for the new age. Nay. The rules have been the same for thousands of years, but the applications are different.
Throughout history, myriad diverse great leaders have pointed to chess as a learning tool that informed their strategy for war. The language is universal. The possibilities are near-infinite. Chess’s application is tenacious, though the game is very old. That’s because rules for social are implicated in rules for war, and thus in rules for chess (and business, which I’ll get to soon).
This week, I’ve been studying one game in particular:
The Game of the Century
Donald Byrne vs. Bobby Fischer
Rosenwald Memorial Tournament, New York City. October 17, 1956
A promising young player, thirteen-year old Bobby Fischer played one of the nation’s leading chessmasters, Donald Byrne.
... read more Post a comment (6)I took these photos at Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery. This place is a trip into Confederate and Southern history while also demonstrating the oddity of gentrification, urban decay, and evolving zoning and land use trends. Depending on where you are standing, you can see the some/all/none of: the downtown skyline, a rusty industrial railroad, a field of identical soldier tombstones, a crowded Jewish section, phallic headstones, gargoyles, mausoleums, heralded magnolia trees, and nature’s insistence that tombstones move over so roots can spring up.
Hmm, where to move? If you were black, where would you move?
I chose BK from g8 to h7. I wonder if white will move the pawn of f4 to f5 and put black in check.
It’s been awhile since a chess match has ended with a sigh of fatigued relief the way a great tennis match ends. I think that’s because I rarely play anyone live anymore! It’s like trying to get Mario Tennis to suffice for the real thing. Maybe.
Considering everything we do digitally, our human relation skills are probably being stunted beyond belief. If you never uncontrollably sigh and collapse at the end of a match (athletic or mental) I think your soul dies a little bit with each passing moment of passionless endings. But attaining such endings is so much more convenient so maybe we think quantity of matches in all makes up for lost quality.
check to your majesty
Photo credit: anemic cinema on deviantart.com
- Avoid mistakes.
- Do not make the opening moves automatically and without reflection.
- Do not seek to memorise variations, try to understand them.
- Do not believe all that you are told. Examine, verify, use your reason.
- In war, topography dictates operations.
- Do not abandon the centre to your adversary.
- Do not give up open lines, seize them and hold them.
- Do not create weak points in your game for your enemy to seize.
- Do not lose time.
- Unless you analyse the position, you will achieve nothing.
- Do not leave any piece where it has no range of action or is out of touch with your other pieces.
- Do not play too quickly.
- It is not a move, even the best move, that you must seek, but a realisable plan.
- Do not despise the small details; it is often in them that the idea of the position will be found.
- Do not think too soon about what you opponent can do; first get clear what you want to do.
- Do not lose confidence in your judgment.
- Never lose sight of your general idea, however thick the fight.
- Do not modify your plan.
- Do not be content with attacking an existing weakness; always seek to create others.
- Do not get careless when, after general exchanges, the end game is reached.
- Haste, the great enemy.
- Do not relax in the hour of victory.
- Do not entangle yourself in a maze of calculations.
- Never omit to blockade an enemy passed Pawn.
- Do not leave your pieces in bad positions.
-How Not to Play Chess by Eugene A. Znosko-Borovsky, 1949
Per usual I am in a dopamine bath from multitasking tonight- I have four batches of Valentines Chocolate Love Bark going for the slew of Etsy orders I received today, making the granola, playing this chess game, listening to NPR, and correcting my posture every few minutes. Besides two great successes in Area 3 of Life, I also fixed my wet iPod today.
... read more Post a comment (0)BEWARE of extremists and pole bouncers (not dancers), especially the religious kind. Even if not terrifying or offensive through proselytizing, something in the brains of such people is off. To sum this experience simply, business interrupted for religious worship is a red flag- patronize elsewhere.
... read more Post a comment (1)"Emily, would you like to say the prayer to renounce your sins right now?" I glanced at Giovanni working on my bumper and declined, but prodded further.
... read more Post a comment (3)
