Hi all,
Surprisingly, we here at TOA headquarters are running out of things to write about this book…
I thought today I’d run the rule over some of the lingering ideas and compare it against my own experience.
All the best,
Tim
Thoughts on decision making...
A player must learn to analyze at a macro-level first before investigating micro-level options.
Bad lines of thinking often start with an emotional component – for example, a player wants to mate the king, then analyzes the position. But why look so far ahead? An increasingly strengthening position will lead to mate. Another way to say this is that troubled analysis starts with a prediction about the outcome.
The two pieces of advice work together to make an important comment on getting a positive result – don’t try to engineer the result! The key is to look at position and think about it from the highest possible level. It doesn’t matter if the analysis leads to a sequence of moves that don’t even look in the direction of the opponent’s king. Eventually, a player who improves his or her position with every move will maximize the chances of victory.
Obsession with the result clouds judgment. A player who has just blown a chance to win may look to avoid a drawn position merely by the feeling that the game should be won.
Anyone who has competed knows the feeling of the blown opportunity. However, the feeling rests on a fallacy of sorts – the assumption that nothing would go wrong from that point forward. Though we all like to think of ourselves as perfect performers, the reality is that most competitions are decided when one competitor takes advantage of the opponent’s error. Recognizing that most competitions are error-strewn affairs is the first step toward building the resilience needed to rebound quickly from setbacks.
Conventional wisdom often encourages us to look at aspects of a situation that are not the most important features to consider.
A helpful habit is to ask – will further thought be beneficial? A close second is to wonder – is this problem solvable and how long will it take me? Understanding the answers will help the decision making process a great deal.
The most interesting thought I encountered during my job search was Amazon’s core value about making fast decisions. In summary – most decisions are easily reversible and therefore do not require extensive analysis.
I liked the idea for the way it turned the conventional decision making process on its head. The core value did not ask if the decision had a good return on investment, if the pros outweighed the cons, or if your boss would liked. The core value simply asked how long it would take to empirically observe whether the decision was a good one. This makes a ton of sense – for most businesses, and even for most people, the core operating constraint is time.
Those who have asked for a free sample before making a purchase understand this idea. Is it better to read a long list of ingredients and ask others for reviews on a particular flavor of ice cream – or to simply have a little taste?
Comments about learning and teaching...
The most challenging aspect of learning to incorporate new patterns is the way this often challenges players to dismantle old patterns.
When something appears wrong about a position, it often signals an error with a player’s expectations rather than a problem with the position itself.
Self-loyalty is always in play whenever we remain committed to an erroneous assumption. The teacher who understands this dynamic will succeed. Most people are capable of learning anything – the problem is that most have yet to learn how to unlearn something. These old thought patterns create a lot of overhead – the teacher who thinks he or she is teaching one thing is really asking the student to dismantle an entire process or routine that consists of many more things.
We can frame our changes as 'growth' but the reality is that if I change how I do something today, it means I was mistaken about how I did it at some point in the past. The consistent challenge of getting older is the commitment we make to our past decisions. Loyalty to the past self is commonly the hidden factor whenever we are reluctant to initiate a change.
Taking the initiative...
Short-term advantages must be converted into something lasting before the moment is lost. If a player accepts that material values fluctuate throughout a game, it becomes clear that certain material advantages are short-term and must be converted before it is wiped out by a value adjustment.
The side with initiative must play vigorously – otherwise, it risks losing the initiative.
I once read about a company whose mission statement included a remark about achieving ‘sustainable long-term profits’. This is utter nonsense and reveals a willful ignorance of basic economics – when there are profits, other firms enter the market and start to chip away at the margins. Profits are always short-term to the extent that every natural instinct among those involved in a free market is to chip away at the profit until it is gone.
A profitable firm in this situation does not have long to translate these profits into a fundamental long-term advantage. It could use its profits to invest in employees, build up infrastructure, or lower prices for loyal customers. Each strategy comes with different likelihoods of building a long-term edge.
Great players opt to translate material advantage into positional gains. This does not endorse throwing away the hard-won extra pawn but rather points to how a superior position is easier to manage than playing with an extra piece.
Materialism means seeking to regain what was just sacrificed rather than trying to gain initiative from it.
Just as the old managerial truism goes – what gets measured gets managed – so it goes in chess, at least with a slight twist. A piece is easily measured and therefore often becomes the sole focus of the amateur player’s strategy. The question of position or initiative is harder to measure and therefore more difficult to incorporate into a strategy.
Forcing any piece guarding two dimensions (for example, a bishop defending a pair of diagonals) to make an arbitrary decision is a good way to learn about the opponent’s assessment of the current position. From the other side, if forced to arbitrarily move a piece out of danger, look for a way to misdirect the opponent.
Sometimes, there is nothing as telling as an arbitrary decision. Let’s say I have two regular social outings on my weekday calendar. One is on Tuesday and the other is on Wednesday. When asked about which one I prefer, I give a noncommittal response – oh, I like them both, they’re both great, I always enjoy myself, and so on…
Suddenly, the Tuesday outing moves to Wednesday. Guess who has to answer the question now?
Forcing errors means playing on an opponent’s awareness of his or her fallibility or shortcomings.
As I’ve written here in the past, those who cannot swim must fight their battles on the riverbank. So it goes in reverse – if your opponent cannot swim, never engage in a riverbank battle.
