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 dont 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 didnt 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
Its not enough to be talented. Its 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

doesnt matter how far ahead you see if you dont 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. Thats 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 opponents 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 Thats 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 instinctsour intuitive

sensesbecome 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 players 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 Written in a flowing style and is a very enjoyable read