All Becomes Chess At An Advanced Level

Any sort of competitive task or event, like out-selling other real estate sellers, or battling in a sport or e-sport, or taking a business to the next level over someone elses, involves knowledge of the fundamentals, and then involves strategy.  All of those who are advanced in their field have already gotten the fundamentals down, so it comes down to making the right chess moves.

What Does Chess Represent?

Chess is all about making the right move at the right time, thinking ahead a few steps, and not getting out-thought by the other player.  If you allow the other player to out-think you, they will be thinking of future moves that you won’t have a good response to, and then it is all downhill from there.  You have to know how the pieces work, but once you have passed that basic state of comprehension, you have to analyze the board and look for opportunities and future opportunities.  Farnoosh from Prolific Living has described chess as “a game of intellect, planning, and quiet rivalry of the minds” in a past piece about Amsterdam memories.

Kobe Relating Basketball Moves To Chess

In this video of Kobe Bryant giving a tutorial about basketball, he compares it to chess at the 2:16 time mark, and specifically he brings that up when talking about how he defeats his competitors, who we know are already very skilled.  At high levels of play, the basics like bounce passing and dribble penetration are known by all, and then choosing the right methods and right modes of action becomes the main issue, and that is much more of a mental game than a physical one(although physical ability is still important in a sport like basketball).

Adding The Right Melodies In Takes Strategy And Feeling

Chess is used as a comparison very often.  Piano playing can be compared to chess as well.  Once you have the basics down, it is about making the right moves as far as melodies to play in the background to complement the main melody, or adding in nice little finishers to pieces that don’t have endings.  I am talking more about piano playing from the mind than reading directly from notes, not that there is anything wrong with that.  I may have linked to this before, but here is a link to a fabulous piano playing of the Tetris theme.

Some Folks Make Huge Chess Moves

Let’s take a look at someone like Donald Trump.  He has the basics down as far as real estate, and also as far as personal branding.  What are some chess moves he has made?  One that you can consider as a large move would be starting his show The Apprentice, as he likely had multiple other options on the table at that time, such as starting a different type of show that was about real estate tips, or not starting a show at all and instead starting a speaking series where he traveled around the world, or so on.  Chess is only chess when you have competition you are battling against, and there are certainly others at Donald’s level who have similar options, like Martha Stewart or Richard Branson, who could choose to start a show(or maintain it as Martha does), or go into stock trading, or build on their brand.  Folks who are at the same socioeconomic level are able to play chess with each other on a larger scale.

As an aside, I want to bring up why it is okay to discuss someone like Mr. Trump or other large individuals many times.  This is because it is his name on the Trump tower, and until it is not his name on such large entities, it is fully worth it to discuss his actions, as his actions are worth thousands of times more than the actions of others, not in principle, but as far as economic impact.  All people are not of equal authority in the economic realm.  For further reading, you might want to look at Hulbert’s article discussing Mr. Trump.

High Level Strategy Shows Up At The Operating Table

Part of chess is also about risk and reward.  High skill in chess involves knowing what piece is worth losing to gain a certain area of control, or what control is worth losing to gain an advantage in pieces.  This can relate well to that which a doctor deals with at the operating table.  When one comes out of medical school and early practice, the fundamentals have all been absorbed and understood.  Most cases can be handled pretty smoothly, but some of the more advanced medical conditions and emergency situations require chess-like thinking for the doctor to assess what is worth saving at the loss of something else, or what method is most beneficial to the current moment, or when to try a riskier procedure to secure the function of an organ.  This is not to say that the treating of patients at certain times is like a game, but that it uses the most advanced of our neural circuitry to assess multiple risk/reward scenarios and future results in a short period of time.

Acquiring Other Companies Is Like Taking An Opponent’s Knight

Lastly, I would add in a business example, like that of an expanding technology company that is based on a geolocation program/service.  One of the important chess moves for this company once it has grown quite a bit is to assess when or whether to purchase other geolocation companies that are up-and-coming competitors.  Acquiring another company is never a requirement for success, but it is way easier to handle a Microsoft when it is in your control, as opposed to it being its own entity and brand.  These are the moves that company owners are to be known for, and they are reflected on by such people in the same way that a chess player can look back at the moves of his game and reflect on where he went right and where he went wrong.

The Moves You Make Are Set In Stone(Mostly)

One thing we have to take note of is that every move is definitive.  In chess, when you make a move, that is it, and you can’t take it back, as that is a rule of the game.  Our legal system and other systems also work this way, as you can’t slander someone’s name, and then take it back when the lawsuit comes, as the damage has been done.  A real estate purchase can’t be undone, as the new owner has the law on his side regarding the purchase, and the only way you could get back something sold would likely be to purchase it at a higher price.

Fundamentals Are Great, But We Like To See Strategy Implemented

A way to look at this concept is to see that every profession or venture has a portion that is more routine and fundamental, and then a portion that is highly strategic and chess-like.  We are almost always interested in the highly strategic part, because the fundamentals are able to be mastered, but the strategy always has new skill ceilings, because person-versus-person and person-versus-environment battles involve the human brain, which can continually be trained to be more advanced.  We care about the relocation a company makes to a new city, and not so much about some small piece of programming code in their software, because the city relocation has a huge impact, and the small piece of code can be figured out with a little effort.

Chess With The Players Being Two Countries

Politics also fits quite well with this theme.  Much of political discourse involves one move or another as though the chess pieces represent the main figures in whole countries.  Government figures have all the fundamentals of political science down, and know the history of how countries of the past have handled different dilemmas and situations, and so their focus is on making moves to outdo the efforts of those in other countries(or maybe just moves to get elected and re-elected, but that is a different topic).  One high-ranking individual will fly to another country as a show of gratitude, and then the other country will send a speaker to the first country, and these moves go back and forth as part of international relations, with strategy always on the mind.

Concluding Note

These examples provide a couple of pieces of information to keep in mind.  One is that knowing the fundamentals is always necessary.  You can’t skip the fundamentals to get to the strategy portion of that which you are doing.  If you don’t understand how loan percentages work, buying and selling houses is probably out of your ability.  At the same time, once you have the fundamentals down, all your focus is to be on the strategy portion of that which you are doing.  If you outdo someone else in this aspect, you are winning the relevant battle, and they will have no choice but to upgrade themselves or give up in some manner.  In chess, giving up is signaled by dropping your king piece.

Tagged as: basketball, chess, doctors, piano, politics, real estate, strategy