How life imitates chess

Krishnan

GTC Book Review Talk

April 22, 2012

Chess mimics real life decision making

Chess is a laboratory for the decision making process

Have to make constant stream of exact, informed decisions

Decisions made in real-time and under pressure

Requires calculation, creativity and desire for results

Three parts of the book

Part 1 – Strategy, calculation, preparation Part 2 – Evaluation and analysis

What changes are needed and why Part 3 – Ongoing, continous performance

improvement

Strategy, Talent, Preparation

Strategy

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat – Sun Tzu

The question “Why ?” separates visionaries from functionaries

William Boeing – invested in superior technology

Play your own game – Aware of your own strengths and weaknesses

Why ?

• “Why?” is the question that separates visionaries from functionaries, great strategists from mere tacticians. You must ask this question constantly if you are to understand and develop and follow your strategy

• … our goal is to improve our position. You must avoid creating weaknesses, find small ways to improve your pieces, and think small – but never stop thinking.

Strategy

If you are employing a powerful and successful

strategy, whether gaining space on the

chessboard or market share in global commerce,

the competition will try to trip you up by getting

you to abandon it. If your plans are sound and

your tactical awareness is good, your competitor

can only succeed with your help.

On Change

Change can be essential, but it should only be

made with careful consideration and just cause.

Losing can persuade you to change what does not

need to be changed, and winning can convince

you everything is fine even if you are on the brink

of disaster. If you are quick to blame faulty

strategy and change it all the time, you don’t really

have any strategy at all.

Talent

When I was eleven, I just got good – Bobby Fischer

Tal doesnt move the pieces by hand, he uses a magic wand

Tal's pieces seemed to move faster than his opponents

Dragging a hippo out of a marsh story

Developing the habit of imagination

Break your routines

Preparation

If a man has talent and cannot use it, he has failed – Thomas Wolfe

Jose Raul Capablanca vs. Alexander Alekhine

- World championship, Buenos Aires, 1927

- Capablanca didnt prepare much, Alekhine was fanatical about his preparation (8 hrs / day)

Alekhine won the match

Preparation

If you said you didn’t have enough time, that

meant you were not well organized.

Botvinnik summed up his philosophy by stating,

“The difference between man and animal is that

man is capable of establishing priorities!”

On working hard

It’s not enough to be talented. It’s not enough to

work hard and to study late into the night. You

must also become intimately aware of the

methods you use to reach your decisions.

Calculation

A computer may look at millions of moves per

second, but lacks a deep sense of why one move

is better than another; this capacity for evaluation

is where computers falter and humans excel. It

doesn’t matter how far ahead you see if you don’t

understand what you are looking at.

Material, Time, Quality

.

Material

Material – describes tangible assets

Personal attachment to assets that do not have a true value

Chess teaches there is much more to life than material

All pieces are of no use if the king is gone

Time

Clock time – Time to make moves

Board time – Number of moves to achieve an objective

Time can be swapped for material – E.g. More money for express delivery

Mikhail Tal – the ultimate time player, did not care much for material

Quality

A knight in the center is more valuable than one on the edge

A knight on the rim is dim

In warfare, the highest ground is sought

e.g. Kargil

Jack Welch – Kept the best GE businesses

No 1 or 2 in the market

Expanding powers of evaluation

Choosing a house – Trading material for quality

Dont fall too much in love with your bishops (in chess) or the corner office

By using time wisely and putting material to good use, we can achieve quality (=happiness)

Material, Time, Quality

But I believe that by using your time wisely you

can put all your material to your best advantage

and achieve the ultimate goal of quality. That’s the

promise of the material-time-quality concept–in

chess and in life.

Exchanges and imbalances

Microsoft exchanged material for quality in the browser wars

Used its cash and placement advantages

If we can detect or cultivate a weak spot in our

opponent’s position, we can then attempt to

transform our position to take advantage of that

weakness

Phases of the game

So dedicate yourself to making the time, finding a

space in which you can think and learn, and

finding new ideas with which to shock your

adversaries.

Question Success

• Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well. When something goes wrong, you naturally want to do it better next time ,but you must train yourself to want to do it better even when things go right

• That’s why I always think of Simon Bolivar and

remember that experienced soldier who studies

the battlefields in the aftermath of the war returns with

both wisdom and renewed courage.

Intuition

As they develop, our instincts–our intuitive

senses–become labor-saving and time-saving

devices; they literally cut down the time it takes to

make a proper evaluation and act. You can collect

and analyze new information forever without ever

making a decision. Something has to tell you

when the law of diminishing returns is kicking in.

And that something is intuition.

Crisis point

• Everything is condensed into one single moment, it decides our life – Franz Kafka

• The best indicator of a chess player’s form is to detect the climax of the game - Spassky

• Crisis really means a turning point, a critical moment when the stakes are high and the outcome uncertain. It also implies a point of no return. This signifies both danger and opportunity…

In Summary

This book stresses the importance of wanting to improve the way you do things

It is also important to understand why you are doing what you are doing